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

I was previously a Linux distro hopper. I started getting bored of Linux because I distro-hopped so much over a few years and I started looking into BSD's and in general UNIX's history, I've always wondered what BSD was and although I have used pfSense (a router OS which is a derivative of FreeBSD), I never really knew what was happening under the hood, since at that time I was a Linux user and pfSense's conventions were new to me, and I thought it was like Linux but it is not.

I then saw a post on unixsheikh's website which has a short summary of how BSD is different to Linux and talks about FreeBSD in general, and I started looking at what FreeBSD was and I saw that it was easy to install (which it was, and I love that about it), and I installed it a few days ago. For the past few days I have been setting up FreeBSD and getting used to its conventions / reading man pages / forum posts and pages of the handbook, and so far, it's great! FYI I used unixsheikh's setup guide to get started.

My current setup is XFCE with some other tweaks to make XFCE look better.

I don't think I will hop to any other OS anymore, time will tell, and I will still need to use Linux on another computer for some things like playing games or maybe still checking out new distros etc.., but FreeBSD is amazing and I've learned more about UNIX's history while using it, and I will stay on it for a while I think.
 
yaslam said:
I then saw a post on unixsheikh's website which has a short summary of how BSD is different to Linux and talks about FreeBSD in general, and I started looking at what FreeBSD was and I saw that it was easy to install (which it was, and I love that about it), and I installed it a few days ago. For the past few days I have been setting up FreeBSD and getting used to its conventions / reading man pages / forum posts and pages of the handbook, and so far, it's great! FYI I used unixsheikh's setup guide to get started.
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This article mentions 'rock solid' and here is my example:

Code: 
$ uptime
 8:17PM  up 658 days,  4:26, 7 users, load averages: 0.92, 1.15, 1.22

This is a machine in open high bandwidth network running VM-s. Hardware is dying already but FreeBSD is rock solid...
 
I'm a long time Linux user and I fooled around with FreeBSD 4.8 (just before it split and DragonFly BSD came to be) and I found it to be more powerful than Linux, but didn't quite understand the port system. Now that I do, I put it back on my computer and now tri-boot with RedCore (a Gentoo binary distro) and Slackware,, I may yet remove the Slackware and try another BSD (NET or OPEN) j ust for kicks. FreeBSD is easier to set up than Gentoo by a long shot and aside from a few gaffs, has worked flawlessly. It found my wifi adapter (which linux couldn't do without having the drivers installed and updated first! ) It found my adapters and pretty much wrote the required settings for X-Windows. I can still run my linux favorite shell , Zsh and set themes for it.
So far this is looking great!
 
I'm a autodidact(28yo) with a degree in Cyber-Security who "lost" almost a decade working on customer care/relations and don't like talking to people.

I just got my first IT related job.

Adjectives that resembles some trait in my persona: accelerationist, egoist (Stirner's egoism), hedonism, transhumanist, agorist, voluntarist (laissez faire, laissez aller, laissez passer), introvert and many others.

I used Linux for a bit more than a decade, mostly Slackware and Gentoo. After a while I got tired of Linux userland mess and decide to try out some BSD's. First I tried OBSD and I really liked the holistic approach of the OS.

After almost one year using OBSD as my only OS I moved to another continent looking for a better life then my native (third world) country. While I was looking for a job here I needed some tools that OBSD don't support, so I needed to move from it, but I didn't want to come back to linux. I decided to try out FBSD, and it was love at first install.

Now I'm on the second month mark using FBSD and almost finishing my first month on my dream job. ;-)

Edit.: From now on, this will be my "About" session on my profile page.
 
Hi everyone.

I have been an "advanced" computer user for years now. I don't even remember... I think from 1996 onwards...

I started with MS-DOS 6.22, and then through various Windows from 3.11 to the current Windows 11. Several years I was playing with Linux (SuSE 6 I think, but it was so automated, that when something went wrong, I didn't know what to touch). I later went through Ubuntu, but was disappointed. It always seemed heavy to me and with each update the system ended up breaking. I switched to Debian and it is the Linux distribution that I have the most fondness and fond memories of.

My arrival on FreeBSD (I think version 10) was out of curiosity about the system. I don't use it to learn all the power it can offer, if not as a basic user (browsing the Internet, and listening to music). I have installed it on a very modest computer: 2 GB of RAM and an Intel Celeron 1007U processor with 2 cores and it works wonderfully with Mate Desktop. What I like most about FreeBSD is that it is a complete system, its kernel and utilities go together, and the clarity of the manual. And its stability with updates. My system hasn't broken unless I've put my paw into something I shouldn't.
 
Long-time distro hopper since Slackware v1.?? (from a Walnut Creek CDROM) but could never commit to any particular Linux distro. Tried various BSD's, including several versions of FreeBSD, over the years on a number of different machines without a successful install so I just bounced back & forth between MS Windows and Linux distributions. My needs are fairly simple and PC's were for personal use and entertainment only (email, browsing the web) so I had the luxury of switching OS's at random. Then FreeBSD 13.0 was released.

When v. 13.0 was released I gave FreeBSD another try and it not only worked, but worked very well, from the base system to desktop. I've managed to break it a few times as a result of tweaking config files etc but a quick reinstallation has me up & running again in no time. Documentation (Handbook and Forums) and stabilty are outstanding with not a single crash or lockup during normal use. Upgrades have been flawless. It's been well over 1 year now and FreeBSD has been my daily driver since 13.0. Very happy with it.
 
I was originally on NetBSD after switching from Unix pizzaboxes to PCs. But NetBSD's VM system was very slow when contiguously reading files larger than RAM, and FreeBSD was fast, so I switched.

Running Linux, too (Debian), but I just like the more organized FreeBSD better. Didn't change for many years.
 
my mom got me into FreeBSD when I was approximately 2.6146 years. She started using it because she thought it was something related to communism and she said she loved that hippy shit. Now shes too old and im basically the computer guy in the house since shes too damn old to type or see the screen now.
 
Alain De Vos said:
There is also this one, explaining everything,

Amazon.com: Absolute FreeBSD, 3rd Edition: The Complete Guide to FreeBSD: 9781593278922: Lucas, Michael W.: Books

Amazon.com: Absolute FreeBSD, 3rd Edition: The Complete Guide to FreeBSD: 9781593278922: Lucas, Michael W.: Books
www.amazon.com
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Published Oct. 5, 2018, so it at best covers 10.4-RELEASE (October 3, 2017) or 11.1-RELEASE (July 26, 2017)... both of which are EOL: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/. FreeBSD does try to stay consistent with base concepts, and up-to-date with online documentation, though.
 
old UNIX hacker, BSDi was my workstation OS of choice in the late 90s, but switched to Linux in early 2000s as their kernel and toolset actually became stable enough to use. Would love to come back into the BSD fold 100% but until some "stuff" is supported I cannot. need md-raid and nvidia/cuda support. [sigh]

Professionally I do embedded and specialized computer engineering in the US military-industrial-complex field but only on consulting basis so that I can concentrate on my art and not have to put up with someone elses idea of what is "correct".

If you understand DLG2209TVX or CPE1704TKS then we could probably get along. LOL
 
Alain De Vos said:
Cuda i don't think.
But raid,
docs.freebsd.org

Chapter 21. GEOM: Modular Disk Transformation Framework

In FreeBSD, the GEOM framework permits access and control to classes, such as Master Boot Records and BSD labels, through the use of providers, or the disk devices in /dev.
docs.freebsd.org docs.freebsd.org
docs.freebsd.org

Chapter 22. The Z File System (ZFS)

ZFS is an advanced file system designed to solve major problems found in previous storage subsystem software
docs.freebsd.org docs.freebsd.org
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nope. it has to support the existing md-raid metadata format used in Linux, which probly won't happen, as preoccupied with as those guys are over their GPL.
cuda acceleration is a requirement for a lot of the stuff I get involved in. unfortunately nvidia doesn't put much effort into non-windows use of their products. even the linux support channels for their GPUs are kind of crappy.
 
kent_dorfman766 said:
nope. it has to support the existing md-raid metadata format used in Linux, which probly won't happen, as preoccupied with as those guys are over their GPL.
cuda acceleration is a requirement for a lot of the stuff I get involved in. unfortunately nvidia doesn't put much effort into non-windows use of their products. even the linux support channels for their GPUs are kind of crappy.
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FreeBSD support is even murkier than on Linux for NVidia GPU's... I'm an AMD fanboi, and got RX 6900 XT working with KDE Wayland (albeit not very easy to reproduce). Anything newer is asking for trouble, best I can tell.
 
I am interested in electrical engineering/electronics and physics. I've known FreeBSD since release 7.0

Why I like the FreeBSD project:

-I'm not a fan of systemd (although I use it myself)
-I like the 2 clause BSD license and the Deamon logo and its history.
-I like the system in general, although my girlfriend said it looks like an ancient operating system
-It's not cluttered with unnecessary junk
 
I first used FreeBSD in early-2022 with ghostbsd, but didn't really like it as everything was already installed and i wanted to made an normal FreeBSD install, but all of them was failures, until today where i finally got it to work. (And btw, this is an dualboot with Nobara Linux)

For the moment, its pretty pleasant to use, and i might do a full switch maybe after learning how FreeBSD and BSD operating systems works in general.
 
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