I've finally switched from GNU/Linux to FreeBSD
What is it like? Would you reckon it's worth switching to?
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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I love it so far, I didn't actually really have a big reason to switch from Arch which i was using, I've just been wanting to try something new, If you've been getting bored of your operating system i think FreeBSD is a great choice to try, although Linux is still great as well I just felt it wasn't really for me
But thats a big change from bleeding edge to freedbsd, no? Feels like totally different use-cases. I never really tried freebsd, just openbsd some years ago on desktop.
What's actually the difference between them? In both case you get started in the tty, follow the installation guide and all the rest are mostly the same right?
Sorry if I sound stupid, I'm a newbie.😅
How is your experience with bsd so far? Did you notice any drawbacks or improvements?
It's only been a day for me so far but I've been enjoying it the only issues I've had were with my Wi-Fi and Audio although i think i have resolved those issues at least mostly. I'm hoping FreeBSD will be my new permanent home 😀
What were the things you disliked about Linux?
Is it daily drivable?
So far it is for me, although it depends on what you do on your computer. web browsing works well along with office suites such as LibreOffice, and I've heard gaming is also decent with programs like Suyimazu although I haven't personally tried this as my PC is not really suited for gaming
Awesome job! I didn’t know XFCE could look so good!
Which dock is that? Plank?
Thx, yea the dock is plank
Is it daily drivable?
Cool stuff, what do you do on your system most of the time? I've messed around with open and freebsd, all hosting stuff though. It's been over 10 years since I tried running freebsd on the desktop, seem to remember sound being a big pita to deal with.
I know you just switched, but you should try OpenBSD - way better desktop experience IMO.
Why do you have that opinion?
Btw, I'm about to test OpenBSD both in a laptop and Banana Pi-M5, reading the docs, mailing lists and other sources. I'm liking how OpenBSD is build and its objectives.
I used FreeBSD on a laptop for a few months and then OpenBSD for a over a year (on the same laptop).
FreeBSD had various small issues:
- Plugged in headphones didn’t automatically output audio (and I never figured out how to do this in a non-hacky way).
- Locking on suspend would sometimes fail.
- My trackpad wasn’t recognized, and I had to use the console mouse driver under X to enable it IIRC (this also made the pointer freeze until X was restarted sometimes).
- More stuff I can’t remember.
It was nice in a lot of ways too - I really like the ports system, the OS is very customizable and very well documented.
On OpenBSD almost everything just worked out of the box. It comes with a privilege separated version of X11 (Xenocara) and 3 wms (FVWM (old), cwm and twm). I did have to setup lock on suspend but it never failed.
OpenBSD also got better all the time - I used the snapshots for a while and meaningful improvements and great new ports were constantly being added.
They just recently built a whole new set of networking daemons specifically to make it easier to hop between networks on a laptop, all while keeping things simple and well documented.
I currently use OpenBSD on a server from openbsd.amsterdam, and honestly it’s amazing.
Service management is dead simple and yet works very well.
It includes a bunch of useful daemons built by the project, which have a sane configuration format and a nice set of features (httpd, relayd, smtpd, etc.)
Downsides are the package manager (although they made it way faster recently), no support for Bluetooth, recent WiFi versions (with sone exceptions) and Nvidia GPUs, and IMO overly aggressive attitude of some developers on the mailing list.
Nice! FreeBSD is cool. Couldn't make it work for me as a regular thing due to poor/outdated WiFi and bluetooth, but if it suits your use case then it's a really solid option.
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