# Is FreeBSD a good mobile solution?



## robspop (Oct 15, 2011)

I'm sure things like this have been asked a thousand times before, so please just ignore this if you find it boring/irritating, and also accept apologies in advance for any opinions you don't agree with.

Background: I have used Solaris (and SunOS before that) for many years both at home and at work, mainly on Sparc boxes but for the last few years on a laptop too.  For various reasons I am now using just one laptop (a Thinkpad X61) at home, at work, and while travelling.

Things got to a point where I could not really live with Solaris any more: too many things just *don't* work.  Although mostly used for "serious" purposes, I occasionally like to be able to play solitaire, watch a dvd, look at something on youtube, etc.  The final straw with Solaris was setting up a 3G wifi dongle: it took me hours to get it to work and was never straightforward.  Following a suggestion on a forum, I tried a live ubuntu disk and pretty much everything *did* work, and configuring the 3G took about 5 clicks and 1 minute.

I didn't really take to Ubuntu and am currently using Debian with xfce.  Most stuff works most of the time, and using the laptop either on its own or plugged into a docking station (different at home and work) is fine.

So, maybe I should just leave it, or maybe I'm a masochist, or something, but: at some level, I find linux a bit irritating.  It lacks tools I'm used to, I update x and y ceases to work, I find solutions on forums that are only a couple of years old and have long since ceased to work, I'd rather have ufs, etc etc.  Solaris was pretty bulletproof, easier to configure in many ways, less keen to hide internals, often easier if you knew at least roughly what you were doing.  Just my humble opinion.

So, after all that pre-amble, my question is: can FreeBSD give me, I suppose, the best of both worlds?  I know from occasional past forays that it's much closer to the sort of unix world I am used to.  I've done a quick install of the base system on an old laptop I have and getting that, basic hard-wired networking and X working seemed as straightforward as any other OS.  I'm currently installing kde on that machine, just to see what it's like as I have never tried it, though I might stick with xfce if I use this longer term.

Will things like mobile and wireless internet work, will I be able to watch a DVD or check out things on youtube, and will it be possible to do these things without many hours of tinkering with arcane bits and pieces that are then really hard to reproduce?  I don't mind doing a lot more manual configuration than something like ubuntu expects, so long as there is a good chance that I will get there in the end.  Can FreeBSD do what Debian can do??

I don't want to end up in a situation where most things work,  but not one of the key things I really have to have!


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## jrm@ (Oct 15, 2011)

robspop said:
			
		

> Will things like mobile and wireless internet work



Wireless can work if you have a supported wireless card.  It works well for me.



> will I be able to watch a DVD


Yes. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/creating-dvds.html



> or check out things on youtube


Yes.  http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/desktop-browsers.html



> and will it be possible to do these things without many hours of tinkering with arcane bits and pieces that are then really hard to reproduce?


Yes.


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## graudeejs (Oct 15, 2011)

It's perfect, if you like to carry a server with you 
(j/k)

Almost everything depends on your hardware.


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## jb_fvwm2 (Oct 16, 2011)

On the only wireless machine I've used, internet connection would sometimes lapse; at first I created an alias for 
	
	



```
sh /etc/rc.d/netif restart
```
 but then found and modified a "wireless keepalive" script (from the web somewhere) that keeps the connection alive. (Useful for portmaster lengthy runs).  Everything else mobile is as good as the desktop; maybe check the Howto subforum for usage quesions, *tons* of stuff there, well written.


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## outpaddling (Oct 16, 2011)

My experience over many years of using both FreeBSD and Linux is that overall, they function about equally as a desktop/laptop system.  Each has some pros and cons.

Device drivers sometimes appear a little sooner for Linux (occasionally the reverse is true too), and Linux has more options for quick and easy setup, but I've found in most cases that the same features are available for FreeBSD, you just have to either go with PC-BSD (KDE only) or do some digging on the Internet.  I've found FreeBSD to be more stable and easier to maintain once I've made the effort to get it configured.

If you're using popular hardware that's been around a while, you'll probably have a pretty easy time.  Pretty much everything works on my Thinkpad T42 (Youtube, suspend/resume, special keys, etc), and I've had a similar experience on old Dells and Compaqs.  I'm writing this on an EEE PC 1015PE (much newer), and I haven't gotten resume or special keys working yet, probably because the X11 driver and ACPI support are still alpha quality.

You might want to check out sysutils/desktop-installer.  It's a post-install script that automates the setup of a desktop/laptop system.  It installs essential ports and does necessary configuration of things like devfs to automount DVDs, USB sticks, etc.   It's not as quick and easy as PC-BSD or Ubuntu, but it's more flexible.  It's evolving rapidly, so you might want to get the latest development version from the home site (see pkg-descr), especially if you're running a BETA or RC version of FreeBSD or using new hardware.


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## mdg583 (Oct 22, 2011)

In my opinion: I think it is best to think of FreeBSD as a unix system. I use it on a netbook and it works _very_ well for me, but this is after I've learned to use it fairly well. You also kind of have to take a different mindset to it - for instance, I use XFCE, and in the latest version mounting of pluggable fs devices from the file manager stopped working. In fact, believe it or not, Thunar itself hasn't been working for me for about 4 months now. There was a time when I would have spent hours trying to fix this or get a solution. Now things are different - I honestly don't notice, as I would use a terminal 80% of the time even if the file manager were working.

How I mount devices:

```
#su
<password>
mount_msdosfs /dev/da0s1 /media/disk
... do device stuff ...
umount /media/disk
```

quick and easy...

My solution to the file manager problem now is to wait until XFCE receives some updates, both from its developers, and the FreeBSD ports tree.

Reading your post, I think FreeBSD probably is the kind of system you are looking for. dvd playback is in the handbook - should be straightfoward. linux-emulated flash works well - and it fairly straightforward to set up. One of the best things I find is that while on many systems getting things to work is a matter of finding a magic combination of configuration, installing dependencies, etc., on systems like FreeBSD it is a matter of coming to understand and be familiar with some aspect of the system. Like the difference between following (often outdated) how-to's vs. looking something up in the handbook.

There are a lot of things that simply won't work on a FreeBSD system, unless you are really good at making them work or really determined. e.g. sleep and hibernate on a laptop. Webcam support is supposed to be better in version 9 coming up - there are patches available now, but I don't have a lot of practice patching my kernel.

Oh, also updating software can be a pain. My favorite strategy right now is to do small updates with pkg_upgrade and hope things don't break, and then about twice a year I do a *pkg_delete -a*, and then reinstall packages as I remember them/need them.  It's actually pretty efficient and also deals with software bloat.


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## ondra_knezour (Oct 22, 2011)

I'm using FreeBSD on IBM notebooks up to T4x many years now and I'm very satisfied in most cases. I was working as "last resort" technical support for ISP with hundreds wireless APs, so I can say 
- wireless networking is definitely usable in most cases
- FreeBSD was always better predictable and only from time to time I have to recompile something because of upgrade something other (usually well documented in ports/UPDATING), which was nothing in compare with library hell I usually found on linux routers I have been administering.

Your questions has been answered before, so only two notices
- Only once I wasn't able to play movie DVD bought for few bucks with default player from gnome
- I don't like Linux flash port, probably my personal deviation only. I use gnash for flash on web, which had some problems with YouTube and Google Analytic long time ago, I don't know, if it is working now.

Side note: There was some discussions here on forum what will be future of Gnome in ports (Gnome 3 didn't meet us yet) and XFCE (heading too linux-centric way of development, I don't know details, as I was using Gnome). Search for them and take them into consideration when choosing your desktop. I will probably go with OpenBOX with my next laptop, but FreeBSD will be definitely under hood.

Sorry for not linking ports, I can't search for names/locations right now, but all mentioned SW can be found there.


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## outpaddling (Oct 23, 2011)

The desktop-installer port takes care of all the challenges mentioned by mdg583 except for thunar-volman and suspend/resume, which will simply require more development work in XFCE and the FreeBSD ACPI system.  Suspend/resume works great on some systems and not at all on others.

It also installs and configures Flash for you.  Linux Flash 10 has worked fine for me for the past couple of years, except for occasionally orphaning a bunch of npviewer.bin processes that slow the system down.  A simple [cmd=]killall npviewer.bin[/cmd] fixes that.

I've found Gnome to be the most complete and stable desktop lately.  All the major pieces (web, DVD playing, webcam, etc.) work out-of-the-box and reliably.

For XFCE, until thunar-volman is working again, you can use mtools to access USB sticks, as long as they're FAT formatted.  This is safer than mounting anyway, since it reduces the probability that the stick will be pulled out during a write operation.


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## rossiya (Oct 23, 2011)

*FreeBSD not laptop-ready*

I switched to Kubuntu for my nc6400 laptop.  Suspend+resume.  Network autoconfigures.  Fingerprint reader works.  Even my Virgin mobile broadband autoconfigures!  Latest KDE.  System understands Russian out of the box.  Laptops at cybercafes are a far cry from a server environment.  If you're a bona-fide BSD purist than have a stab at http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/ which runs FreeBSD kernel without all the GNU-phobic hassle.  Life is far too short.


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## jb_fvwm2 (Oct 23, 2011)

Well, to reanswer the original post, it may be hard[2] at first, but except for "suspend," *if* your laptop hardware is compatible (I've a usb edimax[1] stick, for instance, rather than the problematic internal "ndisgen" one) it may only get easier.  (The only other hurdle I should mention is a script, in a tty, to keep the wifi connection from dropping, something found on the web and modified.) ... 
[1]  large antenna, probably gets better reception than the internal one would. 
[2] the freebsd-questions list provides a lot of answers also
[3a] Your original post does not mention backups.  I've found FreeBSD to excel in that capacity... including easier restores[3b].  That in itself may make a switch from linux worthwhile.
[3c] from accounts of restores to FreeBSD, vs accounts of restores to linux, that I have read.
 ...............
Sorry for a lack of time, there are a few other encouraging things to add but I could write on and on...


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## rdeiriar (Oct 29, 2011)

I am writing this on a Thinkpad T61p, with a dedicated Nvidia video card, running a zfs root 9-RC1-AMD64 install. The only thing that does not work "out of the box" is suspend/resume. While i understand there are some workarounds for that, i have yet to give them a try. 
By personal experience, there is no obvious difference in either performance or battery life between my current FreeBSD install and Ubuntu 10.04 (I used to run Ubuntu on this notebook, yet became fed up with the bloatedness of the latest releases).


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## sk8harddiefast (Oct 29, 2011)

FreeBSD absolutely can be a perfect desktop solution! Of course everything depends on your hardware. FreeBSD maybe don't support the hardware that Linux supports, but this don't means that have not a big database on hardware! On my system see everything. DVD-drive, wifi, my 2 ethernet card, sound, keyboard, mouse, graphics card, camera etc. FreeBSD don't support very good, things like iphone, remote controls, lcd screens etc. That don't means that is not supporting them at all, just maybe you need more hours on your system to make them work. But on BSD you can do the most of the things that you do on any desktop. Listen music, see videos on youtube, burn cd's, see movies, edit movies, create songs, download torrent and have all the known tools like wireshark, chrome, vlc, googleearth, audacity, audacious, gimp, transmission, zenmap etc. Maybe you spend some days to set your system but worth! FreeBSD is a full of life OS that every day becomes better. ZFS, more hardware etc. Have a very good community and if you make a quickly search you will see that a lot of things are Solved and almost everywhere you will see answers and discussions  If you spend so much years with Solaris i think that you will love FreeBSD's flexibility


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## robspop (Nov 7, 2011)

My thanks to all who replied: I went ahead and am VERY pleased with the result, everything works (at least everything that worked before!) and it all seems much more like the *nix I am familiar with than linux did. If anyone is reading this because they are thinking of going down the same route, I thoroughly recommend it.


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## jb_fvwm2 (Nov 7, 2011)

Next I recommend nightly backup of critical files. (Having just lost several days of non-critical ones and a few annotations in critical ones). Both to another media and to another place on the disk. (I use 
	
	



```
rsync, dump, cp -iv, mmv, and cp -vRp
```
 usually. )


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## SNK (Nov 7, 2011)

You might also want to take a look at sysutils/tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com). There are wrappers available online.


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