I went full-time FreeBSD for a couple weeks. These are my takeaways.

If I can use FreeBSD, then literally anyone can use it. Although I will admit that there was a few times I felt like giving up. However, when I felt like giving up, I thought things over, and then I realized that it was simply easier to stick with FreeBSD than to reinstall some version of Linux in order to replace it. Been using it as my daily driver for about three or four months, and I think that I'm now over the hump, and I now feel more comfortable with it.
 
Looking at comments for that: "Eating your own dog food is not so pleasing a thing after all" said someone about the FreeBSD Foundation executive director trying to daily drive FreeBSD (for 10 mins a day only). Does anyone even know what PR is? Do we need a new Executive Director?
 
Just last week I brought my FreeBSD laptop into a vendor training session at work. First day I did try the corporate Windows laptop like every normal person. It sucked. So I figured that these were vendor labs, nothing company specific, nothing confidential.. so what the heck. Connected my personal FreeBSD laptop to the guest wifi (it did this automagically, much to my surprise), and off we went. This all worked without a hitch, faster and smoother than the Windows laptop that's 6 years newer than my private work horse. What always surprises me the most is that nobody ever seems to notice a KDE desktop versus Windows 11. Sitting in a meeting room with just a laptop screen called for virtual desktops. KDE has these. Super useful! Nobody ever noticed, even though we were paired up differently by the trainer multiple times over four days, looking at the shared screen for hours together. I've been daily driving FreeBSD for what.. decades now. Recently, with the improvements to WiFi, my laptop was rolled back into the fold as well. It's been perfect!
 
loveydovey said:
Looking at comments for that: "Eating your own dog food is not so pleasing a thing after all" said someone about the FreeBSD Foundation executive director trying to daily drive FreeBSD (for 10 mins a day only). Does anyone even know what PR is? Do we need a new Executive Director?
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I don't see things that way at all. The focus of the foundation has only recently put focus on this use case.

The fact that the Deb Goodkin is using the system in place of another system and able to get work done as required is a proof of concept for the success of the initiative to focus on laptop usage.

I think it's pretty cool news myself.

EDIT: From Deb's presentation "Daily Habit: 10 Minutes Minimum". This is not 10 minutes a day only. This is a minimum usage time daily.

EDIT 2: As usual I have may edits to my post. I think it's important that this use case is solid and works great for a laptop/workstation/desktop user. After reading the presentation I was surprised at how much daily use software solutions worked or partially worked for Deb. Those are software that I don't use myself but impressive that they work. I think the fact that laptop focus and server focus are remaining separate options during install is absolutely perfect as well. A step in the wrong direction would be compiling a bulk of preinstalled programs that would take more time to remove than actually installing the system. That's the problem with other systems. So, I believe the foundation are doing a really impressive job on this.
 
I was thinking, wow, something wrong with installing KDE and stuff like Konsole/Dolphin/Konqueror? If you use KDE on Linux, KDE on FreeBSD works the same.

Networking in jails - yeah, OP really should have paid better attention to the blogs on klarasystems.com. Even IPv4 network stack can be finicky if you don't get the basics right.

RTFM, then KISS.

FreeBSD can do everything Linux can, and then some. Hell, FreeBSD beat Linux to ZFS integration, and even the Ports Collection was an inspiration to Gentoo's Portage.

I've been daily driving FreeBSD for years, close to a decade now. And I'm writing this on a Lenovo IdeaPad 5 2-in-1 laptop that has a Ryzen AI 445 processor. And yeah, KDE works fine on it, I can even watch Youtube.

But no, OP really should learn to follow the official documentation, which is the FreeBSD Handbook, and not rely on cursory glances at secondhand info from Youtube. Otherwise, it's gonna be an ugly experience all around. :/
 
MrBSD said:
Im just happy that drm-612-kmod was finally released so i can switch back to FreeBSD and use my RDNA4 based AMD card. Lets hope it works.
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Sadly, drm-612 panics (without a dump) my HP 840. Details are in a PR. I suspect it's not initializing a GPU register.
 
loveydovey said:
Does anyone even know what PR is? Do we need a new Executive Director?
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I know everyone here loves to configure every darn bit about FreeBSD so much that everyone breaks out in hives when "what will be the default UI" conversations come out, but out there in the world of The Computer Is A Tool That Better Do Useful Stuff, where the Director lives trying to raise money and manage things, nobody has time for that and the computer needs to load the one and only correct driver when hardware gets plugged in.

Chromebook and Android are the top successful GUI mass-market Linux stories I can think of off the top of my head.

Anyway, this seems appropriate. If anything, the foundation needs an IT department trying to solve requests like this so they know where the pain points are.
 
New to the BSD's. I m testing to see if my workflow can be duplicated with a BSD as a desktop user.
I settled on FreeBSD,I followed the fine manual, a first, works perfectly.
I no longer do desktops, laptops here.

application:
Apache-Openoffice
Firefox
A few pdf apps for editing, not viewer apps.
Caja, FM for sftp to my Linux box .
Gimp
Gnucash


I like cli package management., learning other uses. Very similar to my Debian experience.

greg
 
tingo said:
For a serious effort (but that wouldn't do on screen) if you want to switch, the tryout period should be at least one month. A week is just playing a game.Just my 0.02 Eurocents.
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Partially true now. I'm running a secondary laptop with the original FreeBSD laptop for a lot of things right now.

AlfredoLlaquet said:
That doesn't say much about your skills, I'm afraid.
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100% hardware support issues.
.
AlfredoLlaquet said:
They can ask for their money back, and I'm utterly unmoved by your positive opinion. We don't need your approval here.
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Ditto bud

doul said:
I went full-time FreeBSD for a couple years. These are my takeaways : I never look back.

FreeBSD instilled in me a real love for Unix, the rediscovery of computer pioneers, it make me feel myself a genuine computer enthusiast.
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It really feels like what Unixy OSes are supposed to be. I loved it.

Alain De Vos said:
First i think it's written by A.I.
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Lol no.

penguinslayer said:
GhostBSD... I think their forums software is garbage. As for the OS, I tried it twice several years ago and I'm not a fan.
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I also have a GhostBSD machine. So many problems that I didn't have from FBSD proper.

balanga said:
ISTR having a Jupiter Boadcasting channel a long time ago when I first started using KODI and often watched BSD Now, but when I check the website

www.bsdnow.tv

BSD Now

A weekly podcast and the place to B...SD
www.bsdnow.tv www.bsdnow.tv

I don't see any videos.

Is it just me that can't find them?
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JB got sold off to a parent company in 2018 and then went back private in 2020. BSD Now broke away and became independent at some point during all that. They're still around, just not with JB

LibreQuest said:
"Getting a graphical desktop was as easy as following a youtube video"

:/

docs.freebsd.org

Chapter 5. The X Window System

This chapter describes how to install and configure the X Window System providing a graphical environment
docs.freebsd.org docs.freebsd.org

docs.freebsd.org

Chapter 6. Wayland

This chapter describes how to install and configure Wayland and compositors on FreeBSD, which provides a graphical user environment
docs.freebsd.org docs.freebsd.org

"I regretted my decision to install Ghost-BSD for the last challenge, since it wasn’t a pure ground-up freebsd install and could be considered cheating"

But why?

"Prerequisites are simple: to enter the competition, just install BSD. Any BSD"

In my opinion the challenge was failed by not using the handbook and possibly by not using GhostBSD if it were your first choice due to ruling it out as being cheating when the defined prerequisites were met.
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There were two challenges. This one was more open about what could be used.
hedwards said:
A lot of that has to do with the way that computers have been dumbed down over the years and the users infantilized. I was able to use the Apple ][ for basic things when I was in elementary school. The degree to which people are allowed to pretend like typing a few basic commands that don't change much is some sort of God-like ability is deeply problematic.

IMHO, there's not much point in pointing out such things unless you're pushing things a bit by at least doing more complicated stuff like scripting, jails or at least customizing your install in some interesting way. It's not elitist, it's just that if you're just using the computer for normal computer things, you're just a normal user and there's really no shame in that at all.
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I have to agree. Part of the reason I liked using FreeBSD.
 
skhal said:
Wow, they survived for 1 week and that's impressive. FreeBSD is great once you get the idea of the basics and how things work in general - it becomes transparent and easy after the click-moment, which happens, IDK, maybe after O(months) or maybe event O(years). Really, it takes time to absorb all of that information.

IMHO a good analogy is the first experience with Vim: tons of users (including myself) hate it (and the moment they opened it in the first place) after the first struggle to move around or even exit the app... After N-months/years the very same users become Vim-yoda-jedi-experts and there is nothing that can convince them to switch to anything else from Vim/Neovim.
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I did thought. I've been running FreeBSD and GhostBSD for about two years now. This fresh install was specifically for the challenge.


Zare said:
The guy who wrote this post is a total noob in BSD area so his statement can be only seen as humorous.

This is an old distro hopper thing. There are 3 BSDs. One is lauded for portability so PC user doesn't care much. Of the other two, he gets somehow to install FreeBSD bcz of sysinstall having some disk aid steps, but not OpenBSD because it requires a manual fdisk phase. So FreeBSD is easy and OpenBSD is l33t. I guess this is where "Ubuntu of BSDs" e.g. easily accessible connects to.

Ofc it's straight out bullshit.
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You should read better.


Zare said:
I understand. I managed to read it on my 2nd or 3rd try, once a bit "calmer" ;)
The OP came here, posted, I haven't seem him before, he didn't respond, limits his profile for us to see other activity.

This is nothing but advertisement for his blog.
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I wanted to share the experience. I make 0 money off of what I write and don't link it to my meatspace self in any way.
 
Cedric62 said:
If I can use FreeBSD, then literally anyone can use it. Although I will admit that there was a few times I felt like giving up. However, when I felt like giving up, I thought things over, and then I realized that it was simply easier to stick with FreeBSD than to reinstall some version of Linux in order to replace it. Been using it as my daily driver for about three or four months, and I think that I'm now over the hump, and I now feel more comfortable with it.
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If you have a second computer somewhere, it makes it a lot easier to use one or the other for what they're good at. Makes learning a lot less painful.
 
magnolia_mayhem said:
If you have a second computer somewhere, it makes it a lot easier to use one or the other for what they're good at. Makes learning a lot less painful.
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Yes, but in my case I was pretty much still more or less able to use my computer throughout the entire time when FreeBSD was giving trouble. Even in the worst instances, my computer was never out of commission for more than an forty five minutes or so, and subjecting myself to FreeBSD shock therapy, limited to only one computer, made me learn a little bit quicker than I would have otherwise.
 
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