FreeBSD Questions

[marcelocripe]

Hello dear colleagues.

Through Distro Watch, at https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=freebsd and I reached the FreeBSD website https://www.freebsd.org/ and https://www.freebsd.org/ doc /.

I would like to start by thanking you for creating, developing, maintaining and distributing FreeBSD for free.

Before starting on this operating system, I need to confirm some information, please answer my questions.

1 - What is the minimum hardware specification (Processor and RAM) and what is recommended for running FreeBSD in graphical mode?

The specifications specified are correct at the link: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/bsdinstall-hardware.html or https://www.freebsd.org/doc/pt_BR /books/handbook/bsdinstall-hardware.html?
We are a family owned and operated business.
"A FreeBSD installation requires a minimum of 96 MB of RAM and 1.5 GB of free hard drive space. However, such small amounts of memory and disk space are really only suitable for custom applications like embedded appliances. General-purpose desktop systems need more resources 2-4 GB RAM and at least 8 GB hard drive space is a good starting point. "
We are a family owned and operated business.
For me, 2 GB to 4 GB of RAM is equivalent to the system requirements of Windows Vista or Windows 7. Which is very bad… (for me)
We are a family owned and operated business.
Is that my main goal is to reuse donated or discarded computers / notebooks that have about 512 MB up to 2 GB of RAM, with DDR1 or DDR2 technology, Intel processors: Pentium IV, Celeron, Atom and AMD processors: Athlon, Duron and etc.

Due to bad, slow internet, constant connection failures and etc., I can only download programs and any ISO via download manager, without the manager, everything I download is corrupted.

2 - It is only possible to download the programs with a computer (with any FreeBSD operating system or on a Windows) connected on the internet, via pendrive or CD / DVD copy all the programs to the other computers without internet access and manually install the Software? If so, in which directory are the downloaded programs stored and what is the command to install the programs locally?

3 - Is it possible to install packages in which formats or extensions (".tar.bz2", ".tar.bz", ".dep", "rpm" and etc)?

4 - Would there be a version of FreeBSD that requires less processing and less memory?

5 - In one of the pages of the documentation it is written that the installation of FreeBSD does not include the graphical environment or workspace (graphical mode), if I managed to understand, it will be up to the user to choose what they want to be installed, including which workspace they want . In addition to the desktop, the other basic resources, such as: network (LAN and Wi fi), audio, video, USB and etc. will be the same? Does everything have to be prepared by the user?

6 - Questions regarding FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE and FreeBSD 12.1-STABLE at the link: https://www.freebsd.org/where.html, I was unable to find information that explains the difference between these versions of FreeBSD.

7 - I found the biggest ISOs: FreeBSD-12.1-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso 4.46 GB of 2019-Nov-01 at the link:
https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/snapshots/i386/i386/ISO-IMAGES/12.1/ and FreeBSD-12.1-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso 3.89 GB 2019-Nov-01 at the link: https: / /download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/i386/i386/ISO-IMAGES/12.1/. With these ISOs can I install FreeBSD on computers or notebooks without internet access, including graphic mode or desktop?

8 - Does it have translation into Brazilian Portuguese or Portuguese from Portugal?

I am fighting the programmed or forced obsolescence of technology that still works and that can be useful or can be reused by others who cannot afford to buy a new computer with each new version of Windows or some Linux distributions that follow the same path, the path of programmed or forced obsolescence of technology.

I thank you for your attention.

Thank you!
marcelocripe

original text in Brazilian Portuguese, translated into English by Google translator

 

[a6h]

Minimum RAM usage in my system:
262~279 MB (CLI),
351 MB (GUI/i3),
683 MB (GUI/i3, vnstat, apache, mysql).

You can work with tarball and run Linux packages. But you have to do all the works. You can also take a backup of pkg binaries and copy to another system: /var/cache/pkg. DVD/ISO is fine, but if there's a problem with some package, and you have to update, the whole DVD is going to be render as useless.

-CURRENT and -STABLE are development branches. -STABLE branch doesn't mean stable, it implies that ABI is stable. It's a snapshot on -CURRENT -STABLE branch and it gets security updates and new features. -RELEASE are branched-off (-RELEASE is not a branch itself) from -STABLE branch. It's stable and only gets security updates. No new feature of probably bug-fixes. If you run a production server choose -RELEASE branch. Otherwise you can go with -STABLE branch. But be aware, not frequently, you may encounter some problems. -STABLE branch is not problem-free. Check http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable there's always some problems with -STABLE branch. But they are minor. I have no problem with that. Some people are using -STABLE branch on their production servers and that's fine too, but they know what they are doing.

Mailing list: freebsd-subscribe@fug.com.br
Mailing list (web): http://www.fug.com.br/
Documentation (pt) https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/doc/pt_BR/
IRC: ##freebsd-br on FreeNode

[EDIT]: We have lots of fine and helpful Portuguese speaking users in this forums and mailing list, Both from Brazil and Portugal. Post a update in your FreeBSD profile page and ask them for further guideline

[EDIT 2] Correcting a mistake in the 1st line of 3rd paragraph.

[EDIT 3] For the sake of completeness,
Quote from Frequently Asked Questions for FreeBSD 11.X and 12.X | Chapter 17. Advanced Topics | 17.3. What are snapshots and releases?

HEAD is not an actual branch tag. It is a symbolic constant for the current, non-branched development stream known as -CURRENT.

 

[sidetone]

The xz file is compressed, and can be downloaded if you have a way to uncompress it.

The disc download is good for most purposes, eg: FreeBSD-12.1-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso.xz. Unfortunately, the iso meant for cd doesn't fit on a cd. The boot disc would be unsuitable for what you've described. Also, use a mirror in your country, or continent: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors-ftp.html. This often helps with slow speed internet.

This will allow the most basic operating system on the command line, without a desktop. It can be updated to be a desktop. Updates for desktop would have to be installed online anyway. There are minimal desktops that can be used like dwm, cwm, ratpoison, i3 and jwm. As Gnome and KDE will take up a lot of space and require lots of resources. Trihexagonal had a webpage with screenshots of minimal desktops.

You can have or build packages and settings on one of your computers, and distribute it to other computers on a local network. Use a switch rather than a hub to connect local computers together.

There's also MidnightBSD, which is a lightweight desktop distribution, but it doesn't have a large community, especially multilingual community, for support.

 

[trev]

Minimum RAM usage in my system:
262~279 MB (CLI),

I have found, running FreeBSD 12-GENERIC in a VM, that some ports programs won't compile successfully without 512M of RAM and 1.5G of swap. No GUI installed, so completely CLI.
Of course, if you use pre-compiled packages then you may well get away with less RAM and swap. A custom kernel rather than GENERIC would no doubt also help.

 

[a6h]

I have found, running FreeBSD 12-GENERIC in a VM, that some ports programs won't compile successfully without 512M of RAM and 1.5G of swap. No GUI installed, so completely CLI.

Compiling, true. My number min/RAM/CLI was for my Home/PC no extra program running. Things' going up! Speaking of minimums: last time on a VM/12.1-RELEASE-GENERIC, I get a 101 MB Delta (real, avail) from grep memory /var/run/dmesg.boot

 

[mark_j]

Hello dear colleagues.

Through Distro Watch, at https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=freebsd and I reached the FreeBSD website https://www.freebsd.org/ and https://www.freebsd.org/ doc /.

I would like to start by thanking you for creating, developing, maintaining and distributing FreeBSD for free.

Before starting on this operating system, I need to confirm some information, please answer my questions.

1 - What is the minimum hardware specification (Processor and RAM) and what is recommended for running FreeBSD in graphical mode?

I've run it on 1GB on an embedded ARM device. I've also run it on 512MB, but compiling is a tad problematic.

Now that's out of the way, what do you want to do with the system? Do you want a GUI or just a headless server? What software do you wish to run on it?
Once you answer those, memory and storage capacity can be more easily estimated.

Due to bad, slow internet, constant connection failures and etc., I can only download programs and any ISO via download manager, without the manager, everything I download is corrupted.

2 - It is only possible to download the programs with a computer (with any FreeBSD operating system or on a Windows) connected on the internet, via pendrive or CD / DVD copy all the programs to the other computers without internet access and manually install the Software? If so, in which directory are the downloaded programs stored and what is the command to install the programs locally?

You can purchase the DVDs of it. See FreeBSDMall

That said, if you intend to update the system or packages/ports, you will require an internet connection.

3 - Is it possible to install packages in which formats or extensions (".tar.bz2", ".tar.bz", ".dep", "rpm" and etc)?

Anything's possible. Certainly any source code can be compiled (generally). Whether it installs is another thing.
FreeBSD builds packages for you which are in binary format so that all you have to do is install them. There are thousands of packages, which can be perused via FreshPorts (ok this is for ports, but they're built into installable packages also) or here.

There are also ports, where you compile the code yourself. These can take minutes to hours to days to complete depending on your system and the level of dependencies within the port. In most cases, it's better for you to stick to installing binary packages.

So, in FreeBSD parlance:

Binary installable programs are called packages and installed via pkg
Source code of these binary packages are contained in /usr/ports and are called, you guessed it, ports.

4 - Would there be a version of FreeBSD that requires less processing and less memory?

FreeBSD 1.0 was very light.
Seriously, read up on the FreeBSD versions. On the download page it states which ones are supported. If you were to download now, then you would download FreeBSD 12.1-Release for your correct architecture.

5 - In one of the pages of the documentation it is written that the installation of FreeBSD does not include the graphical environment or workspace (graphical mode), if I managed to understand, it will be up to the user to choose what they want to be installed, including which workspace they want . In addition to the desktop, the other basic resources, such as: network (LAN and Wi fi), audio, video, USB and etc. will be the same? Does everything have to be prepared by the user?

That's correct. You are free to install what you want.
Look at the handbook, it contains details for installing various desktops on the system. It's actually not that complex.
See https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x11.html and chapters 6 and 7 as well.
(In your case: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/pt_BR/books/handbook/ or https://www.freebsd.org/doc/pt_BR.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ )

6 - Questions regarding FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE and FreeBSD 12.1-STABLE at the link: https://www.freebsd.org/where.html, I was unable to find information that explains the difference between these versions of FreeBSD.

Only ever pick Release versions. Period.

7 - I found the biggest ISOs: FreeBSD-12.1-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso 4.46 GB of 2019-Nov-01 at the link:
https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/snapshots/i386/i386/ISO-IMAGES/12.1/ and FreeBSD-12.1-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso 3.89 GB 2019-Nov-01 at the link: https: / /download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/i386/i386/ISO-IMAGES/12.1/. With these ISOs can I install FreeBSD on computers or notebooks without internet access, including graphic mode or desktop?

That includes a lot of packages ready to run, such as most of the desktop environments like KDE/Mate/XFCE. It basically should get you up and running with a full desktop OS.

8 - Does it have translation into Brazilian Portuguese or Portuguese from Portugal?

The handbook does if that's what you're referring to?

 

[richardtoohey2]

Re-using older machines is a noble objective, but running a modern OS with a modern GUI and a web browser - that needs some amount of resources.

It's like using a Raspberry Pi - even the RPi4 with 4GB of RAM - you can just about run it as desktop but it will be frustrating (to put it mildly!) at times.

Older devices will have their drivers removed (but usually decades after the hardware is obsolete). They are likely to be 32-bit, and many/most developers have moved into the 64-bit world, so the level of support/updates/developer interest will be low.

 

[Argentum]

We are a family owned and operated business.
Is that my main goal is to reuse donated or discarded computers / notebooks that have about 512 MB up to 2 GB of RAM, with DDR1 or DDR2 technology, Intel processors: Pentium IV, Celeron, Atom and AMD processors: Athlon, Duron and etc.

Hello!

T think it is probably hard to give comprehensive answers to all these questions. Maybe it is a good idea to just try?

There is NomadBSD project. It is fully functional FreeBSD configured with GUI and capable of booting from USB stick. Why not to just boot it up on different machines and see how it works?

Personally, I have tried it and can confirm it works fine. For that I took an old hard drive and connected through cheap SATA to USB adapter.

Just download the image and write it on the USB stick as described here.
Good Luck!

 

[SirDice]

-STABLE branch doesn't mean stable, it implies that ABI is stable. It's a snapshot on -CURRENT branch and it gets security updates and new features

No, it's not. -CURRENT and -STABLE are different branches. At the moment there is a 11-STABLE, from which 11.x releases are made, and 12-STABLE, from which 12.x releases are made.

Badly drawn ASCII art:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> 13-CURRENT
            \_ 11.0-RELEASE -> p1 -> p2            \_ 12.0-RELEASE -> p1 -> p2 ...
             \_ 11.1-RELEASE -> p1 -> p2            \_ 12.1-RELEASE -> p1 -> p2 ..
              \_ ...                                 \_ ...
               \                                      \
                \                                      \
             11-STABLE                              12-STABLE

Early next year (somewhere around January) 13-CURRENT will become 13-STABLE, and HEAD will move to 14-CURRENT. From 13-STABLE the new 13.0-RELEASE will be made. Some time after this the entire 11 branch will be EoL.

-STABLE is a supported development version. Think of -STABLE as the beta of the next minor release. -CURRENT is an unsupported development release, think of is as the alpha version of the next major release.

 

[mark_j]

Better ASCII art:

                            __/ ///////// /|
                           /              ¯/|
                          /_______________/ |
    ________________      |  __________  |  |
   /               /|     | |          | |  |
  /               / |     | |  Acorn   | |  |
/_______________/  |/\   | |          | |  |
(_______________(   |  \  | |__________| | /
(_______________(   |   \ |______________|/ ___/\
(_______________(  /     |____>______<_____/     \
(_______________( /     / = ==== ==== ==== /|    _|_
(   RISC PC 600 (/     / ========= === ===/ /   ////
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ /     / ========= === ===/ /   /  /

 

[marcelocripe]

Hello people.

I thank everyone who responded to this topic and for each suggestion or information.

The goal would be to use the FreeBSD operating system, as it is not proprietary. The operating system must necessarily be translated into Brazilian Portuguese or Portuguese from Portugal. It should be in graphical mode (with GUI, I start to learn the Unix / Linux language), I don't have much command line skills myself, however it is not for me, computers / notebook computers are for beginners in computing.

Vigole brought the information that indicates FreeBSD, unfortunately, it will not be used for this project.

Depending on the internet to install programs is complicated when they are for multiple computers, remastering the system's ISO is not feasible, as I will need to install programs according to the capacity of each hardware. Downloading the complete program and installing it manually seems to be something very unusual, but this is how I always did it in the "Windows world", this way it avoids failures and problems in the installation process due to bad internet connection and facilitates the reuse of the program in other machines.

I am going to research about the other operating systems that you have referred me to.

I also know that if it were possible to use FreeBSD I could count on the support of FreeBSD colleagues, in other forums they do not help newbies, on the contrary they try to discourage those who are arriving.

marcelocripe

original text in Brazilian Portuguese, translated into English by the Google translator.

 

[sidetone]

There's Fuguita, which has a light desktop, and is based on OpenBSD. I don't see support for languages other than English and Japanese for it. From what I hear, OpenBSD's community is impatient with newcomers.

In a way, FreeBSD has less bloat than Linux operating systems, so is expected to run faster. Compiling is an issue, however. Usually more harddisk swap allows compiles to complete, but on an old computer's CPU and RAM, it would be slow.

It also depends on which desktop is used. But compiling itself takes up a lot of time.

Maybe you can use one computer for the command line of FreeBSD, MiniBSD, or Minix to play with that. MidnightBSD is worth looking into.

Was it the Portuguese FreeBSD forum/mailing list, or another OS?

This forum won't help with troubleshooting other operating systems. It only will help if it's a FreeBSD derivative, and the question was asked on that operating system's forums/mailing list, and the answer couldn't be found there.

One could use FreeBSD, then apply what was learned from that to using a FreeBSD derivative.

 

[ralphbsz]

Boa tarde.

Ao escrever aqui, voce deve tirar por suas perguntas em portugues, e escrever-las ao lado de uma traducao automatica. Aqui ha algumas pessoas que entendem bem, e a pergunta original pode ser mais claro do que uma traducao. Eu nao gosto de escrever em portugues, mas posso ler-lo facilmente.

When writing here, you should ask your questions in Portuguese, and write that next to the automatic translation. There are several people here who understand it well, and the original question can be clearer than a translation. I don't like writing in Portuguese, but can easily read it.

The operating system must necessarily be translated into Brazilian Portuguese or Portuguese from Portugal.

Some of the documentation is translated into Portuguese, for example the handbook. As far as I know, man pages are *not* translated. And file and command names and command line options hardly ever are: Your files will be store in /home not in /casa, the command is called "awk" in all languages (because it stands for Aho-Weinberger-Kernighan), and the "--sort=date" option on ls is not translated into --ordernar=epoca. This is true for most computer things I know of (funny exception: there was a French COBOL dialect, decades ago, and a German database library for COBOL).

computers / notebook computers are for beginners in computing.

What do your users really need? If it is just web browsers (such as elementary schools), then a Chromebook or similar browser-only is a much more efficient solution. If it is specialized educational apps, then Android or iOS tablets are good. Look at it from the amount of work required to install and administer a complete operating system, and reduced systems are much more desirable. But maybe you don't have the ability to chose the hardware.

I am going to research about the other operating systems that you have referred me to.

I would look into some Linux distributions; the must be some that are optimized for minimal resources. Personally, I don't know any, since I fundamentally only run a very small number of distributions myself. But for example, Debian can be slimmed down as Raspbian, and works reasonably well on a 1GiB RAM Raspberry Pi (slow, but works).

 

[ekvz]

In general the hardware should be perfectly fine running a GUI (actually using a lot of operating systems that arent Windows, MacOS or similar) but as others said before that doesn't mean much. The real answer depends on how GUI is defined. In a minimalist sense a Pentium 3 with 128mb of RAM could support a GUI just fine. It's just not going to be very pretty and won't be a able to run a lot of modern applications without constantly swaping and/or the CPU bottlenecking but it would be a usable GUI. A couple very basic applications like an email client, a simple texteditor, audio player, etc would probably work or a least could be patched to do so but that's pretty much it at those specs. In any case running a mainstream browser (i.e. one that can render more than a handful of websites) is completely out of the question.

I'd put the the absolute low end for webbrowsing at Pentium 4 with 512mb of RAM and it's not going to be a smooth (understatement...) experience as soon as the "modern" web is involved. On the brigther side said Pentium 4 could probably be configured to be quite an acceptable system as long as expectations are adjusted accordingly.

In reality something like core2 duo with 1gb of RAM would probably be a more reasonable minimum configuration though. I mean i am all for recycling old hardware but anything below that is just really beyond ancient by now and trying to somehow reuse it in a general purpose sense feels more like some kind of "can it be done?" challenge.

 

[Mjölnir]

The google translator is really good, I would have expected much worse!

• My observation: the FreeBSD community is very patient & helpful to newcomers here in the forum.
• For old hardware, you will likely need the i386 versions of FreeBSD or NomadBSD (good tip). A complete GUI can run sufficiently on a i386 laptop with 1-2 GB RAM (+ 2-4 GB swap), and a 20-40 GB harddisk.
• Choose UFS filesystem, and x11-wm/xfce4 or x11/kde5. Contrary to wide misbelieve, KDE handles low resources well, and you do not need crap & resource hungry browser like firefox, but e.g. lightweight www/falkon instead. Do not expect wizardry/magic, though.
• Optionally, read the gjournal-desktop article before installation.
• To install the GUI on native FreeBSD, you can pkg install desktop-installer, fire it up and let it do it's magic. I guess most people will agree that Gnome3 is broken and Mate is not so lightweight, so choose XfCE4 or KDE5, unless you know what you're doing and want to install one of the many standalone window managers and configure yourself (not recommended for newbies).
• pkg install {en,pt}-freebsd-doc
• package downloads are done by fetch(1), and it handles bad connections well (restart partial downloads where it was suspended). You can tweak /usr/local/etc/pkg.conf(5) to handle bad internet connection:
  

  #FETCH_RETRY = 3;
  #FETCH_TIMEOUT = 30;
  FETCH_RETRY = 60;
  FETCH_TIMEOUT = 120;
  REPO_AUTOUPDATE = false;
  ...
  ALIAS : {
  ...
  message: "query '[%C/%n] %M'",
  ...
  }

  and then you have to do pkg update once a week or so.
• Then after installation of packages, read through pkg message|less

Good luck!

 

[20-100-2fe]

I would look into some Linux distributions; the must be some that are optimized for minimal resources.

Void Linux is one of these.

However, be it FreeBSD or Linux, if your target audience is beginners, be aware they're unlikely get a positive feeling about computers if you run desktop applications (e.g. LibreOffice, Firefox) on a machine with less than 2 GB RAM. Of course, it would work, but your students would have a hard time understanding why something in front of which they spend most of their time waiting is worth learning.

To put it simply, today's software is not intended to run on yesterday's hardware.

I would recommend you to make sure your computers perform (UI + speed) at least better than a low-end smartphone.

Also, today's use of computers makes little sense without decent internet connectivity. This may not be an issue at the very beginning of your student's learning path, but without connectivity, their motivation may not last long. Unless, of course, they are in a very specific context where they can find a motivating use for an isolated computer (or local network), e.g. as a tool in a larger, non-IT community project.

 

[sidetone]

When you search Distrowatch, try the settings: Old Computers, ix86 and Not systemd. See that it uses a small window manager. Also, look at the country of origin.

• http://www.tinycorelinux.net/downloads.html This one is about 100MB for the full graphical installation.
• http://www.slitaz.org/en/get/ This one is small, many downloads need minimal Internet resources.

 

[20-100-2fe]

Another possibility is to run such a tiny Linux distribution on very limited machines to use them as X servers, applications being run on a more powerful machine if you manage to get one. The latter could run either Linux or FreeBSD.

When you search Distrowatch, try the settings: Old Computers, ix86 and Not systemd. See that it uses a small window manager. Also, look at the country of origin.

• http://www.tinycorelinux.net/downloads.html This one is about 100MB for the full graphical installation.
• http://www.slitaz.org/en/get/ This one is small, many downloads need minimal Internet resources.

 

[a6h]

-CURRENT and -STABLE are development branches. -STABLE branch doesn't mean stable, it implies that ABI is stable. It's a snapshot on -CURRENT -STABLE branch

No, it's not.

At the time I couldn't find, where I've read about two(2) different types of releases. I found it, and now I can't realize whether I've misunderstood it or there's some problems in documentation. Two(2) types of release has mentioned in the documentations: dot-zero release and point release. The word release is not written in all capital letters (release versus -RELEASE) in the text. Maybe I should take that difference literally. I would be glad to hear from you and others on this topic. I thought I've managed to grasp the main point of branch/release topic. Now I'm dazed and confused!

4th and 5th paragraphs: FreeBSD Release Engineering | 1. Introduction to the FreeBSD Release Engineering Process

After several months, and the number of changes in the stable/ branch have grown significantly, it is time to release the next version of FreeBSD. These releases have been historically referred to as “point” releases.

In between releases from the stable/ branches, approximately every two (2) years, a release will be cut directly from head/. These releases have been historically referred to as “dot-zero” releases.

2nd paragraph: Frequently Asked Questions for FreeBSD 11.X and 12.X | Chapter 10 | 10.15. I tried to update [...]

[...] FreeBSD derives its releases from one of two places. Major, dot-zero, releases, such as 9.0-RELEASE are branched from the head of the development stream, commonly referred to as -CURRENT. Minor releases, such as 6.3-RELEASE or 5.2-RELEASE, have been snapshots of the active -STABLE branch.