Hello,
I'm new here, my first contact with a BSD was some years ago with an installation of PC-BSD but after a little testing I've decided to stay with Linux. I'm familiar with "penguin" system since 1998, started with S.u.S.E 5.3, 2003 I changed to Debian GNU/Linux. I'm not a freak but using terminal instead of GUI for configuration is not a problem, a lot of years ago I had to compile ALSA for a special Debian Kernel with XFS support. I like Debian and Debian derivatives, Arch based systems but in my opinion also openSUSE is a nice operating system. Developers spent their time to offer installable systems with free software and I honor this.
Now I want to give BSD another try, I want to find out if BSD also can be a good tool for my needs (E-Mail / Browsing, preparing FLAC audio for broadcast station with audacity, office, managing photos with digikam, printing photos in high quality with a print server and some things more). I also want to know how good a BSD-based system can be integrated in our home LAN with Linux systems (two PC, two notebooks, one NAS / the systems are Debian Jessie, siduction, Manjaro, Antergos and perhaps in next time an openSUSE tumbleweed).
I've tested PC-BSD some days ago and yesterday GhostBSD, but after some impressions I've decided to use the "original"
I think, developers of both distributions do a great job, but I don't like, that under PC-BSD ZFS is the standard and that there is no possibility to use UFS2 instead. ZFS is a high quality filesystem with a lot of features, it might be a good choice for servers and big workstations. But as a desktop user I want to have PC power for working with my data and not for the basic system. ZFS "eats" RAM in an aggressive way, on notebook of my wife, a Fujitsu with an Intel quadcore and 4 GB RAM PC-BSD is very slow, and after reading about ZFS I understand, why. Apart from that, Intel graphics seems to be not a good choice when using BSD stuff. The developers of GhostBSD give a nice preconfigured live system with xfce but I've spent some hours yesterday with a lot of tries of installation to get a system which simply starts, but without success. Sorry for this long introduction.
My machine: Intel quadcore, 8 GB DDR3 Ram, Nvidia Geforce Card GT 730, USB soundcard Aureon 7.1, Intel Ethernet controller i218-lm, HD and SSD. I've checked BSD compatibility of all this components.
first disk SSD 256 GB
GPT
grub2 in MBR of sda
sda1 Linux1
sda2 Linux2
sda3 Linux3
...
second disk SSD 32 GB
GPT
BSD Bootmanager in MBR of ada1
ada1p1 64 KB none freebsd-boot
ada1p2 20 GB / freebsd-ufs
ada1p3 8 GB none freebsd-swap
third disk HD 500 GB
GPT
sdc1 500 GB /data ntfs
This gives me possibility to start BSD directly from BIOS boot menu and I also can try to add BSD per chainload to grub2 of my first SSD with Linux systems.
Is there any mistake in my description? Is partition schema for FreeBSD okay? Please keep in mind, that BSD is new for me. I want to arrange my systems in a way that gives me possibility to start my Linux systems if something goes wrong with the BSD installation. And yesterday it was a little bit annoying, I've spent hours to get a starting GhostBSD system, read a lot of documentation about partition schemata and about adding BSD installation to grub2 (I think, there exist more than 20 different descriptions, adding FreeBSD in /etc/grub.d/40_custom, but after trying more than 5 without any success I was a little bit angry). So I hope you understand I want to be sure that with the basics of installations of my further try everything is okay. I just want to get a bootable FreeBSD basic system with internet access, further things like installation of xserver, kde and other applications I can do step by step then.
Kind regards,
Holger
I'm new here, my first contact with a BSD was some years ago with an installation of PC-BSD but after a little testing I've decided to stay with Linux. I'm familiar with "penguin" system since 1998, started with S.u.S.E 5.3, 2003 I changed to Debian GNU/Linux. I'm not a freak but using terminal instead of GUI for configuration is not a problem, a lot of years ago I had to compile ALSA for a special Debian Kernel with XFS support. I like Debian and Debian derivatives, Arch based systems but in my opinion also openSUSE is a nice operating system. Developers spent their time to offer installable systems with free software and I honor this.
Now I want to give BSD another try, I want to find out if BSD also can be a good tool for my needs (E-Mail / Browsing, preparing FLAC audio for broadcast station with audacity, office, managing photos with digikam, printing photos in high quality with a print server and some things more). I also want to know how good a BSD-based system can be integrated in our home LAN with Linux systems (two PC, two notebooks, one NAS / the systems are Debian Jessie, siduction, Manjaro, Antergos and perhaps in next time an openSUSE tumbleweed).
I've tested PC-BSD some days ago and yesterday GhostBSD, but after some impressions I've decided to use the "original"
I think, developers of both distributions do a great job, but I don't like, that under PC-BSD ZFS is the standard and that there is no possibility to use UFS2 instead. ZFS is a high quality filesystem with a lot of features, it might be a good choice for servers and big workstations. But as a desktop user I want to have PC power for working with my data and not for the basic system. ZFS "eats" RAM in an aggressive way, on notebook of my wife, a Fujitsu with an Intel quadcore and 4 GB RAM PC-BSD is very slow, and after reading about ZFS I understand, why. Apart from that, Intel graphics seems to be not a good choice when using BSD stuff. The developers of GhostBSD give a nice preconfigured live system with xfce but I've spent some hours yesterday with a lot of tries of installation to get a system which simply starts, but without success. Sorry for this long introduction.My machine: Intel quadcore, 8 GB DDR3 Ram, Nvidia Geforce Card GT 730, USB soundcard Aureon 7.1, Intel Ethernet controller i218-lm, HD and SSD. I've checked BSD compatibility of all this components.
first disk SSD 256 GB
GPT
grub2 in MBR of sda
sda1 Linux1
sda2 Linux2
sda3 Linux3
...
second disk SSD 32 GB
GPT
BSD Bootmanager in MBR of ada1
ada1p1 64 KB none freebsd-boot
ada1p2 20 GB / freebsd-ufs
ada1p3 8 GB none freebsd-swap
third disk HD 500 GB
GPT
sdc1 500 GB /data ntfs
This gives me possibility to start BSD directly from BIOS boot menu and I also can try to add BSD per chainload to grub2 of my first SSD with Linux systems.
Is there any mistake in my description? Is partition schema for FreeBSD okay? Please keep in mind, that BSD is new for me. I want to arrange my systems in a way that gives me possibility to start my Linux systems if something goes wrong with the BSD installation. And yesterday it was a little bit annoying, I've spent hours to get a starting GhostBSD system, read a lot of documentation about partition schemata and about adding BSD installation to grub2 (I think, there exist more than 20 different descriptions, adding FreeBSD in /etc/grub.d/40_custom, but after trying more than 5 without any success I was a little bit angry). So I hope you understand I want to be sure that with the basics of installations of my further try everything is okay. I just want to get a bootable FreeBSD basic system with internet access, further things like installation of xserver, kde and other applications I can do step by step then.
Kind regards,
Holger
