FreeBSD - good choice for me (browsing, printing, etc...)?

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primuspaul

I am a Windows/Linux user. I use Windows on my primary desktop machine because I'm a gamer and I like the ease of using Windows 7. I also have a laptop I use for browsing the internet and word processor and on this I have Mint installed. It's quite useful for when I need to mess around with a flash drive's partitions or do some repair work.

On a relative's computer, I used to install Windows, but he would constantly get viruses or in some other way break the system, so I put Ubuntu on it. Installing things on Ubuntu can be quite complicated, so he hasn't been able to break it yet. But there are issues. Some software does not work on Linux so we have to use xp on a virtualbox. One example of such software is the software for the multifunctional printer. Scanning never works and we can only print from Linux. The virtualbox has manufacturer software on it and is able to scan. I contacted and got in touch with the organization handling the linux drivers for this series of printers, but he was never able to work out the issue so basically we are using the virtual machine.

Is FreeBSD a good choice for what I want to do? That is, browsing, word processor, viewing/editing pictures, printing/scanning? How does it compare to Ubuntu/Mint? What option does FreeBSD have for running a virtual machine with XP?
 
primuspaul said:
Is FreeBSD a good choice for what I want to do? That is, browsing, word processor, viewing/editing pictures, printing/scanning?
Click to expand...
You're probably going to have the exact same problems/issues as you had running Mint. The only difference will be the amount of elbow grease you're willing to put into it.

primuspaul said:
What option does FreeBSD have for running a virtual machine with XP?
Click to expand...
Besides the exact same Virtualbox we also have bhyve(8).
 
SirDice worded it much better than I, but I still wanted to respond.
Can FreeBSD do this? Yes. Is it a good choice? Well, that depends. How much effort are you willing to put into this?

If you're looking for handholding and a system which can help you "make things work" then I don't think this is going to work out too well, but if you're willing to put in some effort, keeping an open mind to learn something in the progress and then try to work your way through this then it might just work.

FreeBSD can do a lot, but it gets even better if you tell it exactly what you want it to do. However, in order to do that you need to know how it works. And there's where the challenge suddenly pops up.
 
You don't have much relative time to figure out what to do.

About 508 days for Windows 7. How Long 'til Windows 7 EOL?

FreeBSD can do just about anything you want, but you need to learn it. I use FreeBSD to run 2 MediaWiki servers, 2 basic Apache 2.4 servers, 5 OpenSim servers in a Grid, a Mail Host, A mail Gateway, a Firewall Gateway x5, why just today, I setup an Atlassian BitBucket instance on a VM running latest FreeBSD.

Anyway, do a little work, research and time and you'll probably find BSD is where it's at.
 
primuspaul said:
Is FreeBSD a good choice for what I want to do? That is, browsing, word processor, viewing/editing pictures, printing/scanning? How does it compare to Ubuntu/Mint? What option does FreeBSD have for running a virtual machine with XP?
Click to expand...
I switched from CentOS 6.x to FreeBSD 11.x this winter. FreeBSD accomodates my sysadmin tasks. I was using LibreOffice, Virtualbox, Firefox, Gimp on Linux and use them on FreeBSD, for they are available. Our HP MFD is also works, but I never tried to make scans.
 
FreeBSD has far fewer graphical tools than Mint. If it's a laptop, hardware support is way behind Linux. Wireless, assuming your card works, will not do 802.11ac speeds (if you have such a card.) For example, on my LAN, I get 20-50 MB (with a capital B) with Linux, vs 2-11 with FreeBSD. The graphic card may be a problem, though less so with 11.2. If you have a combination of NVidia and builtin Intel, you usually have to stick with the Intel. The official docs were way out of date last I
looked, but as of 11.2, later Intel cards are supported. Synaptics can be iffy.

Much of this can be gotten to work, but it will take time and reading.
Once installed, with X running, the things you mention are all available, including VirtualBox. Bhyve is also there, but far less intuitive, and documentation is quite sparse compared to VirtualBox. (The wiki page on VirtualBox is quite good.)

Some programs will be newer than a Mint version and some won't. Though chromium is available, google-chrome isn't,and you can't for example, watch Netflix on FreeBSD.
I've gotten all printers I've had working with FreeBSD. Cups is available or you can use lpd. It can be fun--so much of it depends upon what you need, how immediate are your needs, and what is fun for you. The detriments I mention aren't huge, (save perhaps for wireless, depending what speed you need--the slower speeds allow video to be streamed with no problem), and there are, in my arrogant opinion, lots of good reasons to use FreeBSD instead of Mint. Package installation is USUALLY pretty easy but, for example, the latest RELEASE version requires you to install NVidia drivers and VirtualBox from ports for the moment (where you build the binary from source on your machine). This has to do with release versions and will be fixed soon, but while you can install most packages with
Code: 
pkg install firefox
right now those two, as well as some others, I'm sure, have to be built from source.

So, if this sounds like fun to you, by all means try it. You'll find these forums very supportive (but if you try to use 12-CURRENT for better hardware support, you'll be told that's not supported here, and depending which mod sees it, the thread may be closed or left open for people who want to, to help). There's lots of excellent documentation, though, for your needs, though as it has a far smaller user base than Mint, you'll find that documentation on third party programs, which includes X, will often be lacking or out of date. Documentation on the base system is excellent though.

But, and for some people, this is a VERY big but, enough to satisfy Sir Mixalot (bad pun, but couldn't resist), setting up the system is done entirely with command line. Coming from Mint, and again, depending how much time you have, it may cause issues. Still, looking at your requirements, it can meet all those requirements, but as has been said, it will take time to learn it.
 
I might make the suggestion that printing could be complicated in some cases. If the printer manufacturer supplies only a proprietary Linux binary driver, then the printer may not work on FreeBSD. It's best to find a printer that does not rely on a manufacturer-specific Linux binary driver (there are many that fit the bill - like postscript). It'd be advisable to check your friend's hardware to see what printers are in place, if any.

For editing pictures, graphics/darktable works well on FreeBSD. Graphics/blender works well for editing video. I had graphics/krita running a while back. It's probably OK. The Gimp is fine of course. Have heard that Natron has been ported. Inkscape is fine. Lightworks and Davinci won't work - they require Linux binaries. All major browsers except newer Opera work well on FreeBSD. Virtualbox works. Qemu works. LibreOffice works.

If there are Wifi issues with built-in WiFi card, can always use external USB device.

With a little work, you should be able to make FreeBSD as automagick as Linux Ubuntu, Mint, etc - at least for the top bullet points.

By the way - noticed you're at post #1. Welcome to the forum!
 
Y'know, for what it's worth, I got a Kyocera printer working by just taking a MacOS ppd file. I'm not saying that will always work, but can be worth a shot. The basic HPs and such should definitely work, including multifunction. See wblock@'s great article about getting it working from command line, http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/lpdprinting.html though I'll be the first to confess I use cups--for the little bit of simple printing I do, it's not worth the reading to get lp working. I have in the past, but it was more for fun.
 
Re Intel and NVidia, going by what I've seen on these forums with laptops. (OP mentioned laptop). However, NO personal experience, so I could easily be wrong on that.
 
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