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

Hi,
I registered today on this forum

My path was with linux at home from 2004.
If i remember the details, i started with Red hat, then Slackware for a long time
Last five years i distro hop'ed:
Void linux, Crux Linux, Gentoo Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, slackware on and off.
I feel slackware is in my heart for long using it and also for what make slackware what it is.
I waited to install permanent freeBSD for some isssue, (Wifi atheros, dropbox not available).
But i knew the differences versus Linux.
The main one is --- FreeBSD is a coherent system, Linux is an assembly of unrelated ideas.
Now, for WIFI on Freebsd i use a USB dongle (ASUS nano), and for Dropbox replaced with rclone.
I want to stay here.
And i dont like the path that systemD/Wayland/Ubuntu are taking to sink linux.
Excuse me for my english (i'm italian).
 
Hello all

I am Phat Le and after 3 tries and errors i got my freebsd running today on hyprland. It has been frustrating, but fun journey and lots of learning to do still especially how things work jails and so on. All is new for me in here. Been running basically all Linux distros already distro hopping and even build my own custom ones ostree based or bootc images just for fun and learning. I choosed for FreeBSD since i think it is time now to learn it and it has much more functions that i want especially stability and security side and i can make it much better to me and my flow.

About me Old grympy one leg on ground already. Just Graduated as Software developer and going on UNI now for Cyber security Specialist and Ethical hacker 4 years starting on August. I have been self learned 7 years on Linux and Software developing before i even went to school to study on it.

Looking forward to learn this seems really fun and the right thing to do even was thinking 2 years sometimes i should test it and here we are now.

I am known on problems on my hardware i dont run easy laptop for linux or here Dell XPS 9510 model basic things work pretty solid, but i couldent figure yet bluetooth so using now logiops dongle and oh the fun is happening to figuring nvidia it might be working since drivers are loaded and nvidia-smi is working and so is intel i915. so not too much issues small things and yes will need cuda to system too, but those not so important now

happy to be here
 
Hello - again - it's been a good while since my last post and I hope you are all doing okay - I have FreeBSD 15.0 running on desktop and notebook PCs - HP Prodesk i7 67xx Gen 2 and Acer 5551-A AMD Athlon 2 X2 respectively. These are both on XFCE4 DEs, as is my choice. I guess you'd say they are become my 'daily- driver' and I'd say well... maybe. They run everything I was (still am) running on my production Manjaro PC & Notebook. However, 15.0 [post 14.3] is doing it for me, currently!

I'm, an 'Application's user in the main. Treeline/Android Outliner Pro, Libre project, Darktable, GIMP & GNUCash. Found the vi discourse forum interesting today - I'm able to use it at a 'very' rudimentary level. I'm retired a long time now however FreeBSD and it's People/Forums take me right to my days of Basic and C/PM+ and OSes in-between then and now. 🤗

The truth is that I've not been bold enough to attempt putting FreeBSD 15.0 on my AMD 7700* & HP EliteBook Manjaro boxes... Yet! 🤔

Keep up the good work. 👍🏻
 
bakul said:
You might want to update your 15.0 systems to get all the security patches.... Or wait for a bit as 15.1-RC2 is already out.
Click to expand...
Hi bakul,
- many thanks for the heads-up. :)

I am showing version 15.0 - P9 currently - I installed from 'pkgbase' and run #pkg update and #pkg upgrade

Looking at /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf all it contains is:-
'FreeBSD-base: { enabled: yes }'

I've no idea if that is all that's required to be in that file and, if not, how to discover what should be in there?
 
itdm5j21 said:
Hi bakul,
- many thanks for the heads-up. :)

I am showing version 15.0 - P9 currently - I installed from 'pkgbase' and run #pkg update and #pkg upgrade

Looking at /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf all it contains is:-
'FreeBSD-base: { enabled: yes }'

I've no idea if that is all that's required to be in that file and, if not, how to discover what should be in there?
Click to expand...

docs.freebsd.org

Chapter 26. Updating and Upgrading FreeBSD

Information about how to keep a FreeBSD system up-to-date with freebsd-update or Git, how to rebuild and reinstall the entire base system, etc
docs.freebsd.org docs.freebsd.org



Chapter 26.7.1 in the hand book should have you covered.
 
itdm5j21 said:
I've no idea if that is all that's required to be in that file and, if not, how to discover what should be in there?
Click to expand...
Yes, that's all you need + the default /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf -- both of which are created in a fresh freebsd install. Along with the handbook suggestion above, manpages for pkg(1) and pkg.conf(5) provide some detail. In general on *BSDs it is a good habit to check man pages as they are usually uptodate. Also the apropos(1) command!

If your kernel shows -p9, you have caught up.
 
Thanks guys, I've read that section of the manual now, have updated the FreeBSD.conf file and have it pointing to the 15.0/STABLE Weekly URL. On rebooting all seems to be okay , though I was already on -p9 previously.

Thanks again for the help & advice, especially since I should have gone to the Handbook first! I mean, I keep a link to it on my Desktop... 🫣
 
Hello All,

I first heard about Freebsd in the late nineties from a friend in my OS/2 User Group.
Had some trials and success installing and using Freebsd since.

The last iteration was text only VM Freebsd in a Macbook to keep my small business records, which worked well, using VI (Started with EE), Taskwarrior, text files and AWK. There's not enough talk about AWK or EE in the world :)

Finally I have scored a used Lenovo T14 Gen 1 intel, I can rely and learn on, which is capable of running a full install and it's working so easily.

Freebsd 15 installing and so far upgrading with pkg has been very simple and Rock Solid :)

Thanks to the Community, Developers & The Foundation for all the work that has been done.
 
My name is Mykhailo, I’m from Ukraine. My hobby is IT technologies, from programming to firmware and reverse engineering. Back in 2009, I decided to study Linux, but it felt like a zoo with no stability. Everyone kept saying “install this distribution” or “try that one,” and if something went wrong, people would just say “your hands are crooked. Everything changed when I installed FreeBSD 8.2. I read the documentation, and believe it or not, even with all the issues after updates, up to version 13 I never needed a USB stick or disk image to recover the system. Everything restored itself, the internet connected, I figured out the ports — they weren’t nearly as scary as Linux users claimed. For me, it was actually an advantage to build my own package instead of running around looking for repositories with the latest version. It’s one operating system. I was even shocked when, in 2015, recovery commands worked for me, and the forum post describing them was from 2006.
I also like NetBSD it’s a great OS too, especially for those interested in embedded systems and projects that run everywhere, like pkgsrc. Thanks to the FreeBSD Foundation and experienced users who taught me so much in life it really came in handy. Because with Linux, everyone “knows everything,” but when it came to unmounting a stubborn flash drive that threw errors, nobody seemed to know about the -f parameter.)))
 
Day 4. Columbian coffee beans almost gone.
Finished reading every single line of 15.0 release notes; most of which I did not understand, followed some bug report rabbit holes and read 10 different forums about configuration...
Feel like my brain is going to melt.
Came back, just make sure that I'm doing the first steps correctly and then I saw it:

15.1

Glancing over at my repurposed Xeon laptop with 15.0 just starting the install boot.

God my timing really sucks.
(sigh)
God I'm old.

Let's all just pretend that the last four days didn't happen while I download 15.1 and begin from scratch once more.
 
Scratch said:
Glancing over at my repurposed Xeon laptop with 15.0 just starting the install boot.

God my timing really sucks.
(sigh)
God I'm old.

Let's all just pretend that the last four days didn't happen while I download 15.1 and begin from scratch once more.
Click to expand...
If you’re just starting out, you don’t have to run the latest version. Just familiarize yourself with whichever version you have. For a newbie 15.1 is not all that different from 15.0.
 
astyle said:
You actually have a laptop with a Xeon?
😲


Doesn't it run hot? Xeons were known to need some space for heat dissipation, rather than being packed into a laptop.
Click to expand...

I have one, too. The Xeon line has processors that are just variants of the desktop processors. But they support ECC memory, even in some laptops.
 
astyle said:
You actually have a laptop with a Xeon?
😲


Doesn't it run hot? Xeons were known to need some space for heat dissipation, rather than being packed into a laptop.
Click to expand...
I'm hoping that FreeBSD will recognize all of the hardware and BIOS options (including C-States) and the multitude of other BIOS config settings that I've been trying tweak in preparing for this, "I'm building a Firewall Router" scenario with FreeBSD as my hypervisor.

"We'll find out" is my attitude on everything at this point; but yeah... it's mobile Xeon with 32GB of ECC. I was trying to wait for the new Transcend 240GB to show up at my doorstep (my intended firewall data drive); but I'm being impatient and will install 15.1 on the consumer grade 512GB M.2 without it, to get me started. Still wondering about ZFS RAID0 on one M.2; but I have no fear at this point.

bakul said:
If you’re just starting out, you don’t have to run the latest version. Just familiarize yourself with whichever version you have. For a newbie 15.1 is not all that different from 15.0.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I thought about that; but I'm really old and the idea of starting out from scratch on an outdated version left a bad taste in my mouth. "Hey wait a second, this doesn't taste like French Roast!"

Plus I had a weird vision of some 10-year old kid criticising me for installing 15.0 when 15.1 is out while holding his finger and thumb in the shape of an L to his forehead and explaining what, "Ohio" actually means. I get kind of punchy after 4-days of bindge reading, this kind of thing was bound to happen.


blackbird9 said:
HP Z-book Xeon
Click to expand...
Exactly. Mine is a used HP Zbook 15 G3 with 32GB of ECC, two Gen3 M.2's (I bought a Transcend TS240GNTE712P-IGT specifically for the PLP Capacitor and the insane DWPD endurance) plus the stock 512GB m.2 for the OS. Not sure if I will even use the 1TB SATA (backups maybe?). I got a good deal on it at ebay as "parts". I think I spent more money on the parts to make it whole again than I did the unit itself; but all in for $350 seems like a fair deal for a firewall/core router. I don't see myself doing any GPU passthrough for a firewall; but it has two GPUs whether I want them or not.

I have my fingers crossed that Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports will work without too much grief or my dual UGREEN 2.5gb adapters idea will fall flat; but I'll cross (or blow up) that bridge when I come to it.

I'm going to take a Bonneville out for a ride around the Weirs before I install 15.1. It is Bike Week after all, and I'm probably going to need a relaxed mind for what comes next. The last two hours have been occupied by everyone I know telling me to just do it in Proxmox. I kind of wish I had tried FreeBSD years ago when I transitioned off Windows; because honestly? I think I'm done with being Linus's perpetual BETA tester, it tastes like instant decaf.

Thanks for the Welcome. I'll try not to be a complete disappointment.
 
That xeon zbook is a cool laptop. I used to have a mate with a Bonneville, had a few rides on the back of it, although some bikers nicked it in the end. He woke up one morning and they'd loaded it onto a truck during the night and driven off, the bastards.
Have fun :-)
 
blackbird9 said:
That xeon zbook is a cool laptop. I used to have a mate with a Bonneville, had a few rides on the back of it, although some bikers nicked it in the end. He woke up one morning and they'd loaded it onto a truck during the night and driven off, the bastards.

Another song...
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FT5bgwALBwc

Have fun :-)
Click to expand...
Given that you're British, the Bonneville in your case most likely means this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_Bonneville

To an American, a Bonneville that you can load onto a truck means this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontiac_Bonneville.

And BTW, don't Brits say 'lorry', as opposed to 'truck' ?
 
Hahaha, I didn't know that... 😂 Yes, you're quite right, here it is a famous british motorbike, and I thought that's what he was talking about! Oh well, that's today's laugh... I never heard of a pontiac bonneville before! They look like nice cars.

This is the Triumph Bonneville, or 'bonnie'. They are nice bikes. This is a modern one, they are made in Hinckley nowadays.

1781648440391.png
1781682467980.png
1781682988519.png


And this is a classic 750 from the early 80s. The old-style narrow tyres and wide handlebars make them very comfortable on winding english roads, very manouverable. These older ones were made in Meriden, near Coventry.
1781681436826.png


en.wikipedia.org

Triumph Bonneville - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

We say both, lorry and truck, kind of interchangably nowadays. A truck is more likely to have a loading platform than a lorry, like we'd say a dumper truck for something used in a quarry, but we would call a big enclosed vehicle for doing a house move a lorry, like you might use to take your household posessions from one state to another (we would call that a 'removals lorry' or even a 'removals van'), and we would call a shipping container carrier a 'container truck'. Whereas what you would call a 'ute', we would call a 'pick-up truck'.
 
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