2024: The year of desktop FreeBSD?

[drhowarddrfine]

But that's not me, and here I am, happy, in general.

Reminds me of Red Green and The Man's Prayer:
"I'm a man...but I can change...if I have to....I guess."

Modified for FreeBSD:
"I'm a FreeBSD user...and I'm happy...but I can change...if I have to....I guess

 

[Cath O'Deray]

What is FreeBSD?

A greatly improved explanation: https://freebsdfoundation.org/freebsd-project/what-is-freebsd/ In the Wayback Machine:

forums.freebsd.org

The Foundation's page no longer mentions desktop, however (my previous comment) this does not convey disinterest in desktop use cases.

… poor adoption rate of Linux …

#2 of all time in /r/freebsd (287 points (99% upvoted)):

We've made it to 0.01% guys!

Posted in r/freebsd by u/SomeArchUser • 287 points and 71 comments

old.reddit.com

• we're still at 0.01%, according to the linked site.

… CURRENT … about 18 months now. No real system issues. … I venture down little rabbit-holes …

The superb thing about ZFS boot environments is that there's always a quick and easy way out (way back), if there's any problem in the hole.

 

[taiwan740]

Reminds me of Red Green and The Man's Prayer:
"I'm a man...but I can change...if I have to....I guess."

Modified for FreeBSD:
"I'm a FreeBSD user...and I'm happy...but I can change...if I have to....I guess

Yeah, a combination of that, and Lesley Gore's lyric "it's my party and I'll cry if I want to"

The superb thing about ZFS boot environments is that there's always a quick and easy way out (way back), if there's any problem in the hole.

I use UFS, but true. Not gotten my small brain around ZFS and jails yet. I'm plenty baffled as-is!

 

[Cath O'Deray]

Not gotten my small brain around ZFS and jails yet.

Loosely speaking: you need not think of jails, and system (FreeBSD) automation largely takes care of boot environments, without you needing to think about them.

 

[mer]

without you needing to think about them.

I agree with everything else; Boot Environments have the tendency to multiply like proverbial rabbits, so one should be familar with the output of bectl list (especially the meaning of the N and R flags) and bectl destroy -o (so you can kill the rabbits before they overrun your yard).

 

[LibreQuest]

The idea behind that question in Linux was a measure of how many users use a Linux solution on their workstation and mobile vs those that use Windows and Mac. It has always been a question of metrics.

However those metrics are made against a corporate technology solution that is sold for profit and has always been a flawed way to measure given the nature of free and open source software.

It wasn't until ChromeOS and Android that there was a truly measurable market that could be measured in the same way. Otherwise you're constrained to using web metrics which can often be flawed.

Regarding the year of the Linux desktop, it's yet to be seen, depending on your metric of measurement.

If your metric is functionality and features you have an argument for Linux and FreeBSD and OpenBSD etc etc.

It would be nice to provide a clearly defined metric to provide context to the question in this case.

However, the outcome will likely be irrelevant to the user base.

But I will say "yes" because there is no real metric so I feel it's a relevant response. haha

 

[scottro]

I think that people have to keep in mind that professions, such as doctors and dentists, have, probably expensive, programs that only work on Windows, and perhaps Macs. I don't know about lawyers, but I suspect that there are many professions where a Windows only program is essential to their work. Again, I don't know about Mac, though it seems to me to be quite possible that many of these specialty programs also work on Macs. But until they get to Linux as well, I don't see it making much headway. The programs may be old, I remember going to a doctor's office and seeing Windows 7, but it was Windows. And also gamers. I'm not a gamer so I don't know how well Steam works on Linux, but even my more tech oriented friends only game on Windows.

 

[tomazo]

After ditching Linux for FreeBSD on my home server and very positive experience with it I was looking for system for my “personal daily driver”, a 2017 Macbook 12 inch.
I like it a lot as it’s totally quiet due to passive cooling, very light and easily portable.
The OSX got bloated to the point that I found myself to be forced to restart web browser (Firefox or Safari) at least once per day and to clean tabs regularly (16GB of RAM!).
It was clear I need to change OS to the one that is more reasonably using resources and gives me more control.

I’ve downloaded FreeBSD 14.0, booted the installation image and that was it… keyboard and touchpad doesn’t work.
I’ve made a research in the web and found that FreeBSD is missing the required SPI drivers.

In the end I had to install Linux on the laptop regardless that I’d prefer FreeBSD.
Still more than happy with it on the server and I hope that maybe in the future I’ll can get laptop meeting my requirements and being at the same time able to be driven by FreeBSD.

Good luck with article and happy new year!

 

[jcamos]

I use FreeBSD for my laptop, desktop, servers and a couple of Pi's on a daily basis and honestly I don't need anything else! It's been years and so far the experience is just great.

The whole thing is a breeze of fresh air. It's stable, efficient, well structured and organized. IT'S SO BORING that I love it!!!

Cheers!

 

[Beastie7]

2024: The year of desktop FreeBSD?​

"ah sh**, here we go again"

 

[PMc]

Ah! Interesting point. In my circle of nerd-dom, "desktop" usage has been understood to mean any use with a desktop environment, as opposed to purely command line based systems.

Oh my gods. Now this gets interesting, albeit laboursome. A "circle of nerd-dom" - what might that be? Apparently a cultural thing...
So we have two issues to solve now. First, we have to clarify the misunderstanding in this "understanding". Then, we have to figure what's actually happening.

Let's clarify: A server, a workstation or a desktop are essentially all the same. For the server you can drop the graphics and audio, but will probably need more memory and more I/O bandwidth, and best quality. For the workstation you want high-performance graphics and audio. FreeBSD does fine with all of them, because it is designed for best quality (server grade) right from the beginning, and the drivers are mostly the same. (What does probably not run is some chinese crap hardware, like cheapo 10-port SATA).

With a laptop things are very different. There is a lot of new, specialised hardware, like a touchpad, or even a touchable screen. There are keys on the keyboard supposed to adjust screen brightness and audio volume. With the normal keyboard driver these keys do nothing. The manufacturer must create a driver that does handle these keys (probably each manufacturer in their own way). Usually for Windows, maybe for Linux.
My -rather new- laptop does no longer have a physical radio-off switch. Instead it is now a function on a keyboard key. Obviousely it does - nothing. There would be software needed to do anything with the key. Who should write that? So there are two possibilities now: either, it is a fake news that airplanes would crash when you switch on the radio, or, governments are obliged to allow only approved operating systems to be run on a computer. Let's see which one will become true...

The touchpad on my laptop did already work - after I changed a number in the source code, from "1" to "2". (That obviousely implies that one does read the source, understand it to some extent, modify and recompile.)

Now let's do a mindgame: pinpoint my previous sentence, and compare it to this:

I'd argue the only reason for the poor adoption rate of Linux is that it doesn't come pre-installed on practically anything.

If the OS were preinstalled, people would not simply read the source and modify it appropriately, they would instead complain to whoever would have installed that OS.

And consider our Berkeley legacy: After the original Unix was written at Bell Labs in 1969, it somehow got to UCB (Berkeley university), for experimental purposes. And there the people started to work on it, modify it, improve it, in any conceivable way, in order to make it suit their needs. That is where the network stack was created (which practically is the Internet of today), among lots of other things. So that is what we were originally doing: grab the source and adapt it to our needs.

Now, You say, "desktop" is everything with a desktop environment. But that means, Your people do only perceive the look&feel, the colors and icons on the screen (like the Windows users did 30 years ago) - they have no longer an understanding of the underlying technology. They've become consumers.

Another (minor) remark: a graphical screen is something different from a "desktop environment". I for my part do not need a "desktop environment" (and I would be very much annoyed if there were one and I had to get rid of it first). I need mainly an X server to provide for the display. The clients are my business - and they might be computing elsewhere. X can do that, because it was originally designed as a professional system.

Question: where is the actual difference between this idea of FreeBSD on the desktop in 2024 and Windows on the desktop in 1994? It was all about the look&feel and disregarding the underlying technology, back then. Is the "advance" actually just the demand to be ignorant?

 

[cy@]

I think the reason people don't think of FreeBSD as a perfect desktop system is because of the effort.

Personally, I've been using FreeBSD as a desktop for 29 years. Back in those days it took a lot of effort to set up a Linux system as a desktop too. I only built on top of my effort to build a desktop over the years, migrating from fvwm to motif to cde (I purchased) to gnome2 to gnome 3 (which I hated) to kde (also hated that) back to fvwm, to motif and finally CDE in ports. The time I invested in customizing my desktop was built upon what I'd done previously.

But for new users without a background like mine (I'd been an IBM mainframe kernel developer in a previous life), all this tinkering around was not only a PITA but daunting.

PC-BSD addressed the problem. But I think what is needed is a meta-port that installs all the necessary bits to install and configure a desktop system. Preferably at install. I'd do it but I have more than my share of FreeBSD grunt work on my plate to chase that shiny object. Maybe someone with some free time and the inclination to take on such a project might be better suited for this. And maybe different meta-ports for different popular desktops, each of which could be a selectable option during install. Once the port is there the selectable option could simply pkg install it.

Just a thought for someone willing to take this on.

 

[LibreQuest]

I think the reason people don't think of FreeBSD as a perfect desktop system is because of the effort.

Personally, I've been using FreeBSD as a desktop for 29 years. Back in those days it took a lot of effort to set up a Linux system as a desktop too. I only built on top of my effort to build a desktop over the years, migrating from fvwm to motif to cde (I purchased) to gnome2 to gnome 3 (which I hated) to kde (also hated that) back to fvwm, to motif and finally CDE in ports. The time I invested in customizing my desktop was built upon what I'd done previously.

But for new users without a background like mine (I'd been an IBM mainframe kernel developer in a previous life), all this tinkering around was not only a PITA but daunting.

PC-BSD addressed the problem. But I think what is needed is a meta-port that installs all the necessary bits to install and configure a desktop system. Preferably at install. I'd do it but I have more than my share of FreeBSD grunt work on my plate to chase that shiny object. Maybe someone with some free time and the inclination to take on such a project might be better suited for this. And maybe different meta-ports for different popular desktops, each of which could be a selectable option during install. Once the port is there the selectable option could simply pkg install it.

Just a thought for someone willing to take this on.

Your proposal sounds a lot like the first Linux distro that I used, mandrake 7.2 it has a fancy graphical installer and a massive list of programs to install from the 7 disk or 5 install media. I still have a copy in a box. I think that having the handbook is sufficient for a new user. Such an effort may be useful if you're starting a company to sell it as a product. But it really won't add much value in opinion.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

… A server, a workstation or a desktop are essentially all the same. …

Fairly true in terms of hardware, however:

2024: The year of desktop FreeBSD?

To me, any such question/statement has its origins in the desktop as a metaphor. (Things on your desktop whilst working on them, some things to one side pending attention, a wastebasket, and so on.) Unrelated to hardware.

 

[vermaden]

I would be very interested in hearing of your reasons why people do or don't daily drive FreeBSD.

I daily drive FreeBSD for about 16+ years now - but from what I hear on the Internet - the biggest issue is not supported or slow WiFi.

The FreeBSD Foundation hired two additional developers to work on WiFi exclusively - so there would be now 3 devs working on FreeBSD WiFi.

Details here: https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/2023-in-review-software-development/

The other smaller reasons are problems with latest GPU support (like released yesterday) and sometimes some ACPI issues or non working custom/additional keyboard buttons.

Other reason why people do not use FreeBSD daily is because they need some commercial software that is available only on Linux, like Docker/Podman/K8S/K3S/... or Oracle Database or whatever.

Some FreeBSD developers use Mac OS X (macOS) instead - but I assume that they just want 'fast and easy' out of the box desktop to not have to configure anything and just 'use' the desktop and focus on something else instead - well - configuring the desktop.

Regards,
vermaden

 

[wolffnx]

Since the headline seems to bring out unexpectedly strong reaction, allow me to explain the logic behind it.

It is indeed a reference to the age old question on the Linux side of thing. Partly to draw attention (no clickbaiting though, this is a print magazine I'm writing for) and also because I often hear people saying that for the average user, the experience of dealing with wifi adapters and driver support is about where Linux was 10-15 years ago. That's also my experience - FreeBSD is often said to be the new "enthusiast" operating system now that Linux is very smooth and easy. Therefore I expected people to see the headline more as a historical injoke than a continued bugbear.

And indeed, I have not heard this question phrased like this on the Linux side of things in at least 5-10 years. And the reason is that, well, Linux is already there. It is and it has been the year of desktop Linux for quite awhile. Unless you're running something exotic, running Linux on almost anything is as plug-and-play as Windows. Pretty much the only reason to stay in Windows if your work is dependent on the few software suites not runnable even with Wine. Main examples being the Adobe behemoth for design and graphic workflows and Waves plugins for me as an audio engineer. For at least 90% of people, Linux works out of the box and easily fulfill all their computing needs.

I'd argue the only reason for the poor adoption rate of Linux is that it doesn't come pre-installed on practically anything. We know the vast majority of people don't even change their default browser, let alone their default operating system.

 running Linux on almost anything is as plug-and-play as Windows

 Linux is very smooth and easy

my 2 cents on this, this words for me, mean "lost of control" and "you have to use it like we want" ej , the virus of systemd
gnome is a shi# , the gtk applications looks like a cell phone..grey with no life, you cant change that because there is no gtk3/4 theme that has LIFE

yes, there are others distros,but there is no unity, everything is paste with glue

so, smooth and easy and almost plug-and-play came along with "you have no right to choise what you want"

 

[pebkac]

I am daily-driving FreeBSD for many years now as my sole operating system. Only exception: I have seldomly used Bhyve with Windows 10 for very specific use cases.

Many of the advantages that make it useful for the server also apply to desktop use cases (jails, stability, ZFS, community, quality of documentation, openness, ...) and having the same environment/commands on servers and notebook/desktop simplifies things.

Indeed though driver support for WIFI, webcams and graphics as well as sleep/wakeup is something that absolutely needs to be worked on.

 

[scottro]

I wish wifi were faster too, but I do find that it's plenty fast enough so that I don't notice a difference in, say, watching youtube videos vs watching them in Linux. Still, if I'm transferring a large file from my main workstation, it can be comparitively slow, compared to Linux. (As the machine in question is a multiboot laptop, I can always transfer it to a Linux partition, reboot into FreeBSD and copy it off the Linux partition, but I think that's a bit of an edge use case.).

 

[jbo@]

(As the machine in question is a multiboot laptop, I can always transfer it to a Linux partition, reboot into FreeBSD and copy it off the Linux partition, but I think that's a bit of an edge use case.).

At that point you might just as well use net/wifibox or build a similar setup yourself.

 

[Gyros Komplett]

BSD is great as a server, but for Christ's sake, I couldn't think of a worse pain in the ass than FreeBSD as a desktop system.

Last time I tried FreeBSD on my PC, about two years ago, there was no support for my 6900XT graphics. My Lenovo T14 laptop loses ethernet connectivity after some minutes, L2 down. Random X11 crashes with XFCE, surely not related to XFCE. After every system upgrade way too much manual intervention needed to get the pre-upgrade state back. Bluetooth Audio a nightmare to setup. Modern stuff you might need for work such as video calls w/ Skype or Slack not supported.

Feels like Linux in the very early 2000s. Fine for tecchies, but nothing you would serve a normal human being ;-)

 

[LJackson]

Mileage varies...

What attracted me to FreeBsd:

• BSD License
• Works well on older equipment
• Highly customizable (including the kernel),
• deterministic releases, and
• stable.

As a hardware/software developer, the BSD License is very appealing!

At home, I have been using FreeBSD as a desktop since at least the 4.4 days (no dual booting); migrating along the way from KDE to gnome2 (with wobbly windows), to now Mate. What drew me in was it broke the WinTel cycle where when Microsoft releases a new OS you must buy a new computer to use it. FreeBSD ran/runs equally well on both older and newer computers. And, back then, as it still is, FreeBSD was a true multitasking OS - not MS Windows' pre-NT cooperative multitasking OSes.

This pattern of obsolesce hasn't gone away. My son started using FreeBSD on his ~2011 Mac laptop once Apple stopped supporting it.

Over the years FreeBSD has become easier and easier to upgrade; Version 4.4 upgrades over a 64 Kb ISDN line could easily take 2 days or longer with no guarantee of success. Today, that upgrade can easily be done in an hour or two. And, if you use ZFS with deep boot environments, should something go wrong restoring the old OS is a piece of cake - you can upgrade with confidence.

Yes, hardware support and software can lag behind more popular OSes, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

FreeBSD is like a Swiss army knife, it provides all kinds of tools to do all sorts of things (desktops, servers, etc.) - how you use it is up to you.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

… driver support … graphics …

Two gems from three weeks ago:

Add new linuxkpi_video driver · freebsd/drm-kmod@a034342

which includes aperture.c and hdmi.c (later from base system). That is done for ease of updateing and maintaining. Sponsored by: Serenity CyberSecurity, LLC

github.com

Update to v6.1 by wulf7 · Pull Request #274 · freebsd/drm-kmod

This is the backport of the DRM drivers from Linux 6.1. Prerequisites: https://reviews.freebsd.org/D42792 https://reviews.freebsd.org/D42793 https://reviews.freebsd.org/D42794 https://reviews.freeb...

github.com

I have a guess re: when 6.1 might appear in the ports tree. I'm seeking advice in a desktop graphics area; for now, I'll keep the guess to myself.

 

[free-and-bsd]

Been using FreeBSD as desktop since ... 2010 says my profile here and I'm planning to keep doing so. Why shouldn't I? Time to time I've been made to switch to Windows for some tasks, but wasn't much impressed. LibreOffice works better (for me) on FreeBSD than in Windows. And MS Word doesn't impress by comparison... except that "most people" use Word and you need file exchange with them every now and then -- in which, BTW, LibreOffice fares better and better. Honestly, if they had the funding MS Office has... ok it's no use LOL. But gov companies over here switch to LibreOffice, too.

Multimedia? Well, I find it far more convenient working with it on FreeBSD. I have my multimedia command lines file for about any conversion/extraction/whatever I may want to do with it. In Windows... not so straightforward. We have all apps in one place (ports), on Windows you have to Google for this or that tool...

And talking about Linux... juts now I had to install Ubuntu Server on my Wifi AP in order to get a faster Wifi with linux drivers. In my opinion, linux is completely "broken" -- by needless complication and introduction of "sophisticated" layers to handle this or that tasks. After a cpl of hard days I found ways to bring it back to humanlike condition --- effectively downgrading it to the state it was in some 12 yrs earlier LOL ( apt install ifupdown && systemctl disable all_*networkd*_junk). But as a BSD user I know how easily these same tasks are handled with the BSD "base tools". Ah but we're talking about DESKTOP, sorry. Well I somehow find my FreeBSD desktop to be more effective than a linux one. But to be fare, MY particular desktop can be painlessly transferred over to Linux and will be much the same. It's just the underlying OS will be worse.

...But you were asking about a newby experience. Well, that will depend on what you expect from your desktop. Entirely.

 

[cy@]

Your proposal sounds a lot like the first Linux distro that I used, mandrake 7.2 it has a fancy graphical installer and a massive list of programs to install from the 7 disk or 5 install media. I still have a copy in a box. I think that having the handbook is sufficient for a new user. Such an effort may be useful if you're starting a company to sell it as a product. But it really won't add much value in opinion.

I disagree. We need a few desktop style #1 meta-port, desktop style #2 meta-port, and so on. Then simply pkg install one or the other. Someone with a good idea of what a simple desktop might look like should be able to cobble something together. The problem is that there are way too many options and way too many desktops available. Everyone will want to set it up their way and I doubt there will be any consensus of what the perfect one or two desktops might be. I'm hardly a good judge of that because I, an old fart who's been doing this way too long, am stuck in my old ways using CDE or other legacy desktops. And most people don't want to see or use that, though a few do.

I think something light such as xfce or lxde might be the best. The desktop installer port/package IMO tries to be all things to all people. It's too complicated for a brand new user with no previous computer experience. We need to keep it simple. The fewer the options the better, there's less to break or go wrong for new users.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

… might just as well use net/wifibox …

Thanks. It's true that the port simplifies things, however when I glance at wifibox(8):

• it's a layer of complexity that I simply don't want in addition to networking that's already weird enough (with traditional em(4) and iwm(4)).