Firefox/Chrome support in FreeBSD

b6s6d6 said:
That's great news!
Personally this would basically leave just 1 important issue to solve:
I can't seem to make Chromium use hardware acceleration. Even when trying to force it, is always "software-only".
Do you know by chance how to solve it? BTW I'm using 11.2-RELEASE, intel driver (sna accel method) with drm-stable-kmod.
Click to expand...

slow down, it is still not ready for us in STABLE ... i just made the same mistake;)

We need to wait a bit.
 
b6s6d6 said:
That's great news!
Personally this would basically leave just 1 important issue to solve:
I can't seem to make Chromium use hardware acceleration. Even when trying to force it, is always "software-only".
Do you know by chance how to solve it? BTW I'm using 11.2-RELEASE, intel driver (sna accel method) with drm-stable-kmod.
Click to expand...

Please, apply the attached patch of the PR 230450 and rebuild www/chromium.
 
Beastie7 said:
i'm considering switching (or at least partially) to FreeBSD due to my personal qualms with Apples direction of their Macs. But I need a well supported, working browser to make the switch. How's the browser support nowadays? FreshPorts indicates the latest versions each are ported; any anomalies i should be aware of?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Hi,
I noticed one problem with Firefox from ports, it crashes when you zoom out on maps.yandex.ru, with following error:
IPDL protocol error: could not lookup id for PTexture
that's very annoying.
 
I installed the new version of www/chromium on my workstation this morning and, after two hours of usage, I have not had any hanging or other issues on FreeBSD-11.2p1 RELEASE. Easily I would have had the issue within minutes.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
I installed the new version of www/chromium on my workstation this morning and, after two hours of usage, I have not had any hanging or other issues on FreeBSD-11.2p1 RELEASE. Easily I would have had the issue within minutes.
Click to expand...
how did you install ? pkg install ?
if so, there are still problems with Whatsapp, it hangs systematically. I have been told to wait for use on STABLE in bugzilla. bye

sorry for format, phone typing;)
 
Nicola Mingotti

I just use WhatsApp Web and it works flawlessly.

Code: 
% uname -a
FreeBSD bsd.nix 12.0-ALPHA1 FreeBSD 12.0-ALPHA1 #0 r337834: Wed Aug 15 18:06:41 CEST 2018     root@bsd.nix:/usr/obj/usr/src/amd64.amd64/sys/GENERIC  amd64

% chrome --version
Chromium 68.0.3440.106
 
Beastie7 said:
i'm considering switching (or at least partially) to FreeBSD due to my personal qualms with Apples direction of their Macs. But I need a well supported, working browser to make the switch. How's the browser support nowadays? FreshPorts indicates the latest versions each are ported; any anomalies i should be aware of?

Thanks.
Click to expand...
Hi Beastie7
Ive been running Freebsd on my macbook air 11inch 2011 for the last year and it works like a dream

I had to build a custom kernel to get the keyboard backlight working for my mac air,
but if your have a later model mac you should be ok

The only thing that isnt working with Freebsd 11.2 is the broadcom wifi card
but Freebsd 12 is adding support for the broadcom wifi cards used on the mac so that will fix that issue

i believe Freebsd 12 should be released towards the end of 2018

I have written a guide on how to set up Freebsd on the Mac with EFI boot
Freebsd use's a legacy boot which means it takes 30 seconds for the Freebsd boot screen to load up

But you can fix that issue by blessing the EFI partition so Freebsd will boot up straight away

Heres my guide on setting up Freebsd with EFI boot on the mac
Freebsd EFI boot on Mac hardware

These are my notes on setting up Freebsd on a mac
Freebsd mac hardware install

Over the last year on Freebsd i have made some notes which you may find usefull
Freebsd notes on github

And here are my dotfiles for Freebsd

Freebsd root partition dotfiles

Freebsd home directory dotfiles

Freebsd home bin directory scripts

I have found Firefox works a lot better than Chromium if thats any help
Also you will probably want to use packages and not ports as ports take quite a while to build at least on my old Mac book air with only 4gig of ram, and dont mix ports and packages use one or the other

Apart from the ZFS file system and pf firewall the other killer feature on Freebsd is the audio which is amazing
i use a usb dac with bitperfect audio enabled on Freebas and it blows the audio on the mac and linux clean out of the water

I have a couple of scripts to enable bitperfect audio and to switch audio sources
Bit Perfect audio switching script

Switch audio devices script

I would also recommend using the i3wm tiling window manager instead of Desktop enviornment like Gnome, KDE or XFCE
Because it uses a lot less resources than a Desktop enviornment
i3m tiling window manager

The mini display port on the Mac also works with adaptors so i can use it either with an hdmi adaptor or with a ethernet adaptor

Also supend and resume with Freebsd works so you can close the lid and the mac will go to sleep
Suspend and resume doesnt work on any Linux distro i have run of the Mac and i have tried ubuntu, debian, linux mint and arch linux and it didnt work on any of then, but it does work on Freebsd

As i said the only thing that isnt working on my macbook air 11 inch 2011 model with Freebsd 11.2 is the broadcom wifi card
but Freebsd 12 is adding support for the broadcom wifi cards and should be out at the end of the year i believe

I would actually say that Freebsd runs better than Mac osx on Mac hardware and you will have a proper packages manager instead of having to use homebrew on the mac to install open source software

So i would recommend making the switch from OSX to Freebsd i know i couldnt go back now
 
chrisb said:
I cannot seem to be able to get any extensions to install in firefox or waterfox. when I click on add, it downloads them but nothing shows up anywhere.... Any ideas??
Click to expand...

i'm having the same problem. extensions that were installed before upgrading to quantum continued to work. but any new installations fail. and i deleted that profile with the working extensions...
 
I know many extensions are no longer compatible. I only use two in FreeBSD, Firefox 62.0, vimium for Firefox and ublock orig, both of which installed without problem.
 
Since Firefox ESR started using the Quantum Strangeness of Firefox I went ahead and switched to Firefox and got it over with.

I keep Seamonkey and Palemoon installed, too, in case there is a vulnerability with one. They all work fine for me, and I have the extensions I deem necessary.
 
Hey, if you're coming from Mac you may be interested in my experience:
http://trafyx.com/?p=2551

Not very technical write-up but still.. Congratulations with your choice. With a little bit of loving care you can setup yourself a really nice home with FreeBSD. I use Firefox by default.
 
Phishfry said:
vermaden, Please don't take offense at what I said. It was not directed at you. I have strong opinions about hardware freedom..
Click to expand...

Well I'm not offended either, and I pump them up more than anybody.

My Thinkpads all run like perpetual motion machines, are a pleasure to type on with more than enough resources for general desktop activity. And in the end, that's what counts where I'm sitting.

I run an Ethernet Lan and have only ever needed to change HDD, RAM and a battery. All readily available on ebay and a breeze to work on. I have a dead T61 that looked like it just came out of the box for parts should I need them. I'm more concerned with the Intel Management Engine than some whitelist.

I usually use my $50 T61's but have grown to like my T400 with Core2 Duo P8600 @ 2.40GHz and 8GB RAM. Gamers wouldn't have it, but I wouldn't have a gaming machine over my Thinkpads either, so it's all good.
 
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