What do you use FreeBSD desktop for?

[astyle]

thanks...
i installed electron32 via pkg and then used textproc/obsidian, it used to work but after updating said ports (a few days ago) it fails with:

[53701:0221/075641.760748:ERROR:bus.cc(407)] Failed to connect to the bus: Failed to connect to socket /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket: No such file or directory
2025-02-21 06:56:42 Loading main app package /usr/local/share/obsidian/resources/obsidian.asar
Updates disabled.
[1]    53701 trace trap (core dumped)  obsidian

Packages are not very amenable to upgrading, and generally suffer from dependency hell. That is a well-known discomfort of Free/Libre software AND Open Source stuff in general. Linux camp was unable to resolve it, and neither has the BSD camp.

I think the best way to upgrade Obsidian is to enable updates within the Obsidian app. If you try to use FreeBSD's ports or pkg to upgrade, you're gonna run into a train wreck that is easiest resolved with a clean reinstall of the entire system.

There are ways to ameliorate the dependency hell issue, but it's a time consuming rabbit hole that is ultimately not a breakthrough, but rather, endless optimization that pushes the inevitable system reinstall a bit further out.

 

[tOsYZYny]

Another

Packages are not very amenable to upgrading, and generally suffer from dependency hell. That is a well-known discomfort of Free/Libre software AND Open Source stuff in general. Linux camp was unable to resolve it, and neither has the BSD camp.

I think the best way to upgrade Obsidian is to enable updates within the Obsidian app. If you try to use FreeBSD's ports or pkg to upgrade, you're gonna run into a train wreck that is easiest resolved with a clean reinstall of the entire system.

There are ways to ameliorate the dependency hell issue, but it's a time consuming rabbit hole that is ultimately not a breakthrough, but rather, endless optimization that pushes the inevitable system reinstall a bit further out.

Another reason to use boot environments or build a squashfs root filesystem and then you want to upgrade, build another squashfs image and boot that .

 

[hern42]

Packages are not very amenable to upgrading, and generally suffer from dependency hell. That is a well-known discomfort of Free/Libre software AND Open Source stuff in general. Linux camp was unable to resolve it, and neither has the BSD camp.

I think the best way to upgrade Obsidian is to enable updates within the Obsidian app. If you try to use FreeBSD's ports or pkg to upgrade, you're gonna run into a train wreck that is easiest resolved with a clean reinstall of the entire system.

There are ways to ameliorate the dependency hell issue, but it's a time consuming rabbit hole that is ultimately not a breakthrough, but rather, endless optimization that pushes the inevitable system reinstall a bit further out.

yeah i should have done just that, i updated obsidian from within the app a couple times. then i ended up in a pkg upgrade that wanted to remove electron and obsidian, i should have locked them and forget about it until they crash ahah.
however, now i'm in a situation where i cannot reinstall it at all
is it possible via ports to install a previous version?

 

[USerID]

I use the Desktop with panels for basic time monitoring (clock), keyboard layout, weather monitoring (plugin xfce4-weather-plugin), mail (plugin Xfce4 Mailwatch Plugin), etc.
Wallpaper - as a reminder of regular small household chores: when to transmit the readings of the water meters, gas, etc.
I do not use organizers and reminders for this. They are complicated and redundant for me. Although, if I get older, I may start using them.

 

[serjsk8]

I use FreeBSD desktop XFCE4 for my working laptop.
- Working with documents Excel: LibreOffice
- Drawing Diagrams: Drawio
- Internet: Firefox and Chrome (only for online meeting)
- Online meetings: Teams in Chrome
- Programming: vi, Sublime, Visual Studio Code
- Remote Connection: Remmina (for RDP)
end etc...

Everything works fine on old hardware!

I just ran into the following problem.
There is no VPN client that supports MFA.
But I solved this problem by installing Linux in a virtual machine and setting up a firewall so that it would be my gateway to the network with VPN.

 

[drhowarddrfine]

My desktop and laptop are strictly for work. I am not interested in games because they all look the same to me and have the same goal. Bad guy pops up to kill you so you try to kill it first. And that's all. I don't watch movies or TV on it cause that's why I got a 65-inch plasma screen with theater sound.

So both systems were for developing web sites and their related server systems. One was a national restaurant chain. The rest were for theatre companies and small restaurants. I closed down the business cause it just got too weird. Only big companies want bespoke web sites. Small places want Wordpress.

That said, my old sysadmin and I are batting around an idea for something new. Of course, FreeBSD front to back.

 

[Espionage724]

I am not interested in games because they all look the same to me and have the same goal. Bad guy pops up to kill you so you try to kill it first. And that's all.

Runescape's a little different; you can do repetitive tasks, gain XP and levels, and then do higher-level different repetitive tasks!

Maybe a couple hundred more fur stall steals and I get to train combat and Herbole from the Chaos tower (kill some bad guys, and then use their loot to kill other bad guys faster later )

Spoiler: game image

 

[astyle]

yeah i should have done just that, i updated obsidian from within the app a couple times. then i ended up in a pkg upgrade that wanted to remove electron and obsidian, i should have locked them and forget about it until they crash ahah.
however, now i'm in a situation where i cannot reinstall it at all
is it possible via ports to install a previous version?

Not impossible, but I'd say you're better off doing a clean reinstall of the entire system. Just remember to make backups of stuff you need.

Install a bare-bones, up-to-date -RELEASE, and grab a fresh copy of ports. Yeah, it will take a few days to compile your way back into KDE. Unfortunately, that's the only real way to avoid the inevitable train wreck that pkg-upgrade brings. pkg-upgrade can only handle so much before something gets forgotten about, destroyed by the automation, and set off a train wreck that is impossible to recover from. The more stuff you install, and their dependencies, the higher are the chances of a train wreck that you can't keep track of.

You either have a system with very little stuff installed (then it's easier to nail down every detail actually needed), or have a lot installed, and be ready for a complete reinstall every so often. Both Linux and BSD camps suffer from this.

 

[tOsYZYny]

My desktop and laptop are strictly for work. I am not interested in games because they all look the same to me and have the same goal. Bad guy pops up to kill you so you try to kill it first. And that's all. I don't watch movies or TV on it cause that's why I got a 65-inch plasma screen with theater sound.

So both systems were for developing web sites and their related server systems. One was a national restaurant chain. The rest were for theatre companies and small restaurants. I closed down the business cause it just got too weird. Only big companies want bespoke web sites. Small places want Wordpress.

That said, my old sysadmin and I are batting around an idea for something new. Of course, FreeBSD front to back.

I do software engineering presently, but miss that as at the time I had infinitely more flexibility in how I did something. I was the project manager, qa department, developer, etc. I was responsible for their Linux and Windows servers.

 

[tOsYZYny]

Not impossible, but I'd say you're better off doing a clean reinstall of the entire system. Just remember to make backups of stuff you need.

Install a bare-bones, up-to-date -RELEASE, and grab a fresh copy of ports. Yeah, it will take a few days to compile your way back into KDE. Unfortunately, that's the only real way to avoid the inevitable train wreck that pkg-upgrade brings. pkg-upgrade can only handle so much before something gets forgotten about, destroyed by the automation, and set off a train wreck that is impossible to recover from. The more stuff you install, and their dependencies, the higher are the chances of a train wreck that you can't keep track of.

You either have a system with very little stuff installed (then it's easier to nail down every detail actually needed), or have a lot installed, and be ready for a complete reinstall every so often. Both Linux and BSD camps suffer from this.

Yes, that train wreck may be inevitable, but how would it manifest itself?

I have my installs on FreeBSD and Gentoo completely automated at this point. If I want to switch from my active machine to one fresh off the press, the only thing I may need to do is to iterate through my git projects doing a git push and pull, or better yet, send an incremental ZFS snapshot. At the time that other machine is brought up, it uses a ZFS snapshot to pull data, but if I'm still actively working on the other one, the data will change .. My build times take 2 hours if I'm doing a host which has a router and workstation jail embedded in them, otherwise, if it were just a workstation build, it'd be about 40 minutes, so the cost is minimal.

Reinstalling aside, if the dependencies are messed up, I would argue that reinstalling isn't fixing anything. The only reason I do it at least every 6 months is:

1. test my backup / recovery / build process
2. remove stuff I tested, but didn't move to my backup / restore process
3. rotate wear on hard drives

If a package depends on a broken package, if you update to the train wreck versus clean install the train wreck, the clean install isn't any better off, or am I missing something.

 

[Espionage724]

Reinstalling aside, if the dependencies are messed up, I would argue that reinstalling isn't fixing anything. The only reason I do it at least every 6 months is:

1. test my backup / recovery / build process
2. remove stuff I tested, but didn't move to my backup / restore process
3. rotate wear on hard drives

My longest OS install I think last year was about a month, but most last a week or two (this install's 3 days old ) I usually clean-install to test something from a different OS.

 

[tOsYZYny]

My longest OS install I think last year was about a month, but most last a week or two (this install's 3 days old ) I usually clean-install to test something from a different OS.

You must have an automated installer then?

As I have been saying to my Dad now, perhaps the issue is the operator? Hehe.

 

[Espionage724]

You must have an automated installer then?

As I have been saying to my Dad now, perhaps the issue is the operator? Hehe.

I mainly copy/paste commands from my wiki for Linux (Fedora) and FreeBSD (14.2-R), and have a folder of batch files for Windows. I have main stuff set-up within an hour usually

 

[tOsYZYny]

I mainly copy/paste commands from my wiki for Linux (Fedora) and FreeBSD (14.2-R), and have a folder of batch files for Windows. I have main stuff set-up within an hour usually

Would you have any interest in trying an automated installer ...

This is an example barebones configuration:

GitHub - walterjwhite/freebsd-example

Contribute to walterjwhite/freebsd-example development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

It is meant to configure:
packages
services / rc
install files
run scripts
configure patches based on different hardware whilst utilizing the same general template (ie. install this video card driver if detected)
boot loader
kernel
users
groups
"apps" - these are shell script apps, I've written including the freebsd-installer
go
npm
rust

This example is quite a bit old and not how I do things these days, but the general concept is still there.

 

[Espionage724]

Would you have any interest in trying an automated installer ...

Eh, I'm not too sure

I like the idea of doing stuff individually so if it doesn't work, I can notice it. Or change how it works on a different computer, or maybe notice a different way to do it later. I feel like automating too much might hide old code and let me get complacent, or cause a scenario where I have to work through the automation program itself to do something vs just doing the change directly.

I looked at Ansible a while back, but didn't like the idea of coding my stuff to its standard, to do my stuff

 

[tOsYZYny]

Fair enough, I completely understand. If I understand ansible, you have to already have a base OS provisioned. It won't setup a from scratch FreeBSD install, right?

 

[astyle]

Yes, that train wreck may be inevitable, but how would it manifest itself?

On these very Forums, there's plenty of threads where people describe the errors they run into after running pkg-upgrade(8)...

They resolve the immediate error of lib incompatibility - only to discover that this creates additional incompatibilities in other places that they never thought of. And this repeats, recursively. That's why it's called dependency hell.

This is why a clean reinstall with an up-to-date copy of ports/packages is less painful than using pkg to upgrade individual packages.

 

[USerID]

Yes, that train wreck may be inevitable, but how would it manifest itself?

For me it often manifests itself visually.
Example: regular updates of 14.1 followed by a transition to 14.2 via the binary method caused problems with
automatic removal
# pkg autoremove
of a whole bunch of "garbage" packages:
gpu-firmware-*-kmod.
As soon as I do this - my system crashes:
OS does not boot, with an indication of a dead firmware file.

 

[drsnx60]

Last time I had to install from scratch was because of the Python 3.9 -> Python 3.11 upgrade , this caused so many cascading dependencies that it was overwhelming.

Today I'm trying to install 15-current on a Fujitsu Celsius H7510 Workstation Notebook , intel i7-10850H , with Nvidia Quadro T1000 that is about 3 years old , the major hurdles has been surmounted. Webcam, Microphone, Audio, Touchpad, Battery , WIFI works , while Suspend/resume and Fujitsu proprietary Audio/brightness keyboard control buttons, does not.
it also has a LTE 4G modem that I have not yet attempted to set up.
this Machine is intended to be used as my travel companion for a while .

 

[teo]

The graphical environment is used for many things, such as, video editing, office automation, creation of autocad or photoshop content, games, browsing internet pages, among others...

Hopefully the results of the survey will come true.

 

[tOsYZYny]

For me it often manifests itself visually.
Example: regular updates of 14.1 followed by a transition to 14.2 via the binary method caused problems with
automatic removal
# pkg autoremove
of a whole bunch of "garbage" packages:
gpu-firmware-*-kmod.
As soon as I do this - my system crashes:
OS does not boot, with an indication of a dead firmware file.

Yeah, I think I have had issues with autoremove as well, so I did not run it as it would have removed most of everything I had installed.

 

[tingo]

Fair enough, I completely understand. If I understand ansible, you have to already have a base OS provisioned. It won't setup a from scratch FreeBSD install, right?

ansible is like that yes:
1) install a minimum system on the machine in question (minimum here means the minimum requirements for running your ansible playbook), give it a name and get it on the net
2) put it into your ansible inventory file
3) ansible-playbook playbook.yml -l hostname
(you also need credential parameters, at least the first time)

 

[drhowarddrfine]

Hmm. I can't recall the last time I had any issues with pkg-upgrade
.

 

[tOsYZYny]

ansible is like that yes:
1) install a minimum system on the machine in question (minimum here means the minimum requirements for running your ansible playbook), give it a name and get it on the net
2) put it into your ansible inventory file
3) ansible-playbook playbook.yml -l hostname
(you also need credential parameters, at least the first time)

Ok, that is why I rolled my own back then when I evaluated my options, why wouldn't ansible support building a system from scratch? It seems like a huge requirements gap (or opportunity)? Not only from a security perspective, but time, repeatability, etc.

 

[Crivens]

Maybe a couple hundred more fur stall steals and I get to train

There is a point in "the Book of Unwritten Tales" where you need to become a master smith in order to fix a magic sword. Building one kettle gives you level 1, so you get 4th walled by your figure that you now need to go get new ore, smelt it, hammer it, make another pot, go for more ore...