Should I install FreeBSD as my daily OS?

Gnunix

Gnunix

I am currently using Debian Linux, but I've always had my eye on FreeBSD. I still need to use some programs for school, such as Cisco Packet Tracer.
Is it a good idea to run FreeBSD as my OS, or just use a VM with FreeBSD?
Thanks.
 
If you want to use it as server OS then yes.
If you want to learn how it's work then VM is better option. There's too many things that you need to setup at the begging to be able to use it as day to day OS.
You may want to check TrueOS which is FreeBSD with pre-configured GUI. It's better suited for desktop use.
 
VladiBG said:
If you want to use it as server OS then yes.
If you want to learn how it's work then VM is better option. There's too many things that you need to setup at the begging to be able to use it as day to day OS.
You may want to check TrueOS which is FreeBSD with pre-configured GUI. It's better suited for desktop use.
Click to expand...

Hm, i will check that out. thanks!
 
If you own laptop with Nvidia graphics and you want to use suspend/resume, IMO it is better to use Devuan (Debian without systemd),
or Alpine Linux (also without systemd, it uses openrc), otherwise, if you use Intel integrated graphics, FreeBSD should work
pretty OK for you, including suspend/resume. List of supported applications on FreeBSD is smaller, but also there are some apps
in ports tree, that aren't available on GNU/Linux.
 
Gnunix said:
I am currently using Debian Linux, but I've always had my eye on FreeBSD.
Click to expand...

Depending on your hardware, the VM experience could be much less appealing. If you've always had your eye on FreeBSD, why not try it outright? If you're the type of person who automatically drops to the command line in Debian, and uses aptitude or apt-get or dpkg to do all the software installations, you'll be able to do that (via ports-mgmt/pkg) on FreeBSD as well. It's not magic at all. The main difference is that on FreeBSD you'll need to install x11/xorg, whereas on Debian you likely didn't. If you're the type of person that automatically uses the GUI software updater in Debian or Ubuntu, then you'll likely want to try TrueOS, or run in a VM.

As far as the suspend thing goes, I run NVIDIA on my power hog machines but I don't worry too much about it. If I'm going to be gone for a while I turn it off. Most of my other machines run 3-5 watts with no CPU load (night-light power) - so it's not very uncivilized to let em run.
 
Gnunix said:
I am currently using Debian Linux, but I've always had my eye on FreeBSD. I still need to use some programs for school, such as Cisco Packet Tracer.
Is it a good idea to run FreeBSD as my OS, or just use a VM with FreeBSD?
Click to expand...
First I'd suggest that you ask yourself why you'd want to use FreeBSD vs. Linux. There are definitely some advantages here and there, but as a desktop OS I seriously doubt that you'll really gain much benefits. After all: in the end you'd basically be using the same (or nearly the same) GUI components as you do now on Linux. KDE on FreeBSD isn't that much different than KDE on Linux for example.

Then there's also the issue that FreeBSD doesn't support the same amounts of hardware as Linux does. It supports a really fair share, definitely, but there are still plenty of places where a Linux drivers is available and FreeBSD is somewhat lacking. Sometimes even resulting in it trying to emulate Linux in order to use those drivers (this is mainly an aspect on wireless).

Another issue that I can think of is that - to my knowledge - (I could be wrong!) FreeBSD doesn't have a GUI front end for its package manager such as most Linux environments have. Which means you'd be typing in plenty of commands to keep your system up to date (if you use binary packages then this really isn't that much of a hassle though).

That's not saying that there aren't any advantages of course. But if those advantages also apply to you heavily depends on how you use your system. The classic "what works for me doesn't have to work for you".

What I can say is that FreeBSD as an OS and environment is much more mature than Linux is. Things don't change on the fly "just because" for example. Sure features come and go, but that's a very slow and easy process.

But yeah, I'd definitely recommend the same as the others: start with a VM to check out the OS so that you can get a bit of a basic feel for it. After that you should consider grabbing a live CD of some sort and then booting that to check if the system actually detects and supports your hardware. Merely booting and checking the output of dmesg should suffice there.

After that you should be able to determine if this would be a good idea or not.
 
ILUXA said:
If you own laptop with Nvidia graphics and you want to use suspend/resume, IMO it is better to use Devuan (Debian without systemd),
or Alpine Linux (also without systemd, it uses openrc), otherwise, if you use Intel integrated graphics, FreeBSD should work
pretty OK for you, including suspend/resume. List of supported applications on FreeBSD is smaller, but also there are some apps
in ports tree, that aren't available on GNU/Linux.
Click to expand...
This is a really bad advise. I can't speak of Devuan but I run several Alpine based Dom0 and consider myself competent Alpine user. While Alpine Linux is second to none as Dom0, Dockers image or Linux based firewall/router due to its use of musl libc running NAS appliance of Alpine is challenging let alone using as a desktop (yes it has ZFS but NFS can't run on musl alone). OpenBSD has a fully functional suspend/resume. DragonFly BSD as well IIRC. If BSDs are not working for you just buy a Mac.

Debian has no more packages than FreeBSD or Red Hat for that matter. Their packages are just fine grained. A single Red Hat rpm might contain 500 Debian packages. Also deb turns automatically daemons after the installation and is trying to guess configuration. To me that is just poor engineering which breaks my systems.
 
Oko said:
This is a really bad advise. I can't speak of Devuan but I run several Alpine based Dom0 and consider myself competent Alpine user. While Alpine Linux is second to none as Dom0, Dockers image or Linux based firewall/router due to its use of musl libc running NAS appliance of Alpine is challenging let alone using as a desktop (yes it has ZFS but NFS can't run on musl alone). OpenBSD has a fully functional suspend/resume. DragonFly BSD as well IIRC. If BSDs are not working for you just buy a Mac.

Debian has no more packages than FreeBSD or Red Hat for that matter. Their packages are just fine grained. A single Red Hat rpm might contain 500 Debian packages. Also deb turns automatically daemons after the installation and is trying to guess configuration. To me that is just poor engineering.
Click to expand...
Why's that?
 
Are you talking a laptop or desktop? FreeBSD's hardware support for newer laptops is often behind. Wireless support is also behind. You can't, as far as I know, get 802.11.ac speeds with FreeBSD. (If you can, then not with the Intel 7260 that I use).

Some programs don't run on FreeBSD, but as has been said, you can use a VM for it. I'm not sure how important graphical interfaces are to you, if they are, that could be a problem. I'd do a quick VirtualBox or other VM install, see how you like it, and then decide. It also lets you see what, if any, programs you need won't run on it.

Also, the install CD can be run as a live CD, so you can see if your hardware works. However, on laptops newer than 3 years old or so, the Intel driver doesn't work. You can use the less stable STABLE (despite its name, it's more of a development version) or the even less stable CURRENT (less reliable, in my experience, than Debian's Sid) for your graphics. Anyway, many of us do use FreeBSD quite successfully for our day to day use, but it really depends upon both your hardware and what your day to day use is. :)
 
Oko said:
ILUXA said:
If you own laptop with Nvidia graphics
Click to expand...
OpenBSD has a fully functional suspend/resume. DragonFly BSD as well IIRC.
Click to expand...
Last time I used DragonFlyBSD and OpenBSD, there were no nvidia driver support,
only nv (nv(4)) driver with no support for video acceleration.
It is a good option to have a video acceleration, on your desktop laptop.

Oko said:
This is a really bad advise. I can't speak of Devuan but I run several Alpine based Dom0 and consider myself competent Alpine user. While Alpine Linux is second to none as Dom0, Dockers image or Linux based firewall/router due to its use of musl libc running NAS appliance of Alpine is challenging let alone using as a desktop (yes it has ZFS but NFS can't run on musl alone). OpenBSD has a fully functional suspend/resume. DragonFly BSD as well IIRC. If BSDs are not working for you just buy a Mac.
Click to expand...
Of these two, I tried to use only Devuan for a quite long period of time, and it is pretty OK,
(it is Debian, just without systemd) while I also tried Alpine and it is also OK for my needs.
 
ILUXA said:
Last time I used DragonFlyBSD and OpenBSD, there were no nvidia driver support,
Click to expand...
Because NVidia is selling only proprietary hardware. OpenBSD and DragonFly BSD are open source projects (FreeBSD not so much) and get video support from XOrg only. If there is no documentation for hardware the drivers can't be written. As simple as that. Please refer to NVidia for the list of officially support OSs and have you pick. I am running Red Hat at work because we are heavy CUDA users (deep learning).

ILUXA said:
only nv (nv(4)) driver with no support for video acceleration.
It is a good option to have a video acceleration, on your desktop laptop.
Click to expand...
Video acceleration works fine on OpenBSD on open hardware. NVidia apparently has something to hide so they want you to use proprietary binary blobs. If you trust them good for you. I don't :).

This is an interesting reading for you
https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=152465462030464&w=2

For people who didn't want to read whole Jonathan Gray's message my favorite part

Ignoring the parts of the shared drm/ttm code that would have to be updated the latest
drivers/gpu/drm/amd in linux has over 1.5 million lines of code. Which
is multiple times larger than the complete OpenBSD kernel source...
Click to expand...

Now go and use your NVidia crap and Linux. My laptop will continue to run OpenBSD as the only OS.
 
Oko said:
Video acceleration works fine on OpenBSD on open hardware. NVidia apparently has something to hide so they want you to use proprietary binary blobs. If you trust them good for you. I don't :).
Click to expand...

NetBSD has ported nouveau, which, despite many outsiders might still frame of being largely experimental and buggy and lag behind Linux', works for real in current branch, without glitches, and obviously supports 3D acceleration, to the point of allowing me to play games.

I love nouveau for being entirely reverse-engineered, a huge effort; devs on #nouveau (freenode) IRC are extremely friendly: they kindly helped me testing the driver on Slackware with my GTX 1060 6gb , when support for Pascal series was still only partial.

Regarding suspend/resume, OpenBSD's support for ACPI-related events is awesome, if not perfect (better than Linux) on a restricted range of models and brands (Lenovo Thinkpads, Dell....and hardly anything else, legacy hardware excluded?). Prove me wrong: if I am, I'll sincerely apologize and accept my ignorance.

OpenBSD has a fully functional suspend/resume
Click to expand...
On the other hand, the day OpenBSD will support suspending/resuming on a variety of laptops which is at least 2/3 of Linux' and half of Windows', I'll may evaluate the possibility of accepting such statements

DragonFly BSD as well IIRC
Click to expand...
Strange, as DragonflyBSD doesn't seem to have added much to FreeBSD's acpi drivers. Even man pages (acpi, acpi_video, powerd, acpidump, acpiconf, acpi_ibm, ....) and officially supported devices lists are close-comparable. I didn't see acpi suspeding/resuming ever being mentioned once in DragonflyBSD releases notes since I started using it (4.8-5.2). To this we can add the fact that in my experience Dragonfly never succeeded when FreeBSD had failed. In spite of the fact I love DragonflyBSD, Dillon , the team, the file systems, ipfw3 and everything else, my impression is rather that DragonflyBSD' interest in laptops and desktop is noticeably weaker than FreeBSD's

FreeBSD hasn't a significantly worse suspend/resume support compared to OpenBSD if you include all models mentioned in the dedicated acpi drivers (acpi_ibm(4),acpi_toshiba(4), acpi_panasonic(4), acpi_asus(4), acpi_fujistsu(4), acpi_sony(4)), without mentioning the fact that sometimes S3 suspending just works (like it did on my Acer TravelMate).

My experience-based opinion, which seems aslo to be shared by a large part of BSD userbase (looking at online fora, magazines, blogs, articles and reviews) is that, generally speaking, the best (still not a big deal) overall support for suspend/resume in *BSD is provided by NetBSD's powerd(8). Powerd, aside from being (at least IMHO) the only serious deamon in the BSD to allow a fine acpi/apm events control, comparable to Linux' acpid, is also the only to allow me to resume after suspend on my Samsung laptop; and trust me when I say that I've put any BSD on it.
 
Yes, unless your school programs aren't expected to work on it through emulation.

Generally, for document writing, Libreoffice is great. However, for professional submissions, keep in mind, you must have the right font properly installed if turning in a resume, and for school projects, the indents, margins, tabs and other spacings won't match exactly as the Microsoft office versions, and those receiving the file through online submissions will think the submission is not professional. It is professional, it's just the conversion to another office application makes it look not so.

If Word Perfect can be used on wine emulation, and printing can be managed from it, then maybe. PDF and postscript should be indirectly able to be printed after being created by Word Perfect, someone has mentioned before.

For gaming, you must have a supported video card, that can do without VESA. The other consideration is that other hardware is supported that you have or want to use.
 
OpenBSD supports Nvidia Optimus Technology out-of-the-box on my Thinkpad W520. No switching to Discreet Graphics in the BIOS, it's using the Mesa DRI Intel Sandybridge Mobile GPU right next to me. Both my T61's running FreeBSD use the Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M. I utilize them all as desktops and never shut the lid or shut them down while using them, so suspend isn't an issue with me.

I have 4 laptops running FreeBSD, 2 OpenBSD, and 2 Solaris. I can do everything I want to on FreeBSD as far as everyday desktop usage (listen to music, watch videos, work with images and files, surf the web, etc.), and prefer it as a desktop OS, or I'd use something else.
 
sidetone said:
Generally, for document writing, Libreoffice is great. However, for professional submissions, keep in mind, you must have the right font properly installed if turning in a resume, and for school projects, the indents, margins, tabs and other spacings won't match exactly as the Microsoft office versions, and those receiving the file through online submissions will think the submission is not professional
Click to expand...
Because of one of my jobs, I need to send documents via mail, because I'm writing articles for money
(not in English of course), but personally I never care if it will be looking very nice on MS Word,
if it is readable, it's more than enough IMHO :D Because the content shows the level of
professionalism, but if it is an office document (some spreadsheets, for example),
of course it may be a problem.
 
sidetone said:
Generally, for document writing, Libreoffice is great. However, for professional submissions, keep in mind, you must have the right font properly installed if turning in a resume, and for school projects, the indents, margins, tabs and other spacings won't match exactly as the Microsoft office versions,
Click to expand...
This purely depends on the field. In the fields I am familiar with (Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy, Supercomputing, and parts of AI/Machine Learning) there is nothing that will send your CV faster to a garbage can than submitting your application in Microsoft Word. All applications, peer review papers, slides and such must be written using LaTeX macros and TeX typesetting system. Actually just having a cover letter written in Microsoft word is such a red flag in those fields and it is usually indicator of total incompetence.

Moral of the story what works for me might not work for you so use the best tool for your job.
 
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