Do you use FreeBSD on metal as your daily driver? Which version? What DE or WM do you use? Do you run any other OS alongside or virtually?

DrJuanNadie

DrJuanNadie

Do you use FreeBSD on metal as your daily driver? Which version? What DE or WM do you use? Do you run any other OS alongside or virtually? Which one(s)? Why do you need the other OS(s)? Explain anything else you want about your system.

Me: Yes, I do. 15.0 as of today. KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland + Kronkhite tiling extension. I use a Windows 11 VM on VirtualBox for some automation stuff that I made using Autohotkey. I also use a bluetooth speaker via a dongle and two monitors.
 
Do you use FreeBSD on metal as your daily driver?
Yes, I do. FreeBSD only since June 2024.
Which version?
I will remain on 14.3 because 15.0 is unusable on my laptop because of a nvme regression introduced in the 15.0 cycle.
What DE or WM do you use?
My DE is CDE.
Do you run any other OS alongside or virtually? Which one(s)? Why do you need the other OS(s)?
I have 3 VMs, also managed by Virtualbox: W11 (that just sits there, I power the VM on just for Windows Update every once in a while), PopOS (just to test COSMIC) and FreeBSD 15.0 .
Explain anything else you want about your system.
Nothing fancy, it's just a laptop that I use with an external monitor and wireless Logitech keyboard and mouse. Sometimes I plug in a pair of USB Sennheiser headphones.
 
DrJuanNadie said:
Sennheiser audio devices, in my experience, seem to last forever.
Click to expand...
I use the ones with optional sound suppression, with cables. These are becoming brittle with time. Other stuff like the ear pads can be easily replaced with spares from the net. Sound quality is great. Maybe, after 20 years of service, they can be allowed to fail.
 
Yes, I use it at both home, and work, where I ssh into my FreeBSD machine there. The one at work runs 14.3, at home, 15.0. I have two that I use at home, one running dwm and the other openbox. I have a couple of Windows VMs, 1 10, 1 11 that I rarely need for work and I have a laptop with a few versions of Linux, plus FreeBSD, that I use for various stuff--such as if I have to use zoom, no mike or camera on my main workstations.
 
Although I daily drive macOS; because the filesystem hierarchy is so well laid out and navigable on FreeBSD i'd recommend a WM + your own tweaks. Configuration of the system is pretty easy because of that. My WM of choice would be Qtile or XMonad because it's all in Python/Haskell - easy to learn, read, and configure without much of a barrier to the user. It takes less time to understand Python than Haskell; pick your poison.
 
I have a lot of x86 machines that run FreeBSD either 14.3 or 15.0. I have no need for any other OS on my hardware at this time. I mostly use KDE, LXQT, MATE or ICEWM. But I'm sure I have an install with PCDM/Lumina somewhere.
 
Full time for a while now.
  • 15.0-RELEASE
  • Full Wayland
  • Hyprland 0.51.1
  • Chromium 143
It's just a little Intel NUC 13, runs like a champ. The sound and fonts are fantastic on FreeBSD.
 
Do you use FreeBSD on metal as your daily driver?
Yes, I do.
Which version?
I will remain on 14.x as long as possible.
What DE or WM do you use?
My WM is dwm.
Do you run any other OS alongside or virtually? Which one(s)? Why do you need the other OS(s)?
Yes, Alpine Linux on bhyve, for using adb/fastboot on my phone.
 
Do you use FreeBSD on metal as your daily driver?
Yes
Which version?
I mainly aim for the latest -RELEASE with quarterly pkg builds. So right now my main workstation is running 14.3-RELEASE and in a couple of months I'll upgrade to 15.0-RELEASE.
What DE or WM do you use?
KDE
Do you run any other OS alongside or virtually? Which one(s)? Why do you need the other OS(s)?
Other OSes.
My main workstation is multiboot. As well as FreeBSD it has Windows 11 which I rarely use (BIOS updates, if I need to test something with MS Visual Studio, when my wife needs Windows help). Next it has Fedora 43. Often that is borked because it has an NVIDIA graphics card. Then there's an openSUSE install. That's mainly there because I couldn't get illumos to work with graphics. So I have illumos on my old workstation. I have 2 RPis, a 4b and a 5. I don't use the 5 much because FreeBSD does not support it. I have a laptop with FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE on it. In the Apple world I have an old Intel macbook pro and a fairly new mac mini aarch64.
Then I have many VirtualBox VMs.
Explain anything else you want about your system.
There's never enough to test everything on.
 
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