Solved Making FreeBSD my primary operating system

bda65 said:
It's what i've made before using only FreeBSD. Arch Linux as main OS and FreeBSD as secondary.
Or you can use a VM. In full screen, i'ts great for learning.
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Something to think about, but I think that if I've put this much work into it, then I'm probably past the point of wanting to play with a VM.
 
jardows said:
pkg lock packagename
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Would this prevent my nvidia driver, which I installed via pkg, from being corrupted as the above poster described? I've seen other people describe this happening to them, and I want to make sure I understand this before I take the big plunge.
 
I feel this thread is incomplete without mentioning boot environments and snapshots. Both of which can be used to mitigate a loss of applications during an update or otherwise. I, like others, have had the experience of an app being removed during an upgrade. If the app was critical, I just rolled back or switched back to the prior snapshot or boot environment.

Cedric62, if you are pressed for additional computing resources, I agree with others that a VM is probably best for starting out. Believe me, I want you to take the plug but not if it will result in a loss (whether of data, time or enthusiasm). I was fortunate enough to be able to get another physical machine and dedicate it to FreeBSD -- it's my daily driver and Windows is a backup for when things don't work in FreeBSD.
 
bda65 said:
See pkg lock.
Or look carefully what packages are upgraded / removed before typing Y.
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Ya - when MY system was trashed there were north of "300" packages (pkg) all being simultaneously updated all at once.

I guess I should have said "N" then huh?

There is a 100% chance your going to get rained on some time !
 
Cedric62 said:
Would this prevent my nvidia driver, which I installed via pkg, from being corrupted as the above poster described? I've seen other people describe this happening to them, and I want to make sure I understand this before I take the big plunge.
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You will need to pkg lock MORE than a single pkg on your FreeBSD installation. You will need to track these all down - it's just a hand full, so not too many. I did not do that in my case and that (later) resulted in the loss of my working NVIDIA driver.

The hope, of course, is that when a brand new NVIDIA driver is downloaded and installed on to your system will still work. But ... well... that's not 100%. I actually run a REALLY common NVIDIA card: Geforce RTX 4080 -- and that stopped working. I quickly switched my FreeBSD system from using the NVIDIA driver to being a server (as I wrote - above) and now I am not as vulnerable to FreeBSD NVIDIA graphic driver loss.

You can read the details here (FreeBSD forums - LINK): URGENT - NVIDIA - REL15.0: 580.119.02_1 of nvidia driver/drm61/kmod - ARE KNOWN BROKEN
 
Cedric62 said:
Would this prevent my nvidia driver, which I installed via pkg, from being corrupted as the above poster described? I've seen other people describe this happening to them, and I want to make sure I understand this before I take the big plunge.
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My use for locking packages is a little different. Against the advise of most, I do mix packages and ports, mainly to get rid of pulseaudio in some of the multimedia programs I use, This is a scenario that poudriere is designed to address, and I have been working with learning that system.

For your scenario, what 'pkg lock' will do is prevent that specific package from being upgraded with the base 'pkg upgrade' command. This will not necessarily prevent any package that it is dependent upon from being upgraded, so it could help, but won't be 100% guaranteed. For Nvidia drivers though, it could be a good thing to prevent an automatic upgrade to a new driver version that may drop support for an older video card.
 
Ubuntu. The worst system I've ever used. You never know if it will start up after an update. It throws in a bunch of unnecessary stuff. I like minimal systems that I can expand myself with the software I need, not the one they push on me because they know better what I want to use.
 
Currently Redcore(Gentoo), seems to work fine for now.
Artix(Arch) was unstable due to lack of nvidia drivers. & nouveau is buggy.
Rust does not compile on Arch, now trying to compile rust(5.10&6.2) from source on Redcore.
Note : MX(debian) works fine. Very,very stable, but a bit older.
Why i use Linux. No good editors on FreeBSD. E.g. Idea/Rider/...
 
Cedric62 said:
Well, I guess that I've just been lucky.
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LOL - No :-). I use Ubuntu as my main desktop as well. Ubuntu always software updates reliably, especially the NVIDIA graphic card drivers, and all my Steam and Wine games work perfectly on it. As you pointed out - "It's boring" :-)...

The posters complaint was largely that Ubuntu installs "a lot of stuff" and they want a minimalist operating system.

To each their own!
 
CShell said:
The posters complaint was largely that Ubuntu installs "a lot of stuff" and they want a minimalist operating system.
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Well, in all fairness, there could be a million things simultaneously going wrong with my installation of Ubuntu, but just so long as it doesn't become unstable, I'm probably oblivious to what's happening below the general surface of it. Can I still watch videos of American cars doing burn outs? We are good.
 
cracauer@ said:
Ubuntu does more bloaty things than just install a bunch of random *.deb packages.
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That is probably true, but thus far I haven't noticed any problems with it myself. Also, if my experiments with FreeBSD don't seem to pan out, then I probably will consider going back to Manjaro, which is what I was using for a little while before I switched to Ubuntu.
 
cracauer@ said:
Ubuntu does more bloaty things than just install a bunch of random *.deb packages.
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Currently using redcore(gentoo). Openrc. Its fantastic.
Just one thing, FreeBSD nvidia drivers are more stable.
For FreeBSD, kernel & drivers are long term.
On Linux one jumps before , than the other jumps before , creating problems.
Have not found any solution. In fact all crashes i had on my PC where 90% due to NVIDIA, 10% memory exhaustion, OOM.
 
Alain De Vos said:
Currently using redcore(gentoo). Openrc. Its fantastic.
Just one thing, FreeBSD nvidia drivers are more stable.
For FreeBSD, kernel & drivers are long term.
On Linux one jumps before , than the other jumps before , creating problems.
Have not found any solution. In fact all crashes i had on my PC where 90% due to NVIDIA, 10% memory exhaustion, OOM.
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How is the installation of redcore(gentoo) could someone like me possibly handle it? Would you happen to know if there are any compatibility issues with my NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030, and redcore(gentoo). I'm not a gamer, so graphics aren't really that important to me.
 
CShell said:
Another thought is... Why step on your working Windows and Ubuntu PC?

Instead why not buy an INTEL NUC, "or similar small PC", and install FreeBSD on to that? Then connect your existing, working PC to the INTEL NUC using ethernet cables and a small ethernet gigabit switch -- and walla! You are good to go.
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My main FreeBSD machine is an MSI CUBI 5, which I believe is similar to the INTEL NUC. It works great, with the xfce4 desktop.

One caution...I have installed FreeBSD on several small form-factor computers including the MSI CUBI 5, NEOSMAY Fanless Thin Client, and KAMRUI GK3 Plus. What I have found is that these small computers often have unusual quirks that make your installation more interesting. For example, the MSI CUBI 5 reports to FreeBSD that it has two UARTS, but it really doesn't, so when FreeBSD tries to initialize them at boot time, it hangs. You have to add these lines to /boot/loader.conf.local:

hint.uart.0.disable="1"
hint.uart.1.disable="1"

The other small computers had similar but different quirks. I have found the FreeBSD forums exceptionally useful in dealing with these quirks. There is always someone who ran into the problem before you did.
 
Yampress said:
Ubuntu. The worst system I've ever used. You never know if it will start up after an update. It throws in a bunch of unnecessary stuff. I like minimal systems that I can expand myself with the software I need, not the one they push on me because they know better what I want to use.
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I quit Ubuntu probably almost 20 years ago when they changed the mailbox format from mbox to maildir. They had a script that would migrate all the mail to the new arrangement. It didn't work. Luckily, they had a backout script. It didn't work, either. (Of course, I should have backed up the mail file manually myself. But back then I was a rookie Linux user, and that was beyond my capabilities.)

That was only one of the times I got burned by Ubuntu updates.
 
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