For all the people using FreeBSD as their primary desktop.

Whattteva

Whattteva

I love FreeBSD, really I do. I love its rock solid stability (my Linux installations seem to always have weird quirks from time to time), performance, directory consistency, relatively simple setup, and of course The FreeBSD Handbook.

I've dabbled with it off and on for years, but have never really made the complete plunge for my daily driver machine mostly for two reasons, which are either drivers or lack of a certain software that I need (Signal, Slack, Bitwarden, Discord, Chrome (for Netflix, and Spotify), etc.). The Linux compatibility layer helps, but it's often a hit or miss, especially on packages that require systemd and that still doesn't solve the drivers issue.
Also, this one has really stumped me. Why is FreeBSD still stuck with the grossly outdated and insecure mount.smbfs instead of mount.cifs like what Linux has, which supports SMB version 2+?

How do you guys solve this problem? Am I missing some secret sauce or BSD-fu?
 
Whattteva said:
How do you guys solve this problem?
Click to expand...
1. I don't use Signal, Twitter, What'sApp, Discord, Skype, Facebook, Netflix, Chrome,... (Believe me: one doesn't need this, one can live without it, and one get rid of a lot of probs you only have because of them. :cool:)
2. smbfs I run it on my NAS for Windows machines only to connect to it locally. It's complicated and senseless to use it for anything else.
3. Else I use NFS - it's easy, it's quickly configurated,...
 
Profighost said:
1. I don't use Signal, Twitter, What'sApp, Discord, Skype, Facebook, Netflix, Chrome,... (Believe me: one doesn't need this, one can live without it, and one get rid of a lot of probs you only have because of them. :cool:)
2. smbfs I run it on my NAS for Windows machines only to connect to it locally. It's complicated and senseless to use it for anything else.
3. Else I use NFS - it's easy, it's quickly configurated,...
Click to expand...
1. Well, to each their own I suppose. Maybe YOU don't care to use them, but everyone has different needs.
2. I do use NFS, but sometimes I don't have control over the actual server that's making the share and CIFS tends to be the more universally supported protocol, especially in a mixed client network with Apple/Windows/Linux machines, but this one is a more minor issue.

Really, as I stated above, the biggest issue is more the lack of some Linux apps and drivers.
 
Geezer said:
You certainly are missing something. Dunno what though.
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I don't understand the issue. If one needs something that runs only on Linux or Windows, run it in bhyve or virtualbox, tuck it in a corner and be done with it. We did this all the time at my company when we had some outlier company that used something we didn't.
 
Whattteva said:
Why is FreeBSD still stuck with the grossly outdated and insecure mount.smbfs instead of mount.cifs like what Linux has, which supports SMB version 2+?
Click to expand...
Because Samba actually made that mount.cifs. It's not part of Linux, it's part of Samba. Samba doesn't have a FreeBSD compatible mount.cifs.
 
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I haven't had Windows on any of my systems for the last ~15 years (some early Win 7 install for some gaming was the last I can remember...). Haven't looked back even a split second...


Whattteva said:
(Signal, Slack, Bitwarden, Discord, [...] etc.).
Click to expand...
All of those services can be accessed from a browser - their "apps" are usually nothing else but a crippled (yet still bloated) browser in disguise that only shows a similarly crippled (or "optimized" in marketing-speech) variant of their frontend...
If one of those try to force you to exclusively use some proprietary app and close down their APIs - just abandon them; they will die anyways.. (remember ICQ?)

Whattteva said:
Why is FreeBSD still stuck with the grossly outdated and insecure mount.smbfs instead of mount.cifs like what Linux has, which supports SMB version 2+?
Click to expand...
Because SMB is shit. Use a proper, secure protocol and simply abandon that sorry excuse for a proper network filesystem protocol... NFSv4 or sshfs are more than sufficient to cover all use-cases on a desktop.

Whattteva said:
How do you guys solve this problem? Am I missing some secret sauce or BSD-fu?
Click to expand...
Simply abandon the flawed mindset from windows-land of downloading and using "apps" from shady sources for everything that is just a website or networked service. If use proper, standardised protocols, there are alternative clients available - if not, just don't use them.
If you *absolutely* need some specific piece of software that is only available for windows, use wine. But usually for 99% of use cases there is an (often better) alternative available or even a much simpler solution/workflow possible with any of the 'proper' operating systems, because _a lot_ of "solutions" only stem from some arbitrary restrictions on Windows that need to be circumvented.
 
NFS has been mentioned. To be clear, NFS is for use between non-Windows computers. At least, it's not natively supported by Windows.

SMB actually allows shared printer access. I read that NFS allows this too, but could only find 1 mention of it in all of my searching with no description nor instruction. It seems that NFS for printer sharing would be minimal or very basic if it's a real function of it.

For those who don't know, Samba is the Opensource way to access SMB. SMB is known for use on Windows, but the technology doesn't belong to any one company. CIFS is a filesystem related to SMB. I forgot their exact relationship, but they're nearly synonymous.

Samba has well documented instructions: https://www.samba.org/. FreeBSD has a few Samba ports.
 
I will add here only to the SMB connection. I work at a large private university that uses only SMB for file sharing, so I cannot use NFS or other means within FreeBSD. The Fuse client is currently working for read access, as I am participating in another thread related to that. Part of what I do makes the Samba access unusable, so a direct mount of the SMB shares is needed. This one thing alone keeps me from using FreeBSD at work.

At home, since I have control over my network, I have setup NFS for file sharing, and would not otherwise worry about it.
 
sidetone said:
NFS has been mentioned. To be clear, NFS is for use between non-Windows computers. At least, it's not natively supported by Windows.

SMB actually allows shared printer access. I read that NFS allows this too, but could only find 1 mention of it in all of my searching with no description nor instruction. It seems that NFS for printer sharing would be minimal or very basic if it's a real function of it.

For those who don't know, Samba is the Opensource way to access SMB. SMB is known for use on Windows, but the technology doesn't belong to any one company. CIFS is a filesystem related to SMB. I forgot their exact relationship, but they're nearly synonymous.

Samba has well documented instructions. https://www.samba.org/
Click to expand...

Since Windows-something the pro/ultimate version have built-in NFS support. IDK anything about shared printers but if I was in the market for a printer to be used shared, I would get a networked one. :)
 
sidetone said:
SMB actually allows shared printer access. I read that NFS allows this too, but could only find 1 mention of it in all of my searching with no description nor instruction. It seems that NFS for printer sharing would be minimal or very basic if it's a real function of it.
Click to expand...
wrong tool for the job

Networked printers nowadays all support IPP - you can basically just throw plaintext or any format the printer understands (e.g. post script or even pdf) via netcat at those printers.

Or use cups to provide printer access via printing protocols to the clients (even windows). NFS even has "file" in its name - printers are not files, don't treat them that way. Just because microsoft still handles network printing (or printing in general) like it's something arcane and highly complicated doesn't mean you have to rebuild all those braindamaged misconcepts they came up with...
 
I've already covered SMB and Samba for shared printing and network use between Opensource computers and Windows. If a single computer is going to take printjobs from other computers to send to a printer, and any of them is FreeBSD or Linux, Samba will be needed.

sko said:
NFS even has "file" in its name
Click to expand...
CIFS has file system in its name.

I've already explained how I only saw 1 mention of NFS being used for printer sharing, and if that's so, it's use would be primitive or very minimal. The mention was in FreeBSD 6 Unleashed. Samba has detailed instructions on printer sharing.

NFS has a purpose of file sharing between non-Windows computers. For the subject of this thread, NFS lacks file sharing with typical Windows computers, and SMB is made for printer sharing.

Unless there's more on newer compatibility between newer select Windows computers with NFS, or there's more on NFS being used for printing, even if it's the wrong tool, then I hope this thread moves on from NFS.
 
sidetone said:
If a single computer is going to take printjobs from other computers to send to a printer, and any of them is FreeBSD or Linux, Samba will be needed.
Click to expand...

I don't run any samba server at home - cups is all you need for any networked printing. (if your printer isn't capable of connecting to a network...)
At home my trusty old brother HL2030 laser printer is attached to an OrangePi zero (or rather, the OPi is attached to the back of the printer...) running OpenBSD and cups. My FreeBSD desktop and laptop; my girlfriends android tablet, iPhone and Windows laptop as well as the nextcloud instance on my fileserver all print via this cups server.
 
sko said:
I haven't had Windows on any of my systems for the last ~15 years (some early Win 7 install for some gaming was the last I can remember...). Haven't looked back even a split second...



All of those services can be accessed from a browser - their "apps" are usually nothing else but a crippled (yet still bloated) browser in disguise that only shows a similarly crippled (or "optimized" in marketing-speech) variant of their frontend...
If one of those try to force you to exclusively use some proprietary app and close down their APIs - just abandon them; they will die anyways.. (remember ICQ?)


Because SMB is shit. Use a proper, secure protocol and simply abandon that sorry excuse for a proper network filesystem protocol... NFSv4 or sshfs are more than sufficient to cover all use-cases on a desktop.


Simply abandon the flawed mindset from windows-land of downloading and using "apps" from shady sources for everything that is just a website or networked service. If use proper, standardised protocols, there are alternative clients available - if not, just don't use them.
If you *absolutely* need some specific piece of software that is only available for windows, use wine. But usually for 99% of use cases there is an (often better) alternative available or even a much simpler solution/workflow possible with any of the 'proper' operating systems, because _a lot_ of "solutions" only stem from some arbitrary restrictions on Windows that need to be circumvented.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure why you have to be so aggressive. And what's with the obsession with repeatedly mentioning Windows when my original post never even mentioned it. In fact, I mentioned Linux at least 3 times (hence, the compatibility layer and systemd dependency problem). I really think you're barking up the wrong tree here. The whole post was really talking more about fully migrating from Linux to FreeBSD.
 
Whattteva said:
lack of a certain software that I need (Signal, Slack, Bitwarden, Discord, Chrome (for Netflix, and Spotify), etc.).
Click to expand...
  • Discord works fine in www/firefox.
  • With www/chromium, YMMV, but on these forums, there are reports of success with using it for Netflix and Spotify.
  • Bitwarden is a password manager. There's quite a few alternatives in ports, if you bother to look and do a bit of research. Just google the term: "Password manager for FreeBSD". IIRC, www/firefox offers that feature, too. So does www/chromium. It's simply a matter of knowing how to do your research and find options.
  • Signal is an IM platform that I didn't even know about until just now, when the Opening Post prompted me to do a quick search on Google. Once again, it should work in any browser.
  • Slack - same story as Signal.
Even on Windows, a LOT of stuff is done in a browser, as opposed to using desktop software. The web browser is the secret sauce for nearly everything related to communications.

If you want to get your files organized and backed up and be secure - yeah, there are ways to do it, but discussions on THAT are beyond the scope of this thread. In my experience, FreeBSD can communicate just fine with Windows via Samba or whatever. NFS is not meant for a Windows participant (unless the same disk is exported via Samba and NFS). :p
 
For compatibility reasons, even if not mentioned, I thought that being compatible with Windows could be an expectation. For compatibility, including with Windows, SMB.

There's this mention of Windows or being universally accepted as well.
Whattteva said:
2. I do use NFS, but sometimes I don't have control over the actual server that's making the share and CIFS tends to be the more universally supported protocol, especially in a mixed client network with Apple/Windows/Linux machines, but this one is a more minor issue.
Click to expand...

Print sharing: some combination of Samba and/or Cups. There are instructions for setting up Cups on Samba. SMB was by multiple companies and isn't limited to Windows Intellectual Property, except for their implementation that uses it. Another company started SMB, it was IBM. Samba would have interest in having a version with wanted features. Or a version with wanted features can be ported here, along with patches to make it work on FreeBSD.

Different implementations of Mac/Apple use different versions of NFS and SMB. They wanted to move on to their own filesystem.

Some mentioned SSHFS, which I don't know anything about.

Edit: at one time, there were RFC's for SMB/CIFS at ietf.org. In this case, there was a draft as an open standard for it at some time. CIFS = Common Internet File System. SMB = Server Message Block.
 
astyle said:
  • Discord works fine in www/firefox.
  • With www/chromium, YMMV, but on these forums, there are reports of success with using it for Netflix and Spotify.
  • Bitwarden is a password manager. There's quite a few alternatives in ports, if you bother to look and do a bit of research. Just google the term: "Password manager for FreeBSD". IIRC, www/firefox offers that feature, too. So does www/chromium. It's simply a matter of knowing how to do your research and find options.
  • Signal is an IM platform that I didn't even know about until just now, when the Opening Post prompted me to do a quick search on Google. Once again, it should work in any browser.
  • Slack - same story as Signal.
Even on Windows, a LOT of stuff is done in a browser, as opposed to using desktop software. The web browser is the secret sauce for nearly everything related to communications.

If you want to get your files organized and backed up and be secure - yeah, there are ways to do it, but discussions on THAT are beyond the scope of this thread. In my experience, FreeBSD can communicate just fine with Windows via Samba or whatever. NFS is not meant for a Windows participant (unless the same disk is exported via Samba and NFS). :p
Click to expand...
Thank you! Your posts are the few that's not passive aggressive and just honestly addressing the OP.

I know that you could use the web browser for some of them (not Netflix/Spotify), but I was wondering if someone has it figured out. I prefer running it natively because I tend to have to reboot Firefox/Chromium every once in a while due to their memory usage becoming untenable after a while.

As for Bitwarden, I don't really like to tie the browser with the storage cause I also use it on my phone. Also, I share it with my wife, so switching it up isn't really feasible cause she's already used to it.

I guess I just have to resort with running them on the browser secret sauce.
 
sidetone said:
Print sharing: some combination of Samba and/or Cups. There are instructions for setting up Cups on Samba. SMB was by multiple companies and isn't limited to Windows Intellectual Property, except for their implementation that uses it. Another company started SMB, IIRC, it was IBM.
Click to expand...
Didn't know that. Nifty little tidbit.

sidetone said:
Different implementations of Mac/Apple use different versions of NFS and SMB. They wanted to move on to their own filesystem.

Some mentioned, SSHFS, which I don't know anything about.
Click to expand...
This is true. Apple really would like you to use AFS more than anything else.
 
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