Introduce yourself, tell us who you are and why you chose FreeBSD

[dr3mro]

I like it more than linux, as its well thought and If I want to do something there is a standard way to do it and its in the manual not in some obsecure forum post.
using FreeBSD 14.p5 on Thinkpad x270
I have also many devices with fedora and Macos and windows but I only feel comfortable on my DWM+FreeBSD

 

[tuxador]

Medical doctor doing some research. I'm using R, some scripts in Perl and g95.
My first private driver was an old Mac, then I've moved to win98 since everybody was using win at that time. My old professor was using an old Sun...I was kind of fascinated, I think it kicked in at that time...
Then 10 yesrs on XP, then Vista...frustrated, I've tried Ubuntu, Fedora, Scientific Linux, Debian...then I've moved back to Win7...it was great, just running for my daily purpose...then win10...
Now, I'm tired of proprietry OS and software. I want my driver to do exactly what I want, no less no more. I've tried Linux again...but it is much to fragmented and overbloated. Installing FreeBSD with a GUI on my laptop was a big deal and a nice challenge. I've learned a lot doing that and I'm really happy to run FreeBSD on my driver now.

Congrats fellow doctor. I'm eager to know which tools are using for your research: Text editor - Language/ Frameworks - vizualisation tools...

 

[astyle]

From what I've read, git only cares about the executable permission, for the user. It makes sense: it's not designed for restricting access but for collaboration. But if you can point me in the direction of setting it up so file permissions are respected, that would be awesome.

Example that would mimic my use case...

There's a file end-world-hunger.md, accessible by groups admin, editor, participant, volunteer, sponsor

John is part of one of those groups on the machine being git remote.

He clones the repo. He has access to the file and many others.
But the metadata is not on the file itself (unless I'm wrong; that data is kept in the filesystem representation of that file).

Now the file lives in ~john/prj. Whatever permissions that folder has, will take over permissions the file had in the original location (if git doesn't represent the permissions). That is, it would obviate the original metadata. Git clone will write files as if they were new.

And that's within the same machine. Could be John is running Mac or Windows where the permission system would be totally different.

I haven't tested this; but if John adds stuff to end-world-hunger.md and pushes to remote, the file might keep the permissions it had originally. That'd be good.

But say there's another file not for John to see 'editor-only-file.md'. Unix permissions make this file invisible to John in the unix filesystem.

But editor-only-file.md is tracked by git. When an editor creates that file and 'git add editor-only-file.md', only filesystem permissions prevent John from seeing it. If John pulls after that commit has been pushed to remote, he will get that file. No matter what the orig. filesystem permissions were.

That kind of conversation frankly merits its own thread... like maybe under Userland Programming and Scripting? I personally suck at git, but I know enough to be able to say that git as a tool is a poor fit for this scenario. Collaborating on a repo is one thing. Publishing specific files with specific permissions - that is a separate thing. Those two things don't mix very well. The Forums can be a great place to discuss how you can put together a solution, what it might take, etc. The welcome thread, however, was not meant for in-depth discussions like that. An example of how to start a thread: Thread sienna_cichlid-driver.86670. Pay attention to where that thread lives (Base System > System Hardware)...

 

[grahamperrin]

Git - Community options include IRC and Discord.

Last week, a Git mental block was cleared for me in FreeBSD Discord. Git crops up fairly frequently there.

 

[wsoteros]

Hello, all!

My name is Will and I head up our Community at iXsystems, the folks behind TrueNAS CORE.

I'm mostly a marketing guy that likes to play around in his homelab on the weekends and pretend I'm an engineer . I really appreciate being a part of the community!

In my free time other than playing around with TrueNAS related things I like to play race car driver in my Spec Miata.

It is a pleasure to meet all of you.

 

[Shiunbird]

Hello everyone,

I was asking to introduce myself so here it is. =)

I've been a sysadmin since I was 16, so for 21 years now. I've dealt with almost everything. I initially migrated NT4 to Win2K and took care of a small company (all on premises, single location). It was too much fun. Then I went to big corp and started supporting VoIP and video conferencing solutions - it was super, too! All on premises, tons of cool hardware, trips for deployments, actual creativity and active work with vendors to solve problems, mix of operating systems in the backend. Then I got the gig of my dreams still at the same company and started taking care of media streaming: a mix of AIX storage with Linux servers, all on premises but then COVID happened and the on premises video conferencing system was gone, we started dismantling the on-premises streaming solution... =(

At the same time, the cloud video solution had a huge security issue and, when I tried escalating it and getting it fixed, the project manager threatened accusing me of racism. The whole deal was so nerve-wrecking that I ended up quitting and now I am at a startup with 10 people. It's a full-Microsoft shop, so I don't enjoy the work all that much, but I have fun at home. =)

So I got a bit of everything, from SGI to G5s, through HP hppa boxes, the odd MorphOS install... and I hate the cloud, so I host everything at home: email, file sharing, storage and services for some small companies: email, an eshop - a mix of mostly freebsd and a bit of Linux.

My journey with FreeBSD started when I installed Debian, typed ifconfig, and realized the command was not there anymore. Seriously - I want to learn new things, not relearn the same thing over and over and over (oh, and systemd binary logs)

For fun, I also do large format photography and play the trumpet in a band. So that's a bit of me. =)

I don't have all that much time to be posting or contributing to the community (there's not much of a brain left after fighting Azure schizophrenic APIs), but whenever I bat my eyes on a question I can answer, I help. =)

So yes, thank you for all the knowledge you share here and for the awesome OS.

 

[astyle]

So I got a bit of everything, from SGI to G5s, through HP hppa boxes, the odd MorphOS install... and I hate the cloud, so I host everything at home: email, file sharing, storage and services for some small companies: email, an eshop - a mix of mostly freebsd and a bit of Linux.

So, you hate the cloud, and so you become the cloud yourself?

 

[rooksis]

Hi all!
I am just an average user, love to research operating systems (especially Unixy). All I know I learned on my own, from the internet (big thanks to the fantastic open source community worldwide that made it possible!). It began when I was 14 and for the first time in our town someone setup a public PC (in the bus station), running Linux (Slackware, if I remember correctly), with the internet connection. Fast forward today. I choose FreeBSD because it keeps away from the extreme ends like proprietary ideology and gnu version of open source ideology (btw result is the same as proprietary e.g., you still do not control/own the source). Other thing I love about Unix/Unix-like is ability to get your hands dirty, that is how I learn. I liked Linux too, before major distros decided to create highly automated (vulnerabilities as well becomes highly automated for free) Windows-like Unix-like Linux and that is just the matter of the time when Gentoo, Slackware will fall. By choosing FreeBSD I am preserving learning opportunity for myself for time to come, I get ZFS, Jails, PF, Ports, Poudriere, DTrace, and, great community for free. Big thanks to the FreeBSD community and project for the important work you do!

 

[Shiunbird]

So, you hate the cloud, and so you become the cloud yourself?

Pretty much.
I host at home an eshop for my friend's business and email for a bunch of others.
One of my friends put it nicely: I know where you live and if you screw up I can punch you.

The azure cli and inconsistent APIs give me stomachache daily. I hate every single second of dealing with it.

 

[free_monkey123]

Hi all. My name is Al. Currently, I'm working as a senior product designer, before that, a UI designer, and even earlier, a graphic designer.

Early Explorations
I've always had an interest in different operating systems and interfaces. My first computer was a 486 PC, something around 1998. I tried many OSs: DOS, Win 3.11, 3.1, 95, OS/2 Warp (still have warm feelings about it), NT, 98, and so on. Back then, I was studying engineering in university and was surrounded by programmers. We were all friends, and we all used FidoNET. Back in those days in our country, it was still a thing. The internet was expensive and not very accessible. FidoNET, BBSs... I was happy to be part of it, and I learned a lot about computers during that period.

An Inspirational Programmer
Even though I wasn't directly involved in programming, I learned interesting things from my programmer friends. Especially one guy who did crazy things! He could read disassembler code to figure out how to crack software by analyzing the algorithms it uses to check serial numbers. Another day he was writing his own operating system from scratch or changing the Energy Star logo in the BIOS by updating the firmware. He wrote apps in many languages – a truly incredible programmer! Programmer blessed by God! He was a source of inspiration to me.

FreeBSD: Then and Now
One day he introduced me to FreeBSD and installed it on my 486. I remember immediately falling in love with the logo and the OS itself. That red, cute devil resonated with me somehow. I think it was this CD cover.

I learned from him that FreeBSD is the real deal – fast, logical, reliable. You can compile software; you can compile the kernel! This is what he showed me back then.

For some reason, Linux never attracted me. I always felt a sense of… messiness each time I tried to interact with it. I still don't really have any desire to learn it, sorry Linux.

The Apple Years and a Return to FreeBSD
After I finished university, I used Macs for work and personal needs. Each year Apple introduced something interesting, and as a designer, it was a source of inspiration. Since 2017 I've been releasing my own iOS/Mac apps with help from a family member. Being an Apple developer is another reason to stick with a Mac…

But over the last few years, I've grown tired of not being able to tweak the OS to look and act the way I want. My 2018 Mac, which I don't think is that old, has become unresponsive; a mistake I made installing the latest macOS. I also don't see any interesting innovations in recent macOS releases. I'm bored with it.

At some point, I remembered that macOS uses FreeBSD partly, and my interest was rekindled! Nostalgia kicked in. I started reading all about it, about how the Mac kernel works, and what elements use FreeBSD. I still don't understand a lot of the technical stuff, but I love it.

Today, after almost 20 years, I find that FreeBSD still attracts me! For the past month, I've been playing with it using a UTM virtual machine (sadly, my attempts to run X failed). But oh boy, I still remember how to use ee, nano, and change /etc/rc.conf. I even compiled and installed successfuly a custom kernel – WOW!

At the moment, I'm waiting for a mini PC to be delivered because I can't wait to install FreeBSD on real hardware!!

The final trigger to try it on real hardware was a video where a guy showed how fast FreeBSD is on a 12-year-old computer (2012). It works 2-3x faster than my Mac from 2018!

With that FreeBSD machine, I would like to try to replace macOS for daily usage. I noticed that most of the time nowadays, we can do almost anything in the web browser. So I would like to install graphic drivers, XFCE or Gnome, maybe try other small desktop environments, with the hope that Firefox will be working fast. It's a bit of an experiment for me - can I use a computer without macOS? How fast can it be? How long can it stay fast and reliable? If this journey is successful, I'm thinking of stopping buying expensive Macs and switching to FreeBSD as much as possible.

So that's my story.
Thanks for reading.