Why do you use FreeBSD on desktop?

Windows and macOS are out for me. I mention my issues with them here.

As for Linux, it is too inconsistent and hacky to be a desktop (It makes for a decent quick and dirty appliance though). In many ways systemd was actually a good thing to unify the Linux ecosystem and bring some consistency. Though for a software as terrible as systemd to be a "good point" of Linux speaks volumes for how horrible I find it.

For desktops, I also find a network aware display system an important factor. Quartz and Wayland are pretty much out since they can only really do VNC which is pretty much a Windows 95-era technology. Windows RDP is by far the best but X11 is actually pretty close if you don't use a ridiculous GUI toolkit. So since "modern" Windows is basically unusable in other critical ways, I guess FreeBSD (and OpenBSD) with X11 win by default!

... I'm going to stop my ramble here. I am sure others have more succinct points ;)
 
Why should we not use FreeBSD?

FreeBSD has all the features of a desktop operating system. All kinds of graphical interfaces, web browsers, text/photo/video editors, specialized engineering software tools and anything else. Unix has always been my favorite OS and for me FreeBSD is the best Unix-like OS. I've done everything you can imagine on FreeBSD without any problem and never seen a limit.
I live in a place where there is no copyright law at all and you can download easily any software/OS absolutely free, so my reason for choosing this OS is never because it's free but because it's the best.
 
I like Unix. But mostly my 2GB RAM laptop was dying with the Linux task scheduler. Something like copying to a USB became tedious. The FreeBSD scheduler isn't perfect, but it seems to work better with i/o swapping.
The constant changes in the Linux base and the small bugs made me look at BSD. I was also looking for a less anti-something community, although that's everywhere.
 
One thing that stands out for FreeBSD being used as a daily driver: Software updates going well. By this I mean both the base system and all the ports resp. packages that come on top of it.

When I update an Ubuntu system, I always need need be prepared of my system getting broken. On FreeBSD however: all goes fine.

This is not a coincidence. FreeBSD has certain design principles underneath the hood that makes these things (e.g. successful OS updates) possible. Common Linux distributions lack these principles.
 
Inertia. Custom. My first Unix experience was with SunOS, later with Solaris,
but I was not so comfortable with it, and then back to BSD with FreeBSD/OpenBSD.

I suspect, I would be more comfortable with MacOS than with Windows.
 
I picked FreeBSD because of jails, bhyve and, among other things, poudriere. I also find that it syncs well with how I think a computer should operate and it operates very well tyvm. I still get kicks out of the initial installation and what is not included. Love it!
 
Our company develops operating systems on microcontrollers (smart cards). These smart cards are used in various industrial systems. Each industrial system has its own requirements for the 'file structure of the card', the 'set of commands' and the security settings of the microcontroller OS. Therefore, our developers for each industrial system create "their own" application that runs on the card "on top" of the base OS of the microcontroller. To demonstrate how a customer's industrial system should interact with our smart card, we write "industrial system prototype" (I write these prototypes). The interaction of the customer's system and our card is carried out through libraries (creating/parsing APDU, cryptographic, TLV, ...), which are linked to the customer's system (I write these libraries). Various industrial systems are written in various programming languages (C, C++, Java, ...) and run on various operating systems (Windows, Linux, FreeBSD). Therefore, the prototypes are also different. But first of all, it is necessary to test the created microcontroller OS (and applications on it). To do this, I write (in С++) tests that test the smart card from the terminal side (from various operating systems: Windows, Linux, FreeBSD). When developing the microcontroller OS, card emulators are used. These emulators work mostly on Windows only (emulator drivers and development tools/environment are Windows only). To speed up my work, I simultaneously run several virtual machines to which emulators (with the microcontroller OS loaded in them) are connected, and several virtual machines (as well as the host itself) on which tests are run...To do this, I used to use Debian as a host, and I had virtual machines on VirtualBox. But in the spring of 2022, after some regular update of the Linux kernel, VirtualBox stopped working - virtual machines started to freeze/reboot after 15 minutes of operation. During operation, the usb-devices connected to the virtual machine began to "fall off". Then I switched to VMware Workstation. There are similar problems - the usb device is periodically captured either by the host or by the virtual machine (it depends on the pcscd settings on the host and the virtual machine). Virtual machines in VMware often "lose" VMware Tools (analogue of Guest Additions in VirtualBox). It's all little things, of course, but annoying ...
In the spring of 2022, I switched to a FreeBSD host and bhyve virtual machines. Virtual machines are reliable and fast (faster than VirtualBox and VMware). For me, this is the main thing.
 
I’m a systemd refugee. I could kinda understand why it exists when it initially came out. But it’s spreading like a cancer.
I looked at a few non systemd Linux distros but in the end I decided to move to FreeBSD.
I’ve only been using it for a week so far, and am finding my way around, but loving it. pkg management is amazing.
 
For me as well, it's more of a "why not" question...

In fact, as far as the "GUI layer" is concerned, any *nix opensource desktop is the same, meaning you have more or less the same choices regarding window managers, tools like terminal emulators, compositors, completely integrated desktop environments, etc. And among all these choices, there are some I really like and prefer a lot over e.g. the GUIs of Windows or Apple. So, I certainly want a "*nix opensource desktop".

Then, "why FreeBSD" is simple to answer: I use FreeBSD anyways, I like the way I can administrate that OS *), and not having to switch between different systems is a huge plus. And this just leaves the "why not".

I didn't find anything so far. Graphics drivers are ported from Linux (using some in-kernel compatibility layer) and work just fine for me. Peripherals I want to use are supported. All the software I want to use is available on FreeBSD. The only little drawback is the state of Wifi support, but I can live with that...

---
*) and, lots of other things I once described here: https://sekrit.de/webdocs/freebsd/advocacy.html
 
jb82 said:
You guys who use FreeBSD as a daily driver on desktops.
Just curious, why you've picked FreeBSD instead of Linux, Mac...? IMHO, it would be great to have this kind of information up to date in 2023.
Click to expand...
My Mom made me learn FreeBSD the day I turned like 13 and she still makes me drive her daily.

In all seriousness, I don't even know what this website is for, I just jointed the forum because I prefer them over evil social media*.

In most seriousness, I learned about FreeBSD a few decades ago, but only dipped my toes in about 11 years ago.
 
I use both windowmaker and kde 5 plasma as desktops on freebsd and linux. I don't use windows or mac. I'm a programmer so its good to have all the tools available. Fbsd is a bit behind linux in a few areas, bluetooth being the one I've hit recently (I wanted to drive some bt speakers, gave up after trying), another is more restricted software availability than linux. The software I use a lot, like wmaker, vim, cmus, cscope, ctags, vifm, slrn, irssi, links (browser), X11 (networked window system is a must), Perl, C compiler and toolchain, git, firefox, too many others to mention but you get the picture, is all available.

Fbsd wins in some areas, the ports system is nice, although code I download tends to compile easier on linux without patching whereas some hacks are often needed on bsd, probably because it was developed on linux in the first place. System updates tend to go pretty well on both o/s's nowadays, and stability of both is good.

As a desktop fbsd has all the tools I need, openoffice, the kde office suite, pdf readers (nice to see mupdf in ports), etc etc. I like the link aggregation that gives me painless failover between wifi and ethernet network connections without the need for something like network manager. I haven't tried getting my 3-in-1 HP laser printer/scanner working on freebsd yet, I still drive that from linux at the moment.
 
itsthosestonesman said:
I use both windowmaker and kde 5 plasma as desktops on freebsd and linux. I don't use windows or mac. I'm a programmer so its good to have all the tools available. Fbsd is a bit behind linux in a few areas, bluetooth being the one I've hit recently (I wanted to drive some bt speakers, gave up after trying), another is more restricted software availability than linux. The software I use a lot, like wmaker, vim, cmus, cscope, ctags, vifm, slrn, irssi, links (browser), X11 (networked window system is a must), Perl, C compiler and toolchain, git, firefox, too many others to mention but you get the picture, is all available.

Fbsd wins in some areas, the ports system is nice, although code I download tends to compile easier on linux without patching whereas some hacks are often needed on bsd, probably because it was developed on linux in the first place. System updates tend to go pretty well on both o/s's nowadays, and stability of both is good.

As a desktop fbsd has all the tools I need, openoffice, the kde office suite, pdf readers (nice to see mupdf in ports), etc etc. I like the link aggregation that gives me painless failover between wifi and ethernet network connections without the need for something like network manager. I haven't tried getting my 3-in-1 HP laser printer/scanner working on freebsd yet, I still drive that from linux at the moment.
Click to expand...

There is one other thing, which is kind of philosophical. I want it to be MY computer (as much as any cpu with an intel ME in it can be mine). If I use a mac or windows, it's not my computer. It's a leaf node in their system, that I have a somewhat restrictive license to use. It's sending telemetry back to them about what I do with the machine, it's sticking ads in front of my eyes, it's installing all kinds of crap and on the machine in the background. In the case of apple it's telling me that my perfectly good hardware is "no longer supported" and they want me to buy it from them again.

In the old days a home micro or a DOS PC was yours. No telemetry, no ads, no unattended updates, no monitoring. The bsd's and linux (at least, things like slackware) are about as close to that as its possible to get in modern systems.
 
itsthosestonesman said:
There is one other thing, which is kind of philosophical. I want it to be MY computer (as much as any cpu with an intel ME in it can be mine). If I use a mac or windows, it's not my computer. It's a leaf node in their system, that I have a somewhat restrictive license to use. It's sending telemetry back to them about what I do with the machine, it's sticking ads in front of my eyes, it's installing all kinds of crap and on the machine in the background. In the case of apple it's telling me that my perfectly good hardware is "no longer supported" and they want me to buy it from them again.

In the old days a home micro or a DOS PC was yours. No telemetry, no ads, no unattended updates, no monitoring. The bsd's and linux (at least, things like slackware) are about as close to that as its possible to get in modern systems.
Click to expand...
And one other thing that's good about Fbsd. There isn't the constant worry about viruses, malware and security fixes that I get on windows.
 
The reason I said Windows' "golden days" were in the late 90s, early 2000s is because that era was when Windows had acquired all of the moden OS features, but not yet any of the spyware.
And Linux's golden days were the days before it acquired GNOME 3 - i.e. when GNOME began losing features rather than gaining them, a process that still continues today with those ridiculous hamburger menus etc..
I realise I'm citing myself but you can't get the staff these days.
 
For me there are two main high-level reasons, and then a couple FreeBSD-specific things:

FreeBSD is a cohesive system that rewards investment

We hear this brought up a lot: "linux is just a kernel, with a bunch of distros, whereas FreeBSD is a complete operating system." What this means for me, in practice, is that as I learn from the primary sources - man pages, handbook, wiki, forum, mailing lists, source code - I seem to grow in understanding and effectiveness of how to use it all. We're all (mostly) talking about the same thing, in all of these places. I get a better sense of where to look for the information I seek. The more effort I put in, the better I results I get, and it's a virtuous cycle.

Plus, since I use FreeBSD on servers, a lot of learning that I do in either "mode" (server or desktop) transfers over the the other one.

I can navigate to all source code with src and ports

This was part of the impetus for me of focusing on FreeBSD, but I've been surprised at just how awesome it is.

I've worked as a programmer for 20 years. I've learned that a lot of questions can only be answered by looking at source code. Also, I often want to change things myself.

I can get access to 99.9999% of the code running on my system by looking at the two main repos, src and ports. This is so unbelievably awesome. If it's distributed with the OS, it's in src. The ports system tells me exactly what files and versions are used to build the packages, and how. I use the Makefile as a jumping off place to explore the source code of those packages.

Additionally, a lot of the stuff in a running system is scripts, not compiled code. So I can open those files directly in editors to understand them.

A couple killer features

zfs and jails, baby!
 
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