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

Then I could just as well have written it the other way round:

Ports aren't going to suddenly get dependencies on base system packages. That's not the point of PkgBase, and would go against the well-established separation between base system and third-party software, which is a common denominator of all BSDs.
 
kpedersen said:
Currently when doing a freebsd-update it is expected that packages won't need to change.
Click to expand...
Exactly who expects something like that? FreeBSD devs sure don't, and will point out that it's advisable to reinstall all the packages. I even highlighted that on my profile post that I made on Nov. 2, 2024...
 
astyle said:
Exactly who expects something like that? FreeBSD devs sure don't,
Click to expand...
Not yet, but it is fairly common in the Linux world and there is (too much of) a tendancy to follow suit.

bsduck said:
Then I could just as well have written it the other way round:
Ports aren't going to suddenly get dependencies on base system packages.
Click to expand...
Ports already have a dependence on base system packages. Of course they do. zlib(1) again is a good simple example. If this starts changing a lot, every port compiled against it will then need to be recompiled.
 
kpedersen said:
Ports already have a dependence on base system packages.
Click to expand...
I may be wrong (then please someone correct me), but to my knowledge, when creating a FreeBSD port, you never declare as a dependency a piece of software that's part of the base system. Of course programs from ports need base system components to run, but you don't need to declare dependencies on them because it is assumed that if a system is running a given FreeBSD release, these components will be there and at a known version. As far as I know, this isn't going to change anytime soon.

Of course with PkgBase you can remove a base system package if you want, just like you can rm or edit any component of the base system, but then you must know what you're doing and the ports framework isn't going to handle for you the issues it may cause.

Also, PkgBase isn't turning RELEASE into a rolling release, so just like now you'll still have only patches, not new features or newer software versions introduced by updates to a given release. It will however make running STABLE and CURRENT as a rolling release much easier, without the need to rebuild the system from source to keep it up to date.

That being said... could a moderator please move the messages about PkgBase out of this thread? Sorry for starting this conversation out of place.
 
bsduck said:
I may be wrong (then please someone correct me), but to my knowledge, when creating a FreeBSD port, you never declare as a dependency a piece of software that's part of the base system.
Click to expand...
You are correct. But think about what happens if the zlib version gets bumped and is now ABI incompatible. Will things still work with the ports / packages?

No. Whether you have stated an explicit or implicit dependency is irrelevant. You *do* have a dependency regardless. You will need to update everything together.

Base needs to be very stable to support the software stacks above it (ports). PkgBase doesn't necessarily mean "unstable" but as mentioned in my posts above, I suspect stability will suffer in those ways I mentioned. The evidence for this is looking at other projects with a fast updating "base" (or lack of base).

As for rolling release, that is unstable by nature. I hope that these forums don't get too flooded with questions about riced systems. In my opinion, if someone has removed a base package, they are no longer running FreeBSD and their question should be treated no differently as it is GhostBSD. Unlike Linux, the monolithic nature of FreeBSD's community might not cope so well with this.

bsduck said:
That being said... could a moderator please move the messages about PkgBase out of this thread? Sorry for starting this conversation out of place.
Click to expand...
I think there is a thread about PkgBase somewhere. Perhaps our sub-convo can be dumped in there. I agree, new users certainly don't want to read our prattle ;) (our apologies, mods)
 
Hello, there!

It was a long journey up to this point but I finally made it in to the BSD land with FreeBSD 14.2!

TLDR: Linux user since 2013, full time since 2023, my hardware is finally fully supported so I made the switch with my laptop today, my main PC is to follow suite soon.

Probably as many people in this forum I had started my journey with Linux (Linux Mint 14 in my case) long before even knowing that FreeBSD was a thing. This decision was thanks to the Metro interface introduction in Windows 8 and 8.1 which I avoided like the plague. My main PC back then was still on Windows 7 SP1 and remained with it for the next 10 years until I had installed Debian 12 Bookworm back in December 2023. Meanwhile with this laptop (Acer ASPIRE 5738Z) I had gone through many Linux distributions but in short my path was Linux Mint -> Debian -> Arch Linux -> Debian.

Some sort of rant...

I had my reasons to return to Debian and I'm most familiar with it but some things in Linux just "never change"... A good example is the constant (r)evolution and reinvention of perfectly working software: first it was systemd, then wayland, then pipewire, flatpak, snap, appimages and things are constantly changing. Together with this we have deprecations, also a lot of the old hardware is just being axed - the x64 v3 optimizations which are becoming the norm for example. The problem is they are (will be) used by default by most of the distributions and the old v1 and v2 architectures will be dropped just like x86. I don't have x64 v3 hardware and I don't see a reason why I should throw away my working hardware just because this is the standard nowadays. Not to mention that with every major Debian version my laptop was getting slower probably because the kernel is getting bloated by the day with more and more drivers and code.

End of the rant...

Enough is enough and I had created a bootable USB with FreeBSD 14.2. To be fair I had tried FreeBSD back when PCBSD 10 was a thing but my Wi-FI driver was sort of missing and my "trip" to the BSD land was cut short. Nowadays it was a different experience. Combining that with my own experience from the Linux years it was actually a walk in the park to install this OS and turn it in to a complete desktop. Everything on the base system is organized so well that I don't need to do Google searches when I'm searching for something and the manuals are probably the best I have ever seen on any OS (plus the Handbook). I do not have experience with the other BSD's, to be fair, so my opinion may be biased. FreeBSD is simple by default and it's getting harder once you decide to tweak and learn what every "knob" does to the OS but thanks to the single user mode I haven't managed to create irreversible damage yet. :D

Once Plasma 6 is the default version in the ports and probably when FreeBSD 14.3 is released I will switch my main PC to it as well. Meanwhile my laptop is quite happy with LXQT 2.1. To whoever maintains the ports - THANK YOU! And thanks to everyone involved in this project, FreeBSD seems like a safe paradise compared to the storms which are happening in Windows and Linux.

I have nothing against Linux, it served me well for more than 10 years but it's just not for me anymore.

Sorry for my English and thanks for reading!

Regards,
Georgi
 
Hello all,

I had some Linux experience from the mid-90s until around 2005, and started last year again testing linux and freeBSD for the daily use…

I am currently using freeBSD (14.2-RELEASE) on a notebook and a 14 STABLE on a desktop.
I had some troubles with “not so smooth” upgrades, but I am actually very happy with the system.

Thanks to all peolple posting here, I learned and found a lot of help!

Thanks,
Philippe
 
Hello,

I'm a systems administrator/programmer (now mostly as a hobby).

Linux "refugee" (Arch Linux): first installed FreeBSD when main server needed rebuild in late January 2023. Main workstation followed suit mid August 2023.

Decided to give FreeBSD a try as I rather liked some ZFS features (error correction, integrating volume management with file system - simpler storage addition/removal/rearrangement than separate LVM and ext4) and ZFS at the time was not as tightly integrated into Linux, and wanted to try a different operating system philosophy.

For occasions when Linux is required, e.g. for determining if issue is software or hardware related, my preferred Linux distribution is Arch Linux because it can achieve relatively clean minimal installs.

graue
 
Good morning,
Long time Penguinista here, total newb WRT BSD. Three reasons come to mind for my decision to dabble with FreeBSD.

  1. I've always been a bit BSD curious. I ran it on an X86 host for a bit before I needed the H/W for something else.
  2. Jupiter Broadcasting (Linux oriented podcast) just kicked off the BSD challenge. I thought it would be fun to try.
  3. I'm trying to help track down a corruption bug in ZFS related to native encryption. Since (I think) FreeBSD is now using the same code from OpenZFS I'm curious if I can provoke the same issue with FreeBSD running on a Pi 4B.
Many years ago I ran SCO UNIX (SYSVR3 IIRC) but the muscle memory from that is long gone. And even back then BSD was diverging from AT&T. It will be interesting. And I have *much* to learn, which is always fun.

Thanks to the Wiki and a post (just a few days old) I now have 15.0-CURRENT booted on a Pi 4B. Now I need to figure out how to do the things I want to do.

best,
 
User of various *Nix for over 20 years. Hard to believe its been that long.

I worked my way up from technical support at a small ISP to a system admin. They had windows and BSD boxes. I remember a must was to have Beastie on the console. That was my first foray into the *nix world. I always liked BSD, but I could not do the things I wanted to do (or lacked the hardware/know how) like gaming, etc.. But I always loved FreeBSD and have had it going in some form the past 20 years (even if it was just personally). The majority has been RHEL based, but I even had it as an option for various staging/test automation environments at my previous job even though I knew no one would use it :)

Today it is incredible the difference between now and then. It is my daily driver 75% of the time.

Why I use it: One of the first admins I worked with became a close friend and loved BSD. He committed suicide. From them on I have committed to running FreeBSD as close to my main driver as I can in honor of him and to know it as well as he did. Without him I would never have started on the tech career that I have had.
 
Quite simple, when I was 15 I've read about the PlayStation 3 because I wondered how people were able to mod around in Grand Theft Auto Online and freezing my console. Aside stuff like return-oriented programming exploits, I came across the operating system of the PS3, named CellOS. At that point I digged deeper into Unix, BSD specifically, finding myself in the great unix wars.

Of course, I knew Linux before. CentOS and RHEL were sold as options aside Windows Server 2008 R2 for game servers on PC. However, I never liked Linux. First off, the name "Linux" did not touch me. Secondly, Google often referenced forum posts about Linux and the users there were overly toxic, arrogant and highly convinced about their point of view. This extreme open source ideology hurts even me from an consumers perspective who actually pays for Software. Last but not least, I don't like Linus Torvalds.

BSD on the other hand is mostly if not always, purely educational and highly passionate about implementing features and the way FreeBSD advances is amazing. I am not a developer, just a simple consumer that uses 75% Windows for e.g. gaming, office stuff and so on. However, sometimes I buy a server to set up FreeBSD and it runs so perfect, no issues with ZFS. I gotta admit, I once tried to replace Windows with FreeBSD using XFCE, KDE, Gnome and MATE but these desktop environments did not offer me that beautiful, smooth and qualitative feeling Windows gives me from a simple mans perspective. I tried getting Steam to work with wine and proton, no success. I tried different "user-friendly" BSDs and same happened, was not that rich for me so i returned to Windows.

Still, this is not a bad sign. To me it means that FreeBSD is a workstation for heavy load and not intended for daily use as Desktop Environment. Its very useful for data storage, web serving, heavy-load processing and thats what I love about FreeBSD... It's like a Truck with the horse power of a ship engine and I assume we all agree almost nobody would go daily shopping with such a machine. It's very fun and feels amazing operating it from an console, can't say the same about Linux for example! I also like that there is no sudo on FreeBSD, who needs that? Honestly... Responsability awareness + FreeBSD = Sysmasteradmin. Hands down, the FreeBSD handbook is probably the 2nd best piece of literature after the bible... That book helped me alot and lead me always the right way! Whats saddening whatsoever is the "cuck" references to BSD, in my opinion these are 2 different topics about the commerical usability of FreeBSD and its roots. Don't understand me wrong, I highly appreciate the FreeBSD developers, but its of purely educational interest and as you can see, enormous power results from such passion! Such things aid the overall advancement of technology in the global context and its not like the FreeBSD project has no donations. Companies and people donate to the project, so that they can also profit from it. Its a mutual cycle most GPL people don't understand and you can't guide them to understand this, its like trying to explain the people who believe the earth is flat that the earth is indeed round.

At the end I feel home in Windows, but with FreeBSD around I feel like I got an extremely patient, helpful and backboned brother around me on who I can count on when I need a server.
 
I like GNU/Linux and use it a lot, but some distro's have become more complex and convoluted when it comes to configuration.

FreeBSD has many advanced features like ZFS and Jails but at the same time FreeBSD has always made the advanced software very easy for an admin to configure.

Sometimes simplicity is overlooked as important in an operating system, I learnt more about UNIX using FreeBSD because of it's simplicity.

The fact it has a handbook is another reason :)
 
I don't work in the tech world (Electrician for day job), but I have always had a huge interest in computers from a very early age. The Commodore 64 being my first computer.
I have used some for of linux since first coming across Fedora Core 2, however many years ago that may have been!!

For the longest time I have felt that most linux distributions have feeling less and less unix like, maybe with Slackware bring the exception. I have tried FreeBSD a few times over the years and I think the lack of wifi support and package availability have stopped me using it until now. With that latest release I finally have wifi support on my thinkpad and all the packages I need for my daily workflow to work.

Now I have got my thinkpad working great, I am currently in the process of moving my desktop machine over to FreeBSD.

I want to thank all the devs and community for the hard work they have clearly put in over the years. You have made a great OS and I can't see me leaving anytime soon.
 
lgrant said:
Why I love open source

For reasons having to do with travel, I need to change my daily driver from my FreeBSD machine to a Windows laptop for at least a few months. Since all my applications are open source, I just install the Windows versions on the laptop and I am good. For command-line utilities, I can run them under Linux using Windows Subsystem for Linux. Although I would rather be using FreeBSD, I can put up with this situation for as long as necessary.

This is how computing should be: the OS helps you do your job, without trying to take center stage.

And in case you are wondering, I did think of putting FreeBSD on the laptop, but laptop support can be iffy sometimes, and I will not have time to debug it while I am traveling.
Click to expand...
An update: using Windows again is driving me nuts. I still don't want to re-image the laptop just before leaving the country, but I am going to install FreeBSD on a good USB stick and run it from there.
 
lgrant said:
An update: using Windows again is driving me nuts. I still don't want to re-image the laptop just before leaving the country, but I am going to install FreeBSD on a good USB stick and run it from there.
Click to expand...
you sure you want this kind of info out in the open? Security by obscurity is the worst kind. This is about as stupid as posting pictures of cash on Facebook. And Google is pretty prompt in indexing the Forums. Everything posted in this thread is visible on Google, Yahoo, Yandex, you name it. Even if one is not logged in. 😩
 
There is no security by obscurity here. There is no skulduggery involved in putting FreeBSD on the laptop. I don't want to install it on the laptop just before I go on a trip, because sometimes FreeBSD laptop support is a but touchier than PC support (or so I have heard), and I don't want to be debugging the OS while I am on a trip.

Leaving Windows on the laptop leaves it unchanged, and having FreeBSD available on a USB stick lets me not lose my mind over the irritating things Windows does. I can use FreeBSD, but if I run into a problem, I have the Windows that came with the laptop for a fallback.

As far the information being indexed by Google, I don't really care if people know that sometimes I run Windows and sometimes I run FreeBSD. In the past, I have also run various Linux distros, as well as ArchLinux ARM on PogoPlug devices. I have also run MPX on an IBM 1800, OS/360 and its derivatives on IBM mainframe gear, RSX-11M on a DEC PDP11, and a few others that I don't remember. None of this is secret.
 
The first FreeBSD disk i can find in my collections is FreeBSD 2.2.8 from 1998. So I have been around for awhile but not terribly active in the forum. I was active in the Sweden UNIX user group affiliated with USENIX while it was an active organization. We hosted a number of UNIX conferences around the turn of the century. I work as a SPARC/Solaris support engineer in my day-job. But will probably retire towards the end of 2025. Now I am fiddling with Kits and solutions that I plan to use in charity and hobby work in the future.

//Lars
 
lgrant said:
There is no security by obscurity here. There is no skulduggery involved in putting FreeBSD on the laptop. I don't want to install it on the laptop just before I go on a trip, because sometimes FreeBSD laptop support is a but touchier than PC support (or so I have heard), and I don't want to be debugging the OS while I am on a trip.

Leaving Windows on the laptop leaves it unchanged, and having FreeBSD available on a USB stick lets me not lose my mind over the irritating things Windows does. I can use FreeBSD, but if I run into a problem, I have the Windows that came with the laptop for a fallback.

As far the information being indexed by Google, I don't really care if people know that sometimes I run Windows and sometimes I run FreeBSD. In the past, I have also run various Linux distros, as well as ArchLinux ARM on PogoPlug devices. I have also run MPX on an IBM 1800, OS/360 and its derivatives on IBM mainframe gear, RSX-11M on a DEC PDP11, and a few others that I don't remember. None of this is secret.
Click to expand...
You missed my point completely.

It's about the safety of your own physical home. You have just announced on the Internet that you're going on a trip, out of country at that. If somebody follows you on the Internet based on the comments you leave out there, they can figure out a LOT of personal details and infer things. Yes, that inludes where you live. That's why I'm using the term 'security by obscurity'. With the amount of personal details you dropped in a pretty short amount of time, even the obscurity is gone by now.

I share my hardware details, for example, because that's reasonably safe to share. It's like walking in an airport and noticing a crowd of iPhone users.
 
astyle said:
It's about the safety of your own physical home. You have just announced on the Internet that you're going on a trip, out of country at that. If somebody follows you on the Internet based on the comments you leave out there, they can figure out a LOT of personal details and infer things. Yes, that inludes where you live. That's why I'm using the term 'security by obscurity'. With the amount of personal details you dropped in a pretty short amount of time, even the obscurity is gone by now.
Click to expand...
This may be more of a problem on a site like nextdoor.com where a much wider spectrum of people hang out. This site isn't exactly a den of lowlifes.
 
bakul said:
This may be more of a problem on a site like nextdoor.com where a much wider spectrum of people hang out. This site isn't exactly a den of lowlifes.
Click to expand...
I know it's not, but this thread and everything we say in it is visible on the wider Internet, even if we're not logged in.
 
Coming from Windows my journey began with arch linux until systemD(estroyer) decided to delete my home partition and my encryption headers.
After 3 months of using arch I switched to artix linux, because it is arch without systemD, but I got problems with firefox and chromium.
They got stuck while loading the homepage, and I could not close them without restarting xorg.
So I switched to gentoo linux until gentoo began to mix systemD into their distribution.
Eventually I ended up with void linux, and was happy, because there was no elogind, but systemD stub files.
Well, I did not really care about the stub files, but elogind got me when I installed sway.
Since I did not like the fact that sway comes bundled with elogind, I installed it from source.
Like after roughly 2 months of void linux usage I switched to FreeBSD, because I could not bear the fact to install pulse, apulse, and the modern pipewire just to get audio control per application.
I just do not understand why an already working audio server needs another audio server on top of it.
It is just a needless waste of resources, and many arrising problems.

Key points why I like to use FreeBSD are:
-> Easy made ports building/rebuilding
-> OSS(v4) which works really great, without crackling, underruns, overruns, or latency problems
-> Performance and stability
-> A clear and easy to grasp Code of Conduct
 
astyle said:
You missed my point completely.

It's about the safety of your own physical home. You have just announced on the Internet that you're going on a trip, out of country at that. If somebody follows you on the Internet based on the comments you leave out there, they can figure out a LOT of personal details and infer things. Yes, that inludes where you live. That's why I'm using the term 'security by obscurity'. With the amount of personal details you dropped in a pretty short amount of time, even the obscurity is gone by now.

I share my hardware details, for example, because that's reasonably safe to share. It's like walking in an airport and noticing a crowd of iPhone users.
Click to expand...
OK, now I get what you are saying. I think I’m good: I’m going on a trip in the unspecified future, I have people and dogs staying behind to mind the house, I live far away from most people, and I don’t own much of value.

But as a retired security guy, I applaud your concern. Good OPSEC is something that is practiced far too infrequently.

Thank you.
 
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