Thank you!

S

Shiunbird

Hi everyone,

I've been running FreeBSD and derivatives as my server/network OS for 10+ years and, honestly, I can happily say that my knowledge was shrinking because everything just works. My NAS is a 10 years install that I've just migrated to a different system (keeping all settings files) and later expanded with a second SAS card and an external enclosure.

At some point last year I accidentally found Vermaden's blog posts about FreeBSD and decided to give it a shot. I got a W530 and I have been running FreeBSD as my daily driver ever since, both personally and professionally, as a sysadmin/cloud architect, and also to learn coding (beyond scripting).

PS: I go around experimenting alternative OSs to see what I can learn, but I've been always coming back to FreeBSD.

I keep a coreboot thinkpad x230 as Internet browsing machine (I am very neurotic) - but that's all it is, an Internet kiosk device. I also keep a 2009 Mac Pro around when I need to drive my Canon PRO-1000 printer.

So I just wanted to shot out a big thank you to the developers and the community. I've probably read this whole forum twice looking for answers. I, unfortunately, don't have too much time to contribute to the forum, but the knowledge here is excellent and I love the fact that FreeBSD is a consistent operating system, that the documentation matches the reality and that moving forward doesn't leave a trail of destruction behind (or forces me to relearn the basics every couple of years).

Thank you!
 
Awesome post! At the moment I'm running FreeBSD 13.2 in a virtual machine; my DE is XFCE. I've been running FreeBSD since 5.x; it's an amazing BSD!
 
Hehe, thanks for bumping that hitest. Indeed nice to occassionally see someone appreciating the overall design of FreeBSD. (side note, I'm sure many around here do, but stating it explicitly sometimes hides between tons of "I want Linuxism foobar, it just sucks without it" posts....)

I don't even use FreeBSD myself for 10 years yet (but, getting close, hehe) 🙈

Posts like this motivate me to invest more time in work on ports (and, maybe, some day, I'll finally tackle base as well ... who knows ...) :cool:
 
I'm new to FreeBSD and I was a Linux user for 20 years. The amount of available software and ports on FreeBSD is mind blowing. I honestly can't believe how well FreeBSD does everything. The only issue I have had is wifi and I only needed to purchase some adapters, hardly an unfamiliar issue. :D And Vermaden is a legendary hero. I'm so stoked about FreeBSD is a workstation "desktop" system. It's just the absolute bees knees.
 
LibreQuest said:
he only issue I have had is wifi and I only needed to purchase some adapters, hardly an unfamiliar issue. :D
Click to expand...
An interesting solution for WiFi on FreeBSD is net/wifibox.
It sets up a minimal Linux VM via bhyve and passes through the WiFi card to use the available Linux drivers. It then provides a dedicated network interface for your host to use as a WAN interface.

It's not ideal - but better than nothing.

This is of course not a magic port or anything. One can easily accomplish the same by setting up everything manually (if being paranoid about the Linux VM provided by that port).
 
jbo said:
An interesting solution for WiFi on FreeBSD is net/wifibox.
It sets up a minimal Linux VM via bhyve and passes through the WiFi card to use the available Linux drivers. It then provides a dedicated network interface for your host to use as a WAN interface.

It's not ideal - but better than nothing.

This is of course not a magic port or anything. One can easily accomplish the same by setting up everything manually (if being paranoid about the Linux VM provided by that port).
Click to expand...
I looked into this solution but decided on getting physical solutions for native support. I mean, I think it's very cool. I may actually use it depending on the hardware and level of system integration. But I have so much hardware I find it a simply solution to buy hardware that works out of the box. Either way, it's a fantastic workaround. I actually tried ndisgen as well. But apparently building with newer drivers doesn't work as often as the drivers from the past did.
 
jbo said:
An interesting solution for WiFi on FreeBSD is net/wifibox.
It sets up a minimal Linux VM via bhyve and passes through the WiFi card to use the available Linux drivers. It then provides a dedicated network interface for your host to use as a WAN interface.

It's not ideal - but better than nothing.

This is of course not a magic port or anything. One can easily accomplish the same by setting up everything manually (if being paranoid about the Linux VM provided by that port).
Click to expand...
Does this exist due to a lack of driver support or is it because the supported driver lacks some kind of functionality or throughput?
 
alexseitsinger said:
Does this exist due to a lack of driver support or is it because the supported driver lacks some kind of functionality or throughput?
Click to expand...
Well, it exists because the author of it decided to create it :D
To answer your question pragmatically: Both. Some wireless chipsets are entirely unsupported by FreeBSD and for supported chipsets, you don't get all the features. For example, AFAIK there is currently no support at all for WiFi 5 (let alone WiFi 6).
This Linux VM based solution just allows to get all the features supported by the respective Linux drivers and the particular port just attempts to provide an easy-to-use out-of-the-box solution.
 
Just found this thread. Been using FreeBSD for about a good solid month. used a WiFi dongle but really want to use my build in WiFi card. .Today 12/21/23 I was looking up something and wifibox came up. i followed a guide and WiFi is up and running. took out the WiFi adapter. it's not fast but it works. once things are loaded i'm good.

Emailed the maintainer today to see if there is a way to speed things up (wifibox) if he replies back i will keep you guys updated
 
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