What do you use FreeBSD desktop for?

K

kriptomahsun

I am a Linux guy mostly. If I was just using FreeBSD for watching videos and consuming, I would use it. But many things are just too different, and Linux is somewhat open source too. But I wish FreeBSD to be popular too. I imagine a world, open source became so much big. Windows is no more, BSD and Linux distros competing for users, all for friendly competition though.

I do some embedded programming too, does freebsd have stuff like tftpd-hpa, or atftp? How to set static IP?

Only tailscale is bugging me. I wish tailscale was working right.
Some people say gaming, but I look up the wikis and stuff, it's terribly complicated. Even I don't wanna hassle that much for that. Why even bother? At least with Linux we got Proton.
Also why doesn't multimedia keys don't work? Is there a one line of code to make it work.
 
kriptomahsun said:
Some people say gaming, but I look up the wikis and stuff, it's terribly complicated. Even I don't wanna hassle that much for that. Why even bother? At least with Linux we got Proton.
Click to expand...

I highly doubt that
Code: 
# pkg install wine winetricks

$ /usr/local/share/wine/pkg32.sh install wine mesa-dri
$ wineboot
$ winetricks -q dxvk
$ wine z:\path/to/installer.exe
$ wine c:\path/to/game.exe
is more complicated than on Linux. There's even emulators/wine-proton. But I admit that I'm not using Steam, I only buy and play PC games which are DRM-free from GoG. So I can't comment on the Steam experience on FreeBSD.
 
Obsidian Notes, Youtube, watching stuff on VLC - a lot of stuff works fine on FreeBSD. I use the KDE 6 desktop, it works fine under Xorg. Wayland works, but making Wayland and KDE 6 play together is a challenge. Progress is being made on that front (if you know where to look to follow along) Just about all KDE games work fine.

FreeBSD has tftp in base:
Code: 
% whereis tftp
tftp: /usr/bin/tftp /usr/share/man/man1/tftp.1.gz /usr/src/usr.bin/tftp

FreeBSD base also comes with the SSH server, NFSv4 server... and if you want a static IP address, you use ifconfig(8), which is also in base...
 
kriptomahsun said:
Also why doesn't multimedia keys don't work? Is there a one line of code to make it work.
Click to expand...

This might do it:

Code: 
hw.usb.usbhid.enable="1"

kriptomahsun said:
Some people say gaming, but I look up the wikis and stuff, it's terribly complicated. Even I don't wanna hassle that much for that. Why even bother? At least with Linux we got Proton.
Click to expand...
That's one of my big issues with Linux; everyone likes to use additional abstraction with Flatpaks and Proton :p A few commands with Wine work consistently Linux and FreeBSD, and Linux Bash stuff also mostly works on FreeBSD sh.

Dota 2: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/dota-2.79688/#post-682298

2004Scape: https://wiki.realmofespionage.xyz/games;bsd;2004scape_localhost

World of Warcraft + Server: https://wiki.realmofespionage.xyz/games;bsd;wine;world_of_warcraft_3.3.5
 
kriptomahsun said:
Windows is no more,
Click to expand...
Besides that's not going to happen,
(long elaborated explanation spared, in which commercial, proprietary software is only one point)
why?
Don't get me wrong: Personally I hate Windows since my first contact with 95. And I'm very happy I finally got myself into a position I can live without Windows, and use FreeBSD exclusively, since Windows 7. But I'm also realistic enough to see I cannot speak for anybody else, especially not everybody.
Many people do the same mistake over and over again, judge others by their own standards. So many open source users/developers don't see the majority of people is simply not that interested in computers. They have to use them for job and entertainment, but they are absolutely not really interested in them. And you need to be at least a tiny bit interested to get even the idea asking for alternatives, yet not speaking of change.
Most people just want watch movies, and surf the internet. They don't even care which player, or browser they use, don't even know there are others than the default installed one. Many don't have the slightest idea what an 'operating system' is. They use a computer. End of story.

Neither FreeBSD nor Linux are ment to be the easy-fun turn-key OS for uninterested users. There are several Linux and some (Free)BSD derived 'distris', trying that, and again I spare me long elaborated thoughts why this can have only limited success.

It's a good thing if you're happy with free open source operating systems. Welcome! One self brain user more. One more for the team of alternatives, and more freedom.
But just because you see their benefits, can handle, and enjoy them shouldn't lead you to a deduction to transform the world.
kriptomahsun said:
BSD and Linux distros competing
Click to expand...
Why?
Why there always must be competition?
Why still this dinosaur attidude?
Why different things cannot simply stay side by side in peace, each is doing what it thinks is best, leave the others alone, and anybody can decide for her- or himself what suits best?

Yes, of course this may result in one may have to face what was created is not beloved applauded as the genius as one sees it oneself, maybe because it's a bit too special, maybe because of others are still not mature enough for it yet, or maybe even because it actually sucks. This way one cannot get away with it easily by just blaming others. That's called self-responsibility.
One can see what just the Linux internal competition only has made of it. Especially when things get out of hands. Lots of energy useless wasted for fighting over each other.

To me that's not desirable.
 
i do pretty much everything i used to do with my debian install...
which is:
  • everyday internet use (via firefox)
  • coding: python, rust inside neovim pimped to look like an ide
  • video: mplayer
  • chat: xmpp, signal via linux compat
  • libreoffice, calibre
  • qgis (GIS tool, i'm a forester)
  • scribus, inkscape, rawtherapee (i'm also a photographer), kdenlive
  • a bunch of tuis because i like it muchly
however i struggle with obsidian and use at the moment the neovim plugin...
for the record i'm on xorg and i3

there was a decent amount of fails and fumbles and i'm still not sure i do things properly (mostly pkg vs ports and updates of the system) but it's a fun ride!
 
astyle said:
Obsidian Notes, Youtube, watching stuff on VLC - a lot of stuff works fine on FreeBSD. I use the KDE 6 desktop, it works fine under Xorg. Wayland works, but making Wayland and KDE 6 play together is a challenge. Progress is being made on that front (if you know where to look to follow along) Just about all KDE games work fine.

FreeBSD has tftp in base:
Code: 
% whereis tftp
tftp: /usr/bin/tftp /usr/share/man/man1/tftp.1.gz /usr/src/usr.bin/tftp

FreeBSD base also comes with the SSH server, NFSv4 server... and if you want a static IP address, you use ifconfig(8), which is also in base...
Click to expand...
how did you install obsidian? struggling with it...
 
I use FreeBSD as my daily since last July. What I use mostly:
  • Graphical session (Wayland+labwc+sfwbar);
  • libreoffice;
  • virtualbox 7;
  • web browser (zoom, gmail, youtube, primevideo etc.);
  • video playing with mpv;
  • sh/bash scripting;
  • basic gaming (pysolfc, tuxracer, simsu, pipewalker and so on, no windows games)
All of this works perfectly, no complains whatsoever.
 
kriptomahsun said:
I am a Linux guy mostly. If I was just using FreeBSD for watching videos and consuming, I would use it.
[...]
Some people say gaming, but I look up the wikis and stuff, it's terribly complicated.
Click to expand...
That's fine. Games are just another form of consuming, so ditch them. Problem solved :)
 
The only things I find that Linux has and FreeBSD doesn't are wireless speed (and that, at least for some people, can be worked around with wifi box) Teamviewer and masterpdf editor, neither of which I've used in years, and playing Netflix or other proprietary stuff that will work on Brave or Chrome, which can also be worked around now--there's some older tutorials around these forums, where one uses an Ubuntu Linux base instead of the default CentOS. Most of my work is ssh-ing into servers over openvpn. I can even access Windows machines with xfreerdp.

The tutorial on putting the Brave browser on, to watch Netflix, etc., the tutorial, by member patovm04, is here
P

Thread '[Linuxulator] How to install Brave (Linux app) on FreeBSD 13.0+'

Important notes:
1) This guide is for FreeBSD 13.0 and newer only!!
For FreeBSD 12, please see: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/...-google-chrome-linux-binary-on-freebsd.77559/
2) This method should be valid for installing any other Chromium-based web browser (Google Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, Edge, etc), as long as they (or their dependencies) are not Snaps/Flatpaks.
3) Most enhancements found in this tutorial were taken from/inspired by: https://github.com/mrclksr/linux-browser-installer
4) Given the many improvements made in Linuxulator and DRM...
  • Thanks
  • Like
 
hern42 said:
how did you install obsidian? struggling with it...
Click to expand...
Code: 
# cd /usr/ports/textproc/obsidian
# make && make install

I did manage to compile devel/electron32, which was a required dependency. By now it's got CVE's, but the error message also tells you what to do to override that.

Not many people like Electron on FreeBSD, but I see it as something useful for me.

Obsidian does seem to work somewhat differently under Xorg and Wayland. I'm frankly still playing with it, and discovering uses, quirks, and limitations. I personally do see a 'daily driver' use for it, it's useful enough for me to keep playing with it and find workarounds for limitations. Basically, a nice time sink :P
 
astyle said:
Code: 
# cd /usr/ports/textproc/obsidian
# make && make install

I did manage to compile devel/electron32, which was a required dependency. By now it's got CVE's, but the error message also tells you what to do to override that.

Not many people like Electron on FreeBSD, but I see it as something useful for me.

Obsidian does seem to work somewhat differently under Xorg and Wayland. I'm frankly still playing with it, and discovering uses, quirks, and limitations. I personally do see a 'daily driver' use for it, it's useful enough for me to keep playing with it and find workarounds for limitations. Basically, a nice time sink :P
Click to expand...
If you like to build obsidian in poudriere, you need to accept eula license first. To do this, create a make.conf for the poudriere jail and then add:
LICENSES_ACCEPTED=EULA
 
nxjoseph said:
If you like to build obsidian in poudriere, you need to accept eula license first. To do this, create a make.conf for the poudriere jail and then add:
LICENSES_ACCEPTED=EULA
Click to expand...
You can actually update Obsidian in place once installed. The ports version was for v. 1.7.5, but you can use it to check for updates and pull in 1.7.7 bypassing the FreeBSD packaging completely. I did that with no issues. I guess the trick is the initial installation still requires the ports system.
 
astyle said:
Code: 
# cd /usr/ports/textproc/obsidian
# make && make install

I did manage to compile devel/electron32, which was a required dependency. By now it's got CVE's, but the error message also tells you what to do to override that.

Not many people like Electron on FreeBSD, but I see it as something useful for me.

Obsidian does seem to work somewhat differently under Xorg and Wayland. I'm frankly still playing with it, and discovering uses, quirks, and limitations. I personally do see a 'daily driver' use for it, it's useful enough for me to keep playing with it and find workarounds for limitations. Basically, a nice time sink :P
Click to expand...
thanks...
i installed electron32 via pkg and then used textproc/obsidian, it used to work but after updating said ports (a few days ago) it fails with:
Code: 
[53701:0221/075641.760748:ERROR:bus.cc(407)] Failed to connect to the bus: Failed to connect to socket /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket: No such file or directory
2025-02-21 06:56:42 Loading main app package /usr/local/share/obsidian/resources/obsidian.asar
Updates disabled.
[1]    53701 trace trap (core dumped)  obsidian
 
hern42 said:
thanks...
i installed electron32 via pkg and then used textproc/obsidian, it used to work but after updating said ports (a few days ago) it fails with:
Code: 
[53701:0221/075641.760748:ERROR:bus.cc(407)] Failed to connect to the bus: Failed to connect to socket /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket: No such file or directory
2025-02-21 06:56:42 Loading main app package /usr/local/share/obsidian/resources/obsidian.asar
Updates disabled.
[1]    53701 trace trap (core dumped)  obsidian
Click to expand...
Maybe this caused because dbus is not running system wide?
 
I use FreeBSD mainly for gaming (emulators, wine), programming, watching videos, and as an audio server with OSS + MPD + ffmpeg filters for parametric equalization.
 
I have been using FreeBSD for the past 5 years ~ and before that, was a Linux guy for 18 years, most of which were on Gentoo / Funtoo. FreeBSD has been great from the stability side of things, I think I only managed to not be able to boot once and that was a result of not following directions. Some other pain points would be where packages randomly disappear because a build failed overnight.

I do some development in Java, go, and shell, use mpv to watch videos and listen to music (though occasionally pandora to stream using a shell script / expect wrapper around pianobar), latex for resume, and git.

I also have FreeBSD on a Dell laptop and a few things are frustrating, bluetooth and the backlight cannot be controlled or work. I use wifibox on the laptop to get decent wifi performance. I also wish the monitor could automatically turn off when I'm in console mode as I have my user sessions killed nightly and have to manually turn off the monitor to avoid burning in the screen.

Like anything in life, you cannot have everything. Once those issues are sorted out, I'm sure I'll have other items to address and so the list continues.

Perhaps in my developer / engineer mindset, I'm thinking why cannot the systems have a higher level concept. For instance, Funtoo had autogen and other metatools. I am dreaming that some day, only the OS itself needs to be directly maintained by FreeBSD and the userland software could be defined in a manner such that packages could be built against any platform. Yes, the port maintainers would need to update those definitions, but couldn't a good deal of that be automated?

I would like to contribute to ports more, but I attempted to update intellij and that bug / update is still in progress after 4 years.
 
thanos-infinity-war.gif.gif.gif
 
I generally only have web browsers and xterms open on my desktop. Plus a few gizmos like xbiff and ledbiff.

If I can have it a nice window manager, but that is being made hard now.
 
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