2024: The year of desktop FreeBSD?

Unixnut said:
However what is the problem with wifi on FreeBSD? I've not come across any reliability issues so far with wifi myself.
Click to expand...
Connects to the wrong hotspot on boot, gets the incorrect IP address, and I tried troubleshooting for years, editing /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf , and just giving my hotspot priority is not not enough. I had to learn to do the service netif restart , followed by bsdconfig wireless EVERY TIME, by hand. There's probably something beyond editing /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf , would be nice if I knew what it is. Once I connect to the correct hotspot, I don't have issues, true.

I imagine that the Bluetooth stack is similar - Yeah, you can edit config file, but if you don't edit the correct ones, the end result (even if successful) won't persist across reboots. I'd think that making such behind-the-scenes details get sensible defaults (like Xorg does) would go a long way. On FreeBSD, you can either compile Xorg or install it from packages, and it works pretty reliably. Would be nice if wifi and Bluetooth had the same level of reliability. The available drivers do support decently capable hardware, but proper config of those drivers is a house of cards that can fall apart, and be very difficult to put back together without a reinstall of the whole friggin' system.
 
Cath O'Deray said:
A December 2023 RFC included a plan to write a Bluetooth device management utility. I vaguely recall a subsequent change of plan, or someone else taking the reins in this area.
Click to expand...

blackbird9 said:
… I remember reading some time last year… someone was writing a new BT stack for freebsd. I don't know what happened.
Click to expand...

I don't recall anything about a new stack.

For the upcoming status report:

… future tasks include:
  • …
  • Write a bluetooth device management utility.
  • …
Click to expand...
 
Cath O'Deray said:
I don't recall anything about a new stack.

For the upcoming status report:
Click to expand...
I'm probably talking rubbish... i usually do! I've done a web search but I can't find the thing I read or any news of a new bt stack.

I've actually pulled the wifi/bt card out of the new mini-pc box I'm currently using, so I can't try out the latest instructions in the handbook. One older howto I remember trying was http://www.oook.cz/bsd/bluetooth.html , and I couldn't get that to work with the speakers I was trying to use, that was on a thinkpad. I noticed there was an update in 2022, and a freebsd foundation guide here https://freebsdfoundation.org/resource/networking-basics-wifi-and-bluetooth/ which seems to be based on the current handbook version (I guess the handbook would be the most up to date). So maybe it's worth giving it another try some time. The last couple of appends in this thread, which are from 2024, are quite encouraging: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/...nd-use-bluetooth-headphones-on-freebsd.82671/

As for general desktop use, freebsd works pretty well. I've pretty much got all the tools I need, although I'm probably not a very demanding desktop user, I still tend to do a lot of things in the terminal. It would be nice if there was a waterfox port but you can't have everything. But all the main stuff I use is there. As for standardising on a particular desktop.. linux still hasn't solved that one either, in fact it seems to be getting ever more fragmented (with wayland v. X11, etc) rather than converging on one soluton. I think the way freebsd does things now is pretty good, let the user choose, or let derivatives like ghostbsd ship with a specific desktop.
 
astyle said:
Connects to the wrong hotspot on boot, gets the incorrect IP address, and I tried troubleshooting for years, editing /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf , and just giving my hotspot priority is not not enough. I had to learn to do the service netif restart , followed by bsdconfig wireless EVERY TIME, by hand. There's probably something beyond editing /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf , would be nice if I knew what it is. Once I connect to the correct hotspot, I don't have issues, true.

I imagine that the Bluetooth stack is similar - Yeah, you can edit config file, but if you don't edit the correct ones, the end result (even if successful) won't persist across reboots. I'd think that making such behind-the-scenes details get sensible defaults (like Xorg does) would go a long way. On FreeBSD, you can either compile Xorg or install it from packages, and it works pretty reliably. Would be nice if wifi and Bluetooth had the same level of reliability. The available drivers do support decently capable hardware, but proper config of those drivers is a house of cards that can fall apart, and be very difficult to put back together without a reinstall of the whole friggin' system.
Click to expand...
Interesting, did you open a thread here about it?

Truth be told I never got that to work properly on Linux either. To this day it is as if the "priority" setting in wpa_supplicant.conf is completely ignored. If I want it to connect specifically to an AP, I have multiple wpa_supplicant.conf files, each with single AP's listed, and then call the binary with the config file I want.

Its not enough of a headache for me right now, but in future I may well write a perl script that automates the above so I can call the script with the AP I want and it will auto-reload wpa_supplicant with the correct conf file.

The only FreeBSD wifi issue I've come across so far is when switching from monitor mode to managed mode after using Kismet. For reasons unknown the entire machine locks up when after destroying the interface and re-creating it in managed mode, requiring a hard reboot. It only happens after running Kismet, so I suspect it is something to do with Kismet rather than with the wifi stack itself.
 
I have been trying to get a FreeBSD desktop working off and on far about a decade. I finally got things working with KDE and Slim last year, and life was good. Then I got a ritzy new NVIDIA GPU and had to install the NVIDIA driver, and suddenly the desktop did not work, and I wasn’t a studly enough X-windows guy to fix it.

I tried SUSE Linux for a while, and it was OK, but I am really more comfortable with FreeBSD, since I have several FreeBSD CLI machines. My Linux machine died (mobo problems), and when I get it going again, I think I am going to give the FreeBSD desktop another shot. So I am hoping that for me, 2024 is the year of the FreeBSD desktop.

BTW, for anyone else like me, who has struggled to set up a FreeBSD desktop, here are a couple of nice, although dated, references:

Nicole Reid (R11): https://cooltrainer.org/a-freebsd-desktop-howto/

Colin Percival (R12.1): http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2020-05.html
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top