That's what attracted me to FreeBSD initially, you can just do
cd /usr/ports/devel/php85 and type make install. One of the first systems I used to build FreeBSD on was an old Pentium 90, with 8 MB (yes, megabytes, not gigabytes) of memory
I wasn't either when I started with FreeBSD almost 30 years ago. I'm convinced dabbling with FreeBSD actually prepared/trained me for a professional system administrator's job.
I actually already tried to install Blender from the ports and I ran out of RAM (and even swap) and the PC just froze (and I had to do a hard reset),and as for learning FreeBSD, I don't mind the second reason I installed it is because I wanted to try something with the CLI
Can't second this. I dare say FreeBSD's ports tree covers ~98% of Linux' third party software. I may be wrong, but I don't miss anything.
)
)Why not just simply do a
pkg install blender?
The FAQs are also really worth to skim, cover a lot of typical newbie questions.)blender is an application that you dont want to run on an old machine. Better try another port that attracts you.
I did so, I just first tried the assembly from the sources,regarding Linux users, they prefer to retell fables, because all the software I used in Debian is also on Freebsd (the only thing is that I had to transfer FreeBSD from quarterly repos to latest, because there was no Blender on quarterly),Well, for games I have a second PC with Windows (because I stick to the tactic of only using open source software on the main PC,because I don't really trust OS that have a closed source code)Can't second this. I dare say FreeBSD's ports tree covers ~98% of Linux' third party software. I may be wrong, but I don't miss anything.
There may be some few very special packages only available under Linux, and for sure there is the one or other user insisting on a certain package, not (yet) available here. But that's rather an exception.
For what may be missing here there is either an alternative (not seldom even better - you just didn't knew it yet; give it a shot. being always open for alternatives should be common when using alternative OSs anyway), or it's not really a loss (IMO), or it will be ported to FreeBSD sooner or later (maybe, you do it one day.
Personally I never missed anything under FreeBSD (Well, games. But they are not crucial. Since I switched to FreeBSD for me it's less gaming, more production. Just a change of what I was used to before, and not to the worse.
After all, what's the use in having all software packages as bleeding edge versions, when the whole shit does not work reliably because of a giant not conformable update mess and dependency hell?
Why not just simply do apkg install blender?
(You probably missed that section in The Handbook? Well, coming from Linux you are experienced to not having an useful documentation. But here is unix ground.
Welcome!
Once you get used to the changes you will admit: good choice.
I don't mind building something from a port to gain experience, but I would not like to do a hard restart again due to a lack of RAM (since building on my processor will take a long time and I will not be able to be at the PC during all this time)
ZX Spectrum 48k and I never poked Manic MinerSo, a bit overdue, but here's my intro...
Started with DOS/Windows (well, after ZX Spectrums and the like), around 2001/2002 moved to Linux (and finished Neverwinter Nights there, Slackware at the time, some LFS for good measure) kept Linux as primary (even for work) for a lot of years, had issues (can't remember what exactly, maybe Pulseaudio?) moved back to Windows 8 (don't mock, I do think MS did some nice work with the less loved versions like Vista and 8), got back to Linux around 2015 (so around Windows 10) and was happy with Archlinux for a while. The SystemD, Wayland and Flatpak/Snap creep (and related issues) moved me to Artix and Alpine (still running that where FreeBSD is not an option) but also made me take a serious look at the BSD landscape and liked what I saw.
So in April 2021 tried the newly released FreeBSD 13 on a work HP laptop (IBM/lenovo's were not options) that had all to be supported (Kabylake, supported wifi and all) , failed miserably due to UEFI issues (though it worked fine in a pass-through VM), tried hard to make it work (compiled kernel's, applied patches, etc), failed hard and life goes on.
Armed with a new mini pc (Ryzen 7 8745HS) tried the FreeBSD 15 alphas and everything is supported, works and due to recent Foundation sponsored work (OCI container support, podman, drm) all my work flows were supported, keep it, wiped the linux partions and I'm an happy FreeBSD user. Since then I've been making all my personal flows also work (widevine in Firefox, vulkan on compat/linux), and all this thinkgering makes me happy
On a plus note I do really like the community on this forum. So much that I'm participating instead of the safe option on today's online world of just lurking
PS: As for the HP laptop, I'm happy to say that it boots correctly now but graphics support outside of framebuffer support doesn't work, so that is still on Artix, maybe for 16 I can finally move it?
The bolded part. I'm assuming digital, not silver halide based. If digital what applications are you using to tweak RAW? This is curiousity on my part, I grew up smelling Dektol/Rodinal and using Omega D3 and just wonder what folk are using for digital.
A little bit of peeking too.
peek, poke, byte and ram...
There's several (probably lots more than several) of us on here who like running freebsd on old thinkpads. Welcome, and have lots of fun
Don't worry, I do too, lots of folks here do actually. It's a great source of information.
