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Yes, I do run into problems lately. Sound broke down ( 3rd time) and I am to sick to spend to much time. Sure, there are things I will miss but it is becoming a problem for me.
Thanks for all the help, take care
 
Needing features can be a must have or a nice to have. Nice-haves allow for taking time to find a robust solutution. Must-haves can pus to an instant solution.

For that reason I installed Debian on my must-have dual boot laptop that I use now and then. Dual boot W11 and FreeBSD is a bit out of my league for now. I need the <rant_skipped> W11 for a program to read the ECU of my motorbike, the program doesn't work on other OS (yes, I tried, contacted the programmer, etc.)

My main box will stay FreeBSD. I just want a reliable workhorse, and don't really need sound and video. In the end day to day non-programmer UX is mainly the same on every FOSS.
 
In my system, FreeBSD works fine. If you don't know how to upgrade properly, you should consider a clean install.
 
Best wishes with Debian. If you haven't nuked your system yet you could post a question here in the forums. As previously mentioned OpenBSD is a good option for sound card support.
 
I can understand being frustrated, FreeBSD can piss me off sometimes too. Debian and FreeBSD are my two favorite operating systems. Maybe continue to use FreeBSD on a system that you don't actually need to use on a day to day basis? Like some old computer that is just lying around collecting dust? FreeBSD takes a little more elbow grease than most Linuxes, but in my opinion, it is worth the effort. I have Debian on my laptop and FreeBSD on my desktop, both great systems. Anyhow, farewell, maybe we'll see you back here some day.
 
Yes, I do run into problems lately. Sound broke down ( 3rd time) and I am to sick to spend to much time. Sure, there are things I will miss but it is becoming a problem for me.
I think that all this is not a reason to be disappointed to such an extent. There are two aspects to your "sound incident":
  1. The first is that lack of sound is not a reason to abandon FreeBSD. Why did you trade FreeBSD for sound? Why don't you give up everything that requires sound (messengers and their users, video, music) and stick with FreeBSD only? In the future, you can also try to turn off the graphical environment from time to time, and then even the display, turn off the computer trying only with the help of the power of thought to understand what is happening in the computer.
  2. For me, one of the advantages of FreeBSD is the understanding that operating system pluralism is not necessary. You are already familiar with one of them, why do you need others? With FreeBSD you have no sound, and with Debian you will have systemd, so why do anything?
 
Most of the system are working fine in clean environments. Some including myself had problem with sound.
If you enjoy exploring solutions , there are people willing to help you here without any hitch. Only you have to provide the detail of your system and how you tried to setup/solve the problem. New hardware/driver require some attentions. 'Devuan is without systemd and full desktop environments.'
 
Makoto that is a wee bit rude, ain't it?
I don't think so. I don't know how he have problems with sound 3 times. I already had some similar problems like this in the past, but, after reading the handbook, everything is fine. I am newbie here, so a clean install can solve a lot of problems to me. I think it was a good advice. I didn't mean to be rude.
 
Funny. I got away from the Debian / Ubuntu world for my HTPCs because of sound issues (Pulseaudio, enough said). OSS on FreeBSD is heaven-sent for some real audio use:
- PCM up to 384 kHz sampling rate
- Up to 7.1 PCM with 96 kHz
- Passthrough without headaches, up to DTS:X and TrueHD with Atmos
- No lag

Using Nvidia drivers and sound over HDMI to an "audiophile" 9.1.4 setup. Especially passthrough, lag and high sampling rates were a headache on Debian / Ubuntu

Also, you get systemd with Debian, "Russian Routlette"-style major version upgrades and the "supportive" Linux community. 🤢🤬

So the OP is getting out of a mildly warm frying pan into a big, hot fire.
 
I don't know how he have problems with sound 3 times. I already had some similar problems like this in the past, but, after reading the handbook, everything is fine.
Reading the handbook doesn't prevent you from future trouble. I'll give you a sound related example:

My hardware actually shows up 6 sound devices (pcm0 to pcm5), from which I'm using 3: My monitor (HDMI via Nvidia graphic card), the mainboards backpanel and the headphone and microphone unit on the front. The computer has two users. First I'm setting at boot time the default sound device: the monitor. And my user sets at login my preferred mixer settings within ~/.xsession. Such settings you can get easily: With mixer -o you get them in a form you can re-use inside scripts. I've also set up some start menu entries to easily switch over to recording settings and back again, also to switch from monitor to backpanel to headphone, and to reset my preferred settings.

A few years ago the method of how to include the Nvidia driver changed for me, and as far I remember I've got to find out which pcm device is which again. Some months later I bought a new graphic card, and again I've got to find out which device goes to my monitor; Both times I had to update my boot settings as well as my start menu entries. And by updating to FreeBSD 14 all my user scripts and start menu entries didn't work anymore: The format for the mixer settings changed a little bit (percent isn't valid anymore, the format is now 0.00 to 1.00 only).

3 times. After reading the handbook for more than once. Not a problem to me - and for sure not for hansw, too - but you've always have some handicrafts to do. And none fresh installation would have helped me anything here, the last update costed extra time because of sound. (And I know zero unix/Linux user who sees a fresh installation as a solution.)

…and you remember a few months ago when Firefox stopped to do audio without starting sndio first? All & always solvable, but always by handicrafts. Discussing if you've got less maintenance on Debian will lead to nothing, but for me: I think so. But other disadvantages let me stay on FreeBSD ;)
 
A few years ago the method of how to include the Nvidia driver changed for me, and as far I remember I've got to find out which pcm device is which again. Some months later I bought a new graphic card, and again I've got to find out which device goes to my monitor; Both times I had to update my boot settings as well as my start menu entries.
Yes, it would be nice if we could have support for somekind of label for pcm(4) devices, like the labels for GPT partitions under /dev/gpt, so a configuration like yours could be independent from initialization sequence of the devices.
 
And by updating to FreeBSD 14 all my user scripts and start menu entries didn't work anymore: The format for the mixer settings changed a little bit (percent isn't valid anymore, the format is now 0.00 to 1.00 only).

If true, that would be far more than 'a little bit', since many peoples' scripts would be defunct for no good reason.

However according to:
https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi...FreeBSD+14.0-RELEASE&arch=default&format=html

you'll only have to add '%' to each entry, which is 'less bad'.

Useful functional change, done right, is good. Change for its own sake, especially if destructive of existing setups, is not.

Why didn't the new author just use 0.0 to 1.0 when there is a decimal point, and leave other numbers as the percentages they've always been? Bizarre.
 
My "reliable workhorse" workstation is Windows 7 Pro for heavy Excel and Win development.
Sadly, the major software vendors, Turbo Tax, Quickbooks, etc, refuse to launch on it.
I use multiple ESXi VMs for this instead.

My movie ripping station is a big Xeon, Win10 Pro, 128gb of ECC, SSD, and nVidia 4060ti for hardware transcoding.
These are native on the Windows platform, so I have zero desire to fiddle with them on a 'nix platform.

My FBSD use for iron clad stability is XigmaNAS on a big Xeon for high capacity storage and dnsmasq on a VM for local DNS.
 
What's a USN?
US Navy. They once build a "smart ship" which was meant to be operated by only a handful of sailors. The problem with . vs , crept up when the engine control system interpreted 12.0 knots as 12.000,00 knots due to different locales. Stupid thing would not move for hours. Maybe they renamed it the USS Sitting Duck.
 
Not FreeBSD related.


I have trouble with audio on FreeBSD at home that I don't have at work. The same computer. It's not home-related.

I'm not seeking help, I simply learnt to rarely bother with audio at home.
 
I have trouble with audio on FreeBSD at home that I don't have at work. The same computer.
Do you still have that suspicious looking cat at home?

Lots of problems with audio. People with a background in Linux tend to install alsa/jack/sndio/pulseaudio because they know it. And if they install don't it themselves, installing packages will drag in all of them sooner or later.
Especially pulseaudio is known to cause problems. Often it's better not to have 'em installed, standard OSS will do perfectly in most use cases.

If you're using packages, here an attempt to solve such problems in a few steps by using ports. Let's assume application audio/ABC doesn't give you proper audio.

1. # pkg delete -f audio/ABC
2. # cd /usr/ports/audio/ABC
3. # make config
4. # make install clean

At step 3 uncheck all jack/alsa/sndio/pulseaudio options. If FFMPEG is mentioned in this screen, repeat steps 1 to 4 for multimedia/ffmpeg.
After that, use the configuration settings in ABC to play to a /dev/dspN device. Likewise, choose a /dev/dspN device to record, if applicable.

If this approach using ports works for you, then keep in mind that a package upgrade will overwrite application ABC. You will have to keep track of which software you will have to build using ports.
 
Needing features can be a must have or a nice to have. Nice-haves allow for taking time to find a robust solutution. Must-haves can pus to an instant solution.

For that reason I installed Debian on my must-have dual boot laptop that I use now and then. Dual boot W11 and FreeBSD is a bit out of my league for now. I need the <rant_skipped> W11 for a program to read the ECU of my motorbike, the program doesn't work on other OS (yes, I tried, contacted the programmer, etc.)

My main box will stay FreeBSD. I just want a reliable workhorse, and don't really need sound and video. In the end day to day non-programmer UX is mainly the same on every FOSS.
run windows 11 in a VM on freebsd so you can erase the windows partition ?
 
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