# Question(s) about Hardware



## smooey (Mar 25, 2019)

I have a question or two about hardware and if FreeBSD would be compatible or not. Will FreeBSD work alright on a Dell Optiplex 755, Mini Tower? Now the Processor isn't stock, I added a faster processor to it. Are the Intel Core 2 Quad processors compatible with FreeBSD? I have 8GB Ram, and 1TB hard drive as well. 


```
Summary
        Operating System
            Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
        CPU
            Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 @ 2.83GHz    43 °C
            Yorkfield 45nm Technology
        RAM
            8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 398MHz (6-6-6-18)
        Motherboard
            Dell Inc. 0GM819 (CPU)
        Graphics
            VA903 SERIES (1280x1024@75Hz)
            Intel Q35 Express Chipset Family (Dell)
            Intel Q35 Express Chipset Family (Dell)
        Storage
            931GB Western Digital WDC WD1002FBYS-18W8B0 ATA Device (SATA )    39 °C
```

Also, I seen on GhostBSD forums that someone needed to download drivers from NVIDIA site or something... 

https://forums.ghostbsd.org/viewtopic.php?p=3071#p3071 


> You MUST download the graphics driver from the nvidia web site. or in /usr/ports build the nvidia-driver it will download the 376.26 nvidia driver for you. The 755s' have all Intel chips and FreeBSD i915kms driver will NOT work !! The driver in TrueOS works fine as does NetBSD but FreeBSD's i915kms just won't work!!



Not sure which drivers they're talking about? And I'm assuming I would need Viewsonic monitor drivers as well right? Thanks


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## Phishfry (Mar 25, 2019)

No they are talking Xorg video card driver. This machine uses video features built on CPU.
Intel i915kms is the console driver and the xorg driver is x11-driver/xf86-video-intel.
I have seen some people with similar problems on that particular chipset. It should be supported but it is getting old.
Give FreeBSD a try. The computer is a prime candidate.


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## smooey (Mar 25, 2019)

So my machine's chipset had similar problems for other people, or you mean the other guys at ghostbsd forums chipset? I tried FreeBSD on virtualbox and it seemed alright for me, but every once in while it seemed like "page tearing" or something was going on. >_> I didn't bother downloading any drivers though, unless FreeBSD handles that during installation. I didn't try it directly on host machine though cause I wanted to get familiar with it first and see if I could install what I needed first... Brave browser (or good alternative), GIMP, LibreOffice, VLC player, etc etc.


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## scottro (Mar 25, 2019)

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/is-it-possible-to-install-brave-browser.70149/ talks about installing Brave browser--it seems to be iffy, though you can install iridium. https://iridiumbrowser.de/


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## D-FENS (Mar 25, 2019)

The hardware you are showing should have fairly good support in FreeBSD.
What you can do is, you could install FreeBSD on a USB 3 stick without touching your HDD. Then you can try FreeBSD and see if everything works fine. If you are satisfied then go ahead and install it on the HDD.


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## Ordoban (Mar 25, 2019)

I also have some of the Dell Optiplex 755 in my office. Well, not currently in use, but in the "too good to scrap" pile.
Today I was on low workload, so I pull one of this out, blow the dust away and installed FreeBSD on it.

My first test was to simply start Xorg without loading a console driver. Works fine, but xorg uses the VESA driver. High resolution, high color, but VESA is usually a bit slow. And VESA have no 3d-support. I have not tested this long time.
Then I loaded the i915kms console driver (from base system). *The screen turn blank*.
I also try the i915kms driver from the drm-next-kmod port. *Same issue.*


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## SirDice (Mar 25, 2019)

Have a look on the wiki, it should be fairly up to date: https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics


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## smooey (Mar 25, 2019)

scottro said:


> https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/is-it-possible-to-install-brave-browser.70149/ talks about installing Brave browser--it seems to be iffy, though you can install iridium. https://iridiumbrowser.de/



Yep, that's my thread that I've started... 



roccobaroccoSC said:


> The hardware you are showing should have fairly good support in FreeBSD.
> What you can do is, you could install FreeBSD on a USB 3 stick without touching your HDD. Then you can try FreeBSD and see if everything works fine. If you are satisfied then go ahead and install it on the HDD.



Alright. But I'd probably just burn the ISO to USB stick and install it anyway lol. Windows 7 will be EOL in future anyway, so I'll have to convert to something else regardless. I'm looking for a good stable OS that's replacement for Windows 7, hence trying FreeBSD in virtualbox and some other non-systemd "distros".



Ordoban said:


> My first test was to simply start Xorg without loading a console driver. Works fine, but xorg uses the VESA driver. High resolution, high color, but VESA is usually a bit slow. And VESA have no 3d-support. I have not tested this long time.
> Then I loaded the i915kms console driver (from base system). *The screen turn blank*.
> I also try the i915kms driver from the drm-next-kmod port. *Same issue.*



That's what I'm worrying about myself, if it's the old graphics chipset. Now, the only difference between my Dell Optiplex 755 and yours, is I upgraded my processor to an Intel Core 2 Quad, where yours comes factory with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. And I think I've seen some where on FreeBSD wiki that "Intel Core 2 duo" processors aren't supported? But I could be wrong.

If OUR chipsets /on-board graphics card/etc are the same (as I don't have modern graphics card installed), we might have same issue.. and that's where I'm stuck and not sure what to download and use for drivers.


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## smooey (Mar 25, 2019)

Hmm, weird, this page says Intel Core 2 Duo is alright... https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/amd64.html  but this page says "not Core 2 Duo"... https://people.freebsd.org/~rodrigc/doc/handbook/bsdinstall-hardware.html 

I have the Core 2 Quad of course, so that should be fine for me. But the graphics chipset is my main concern lol. Or if I should install this driver... https://www.freshports.org/x11/nvidia-driver/ 

But not sure how to disable/not load the default i915kms drivers and only install the nvidia driver...


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## D-FENS (Mar 25, 2019)

FreeBSD should work just fine on it. But in case it does not work out for you, Gentoo is another great option because of the great hardware support and flexibility. You can stay away from systemd if you don't like it.
I personally use FreeBSD and I have Gentoo systems with ZFS because I need GNU/Linux too. But getting ZFS to work on Gentoo is quite hard and with FreeBSD it comes out of the box, which is great!



smooey said:


> Yep, that's my thread that I've started...
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## trev (Mar 26, 2019)

smooey said:


> Hmm, weird, this page says Intel Core 2 Duo is alright... https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/amd64.html but this page says "not Core 2 Duo"... https://people.freebsd.org/~rodrigc/doc/handbook/bsdinstall-hardware.html



My Late-2009 Mac mini has been running FreeBSD since at least FreeBSD-8.0-RELEASE (currently FreeBSD 11-STABLE) without any issues on its CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     P8700  @ 2.53GHz (2520.73-MHz K8-class CPU).


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## Ordoban (Mar 26, 2019)

It does not matter what kind of cpu you use. The integrated graphic chip is on the motherboard, not on the CPU.
https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/does-the-core-2-duo-e6600-have-integrated-graphics.1438286/


> No Core 2 duo has a built in gpu. With core 2 duos the integrated graphics was part of the motherboard not cpu.



It seems an real issue with this chipset: (same graphic controller)
https://www.mail-archive.com/freebsd-stable@freebsd.org/msg136367.html

To the OP:
Seems FreeBSD does not work well with this chipset, and I would not think this will be fixed in near future, except you fix it by yourself.
So you have 2 options: 
1. Use the VESA driver.
2. Use some Linux distribution.

And why you are talking about the nvidia driver? This is an intel graphic, not nvidia. Installing the nvidia driver seems complete useless to me.


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## smooey (Mar 26, 2019)

Ordoban said:


> It does not matter what kind of cpu you use. The integrated graphic chip is on the motherboard, not on the CPU.
> https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/does-the-core-2-duo-e6600-have-integrated-graphics.1438286/



Yeah I know, I was just stating to the other guy that only difference between his 755 and mine was the CPU. Cause the other guys said the hardware should be fine. And the other guy said he had issues with the screen etc... hence mentioning the only difference between ours is the CPU. I didn't try FreeBSD install on my 755 yet of course, so I'm not sure what will happen on host machine. 



Ordoban said:


> It seems an real issue with this chipset: (same graphic controller)
> https://www.mail-archive.com/freebsd-stable@freebsd.org/msg136367.html
> 
> To the OP:
> ...



That's what I was afraid of... so basically use the driver then. https://www.freshports.org/x11-drivers/xf86-video-vesa/




Ordoban said:


> And why you are talking about the nvidia driver? This is an intel graphic, not nvidia. Installing the nvidia driver seems complete useless to me.



I only asked/threw it out there because some guy on ghostbsd forums said about a nvidia driver cause of possible issue I'd run into, hence asking the question here for FreeBSD.. cause I downloaded and was trying FreeBSD ISO. 
https://forums.ghostbsd.org/viewtopic.php?p=3071#p3071 dave-570


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## smooey (Mar 31, 2019)

roccobaroccoSC said:


> What you can do is, you could install FreeBSD on a USB 3 stick without touching your HDD. Then you can try FreeBSD and see if everything works fine. If you are satisfied then go ahead and install it on the HDD.



I'm curious about this and the USB 3 stick you're talking about... I just got this stick and memory card other year, will this work alright? ebay.com/itm/SanDisk-32GB-MicroSD-HC-Class-4-Memory-Card-32G-SDSDQM-032G-B35-Card-Reader/160855827389

Of course the ports in computer are still going to be 2.0 ports I think. And regarding installing FreeBSD on the stick itself, is that just the system of Freebsd or can I install the desktop on it as well...cause I won't know how FreeBSD works for sure if it don't install the DE lol. What's best route to take to get FreeBSD and DE on the stick from Windows 7 OS.


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## Phishfry (Mar 31, 2019)

Yes that MicroSD card with a Card reader would work.
It is one of the slowest possible ways to do it, but it will work.
Problem is most microSD cards peak around 20MB/sec.
Whereas a USB3 stick will give you over 100MB/sec.
So that is why he recommended USB3 stick.
A USB2 stick would not yield much more than a microSD card. Maybe 25MB/sec

So the procedure here is to use 2 USB sticks. One is the FreeBSD memstick installer and the other blank.
At the tail end of the FreeBSD install you have a "Post Install Shell". This allows you to modify your installation.
Here you must modify /etc/fstab to change mount points.
You see, the USB Memstick installer will grab da0 and the empty stick will be da1.
When you remove the Memstick installer at the end of the install, The drive letters will change on next bootup.
What was da1 during the install phase will now be found as da0. This means /etc/fstab needs fixing.
The post install shell will allow this crucial step.
`ee /etc/fstab`
Now change da1 mountpoint to da0 and exit and save.
That is it. Now you can exit the post install shell with the `exit` command and allow the installer to reboot.
Remove the USB memstick installer as directed and you have a USB installation.
(Note: As an alternative you could use disk labels and avoid all this mess.)

You may want to install FreeBSD without swap depending on your situation.
Otherwise many writes to swap can kill your USB sticks lifespan.

edit:
Another useful method for a USB installation is use a FreeBSD CD/DVD installer and then a USB stick installation will work without modification. No drive letters change on reboot. CD and DVD use different device names.


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## Phishfry (Mar 31, 2019)

I was just reviewing your post and I realize we are talking Core2 here, so chances you have USB3 is about zilch, unless you added a USB3 paddle-card to a desktop.

So you can ignore USB3. It will not get you anything.
I have ran Xfce4 from USB2. It works but is noticeably slow.


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## smooey (Apr 1, 2019)

Thanks for explanation of how to do it, just seems a bit much /complicated though lol. I my as well just burn FreeBSD to the stick like I normally would and install it over windows 7 and see how it works out. If it doesn't work right or get blank screen or something, then I'll just make another stick with another distro on it from the second tower /PC I have next to me here in my room. I use the second tower as place to read guides, watch youtube videos on how to install or "fix" things etc. I plan on wiping and replacing windows 7 on all PCs in house anyway so no big loss. Thanks again for your help.


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## D-FENS (Apr 2, 2019)

smooey said:


> I'm curious about this and the USB 3 stick you're talking about... I just got this stick and memory card other year, will this work alright? ebay.com/itm/SanDisk-32GB-MicroSD-HC-Class-4-Memory-Card-32G-SDSDQM-032G-B35-Card-Reader/160855827389
> 
> Of course the ports in computer are still going to be 2.0 ports I think. And regarding installing FreeBSD on the stick itself, is that just the system of Freebsd or can I install the desktop on it as well...cause I won't know how FreeBSD works for sure if it don't install the DE lol. What's best route to take to get FreeBSD and DE on the stick from Windows 7 OS.



I used the program dd without any problems on Windows. Install cygwin for example, it has dd. Then download an image and use dd to write it to a USB device.


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## Phishfry (Apr 2, 2019)

roccobaroccoSC said:


> download an image


The problem here is FreeBSD only offers CD/DVD/Memstick Installer Images. No preconfigured x86 FreeBSD images.
The only thing I can think of is the VM Images. The .raw file can probably be extracted and dd'ed to a USB stick.
I never tried it though. Networking/ifconfig  would need to be addressed. They probably use virtio on those VM images.

Other than that the SD Card images are all Arm based.
You can build your own image with release.sh or even by hand. Crochet, NanoBSD make images as well.


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## tingo (Apr 2, 2019)

Other option: install FreeBSD onto a usb stick / sdcard.


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## smooey (Apr 7, 2019)

I had installed FreeBSD twice on host/main machine I'm currently using. Once with XFCE and other time with KDE5 (Plasma). For some odd reason though, the installer appears to only give me 3.5GB SWAP, when I have 8GB RAM installed in tower/hardware. Unless that's Swap being sliced up in 3rds (3.5, 3.5, and 3.5 = 10.5GB ram) ?

Also, issue with KDE5 at some point the background of menus and menu items disappeared and only saw the beveled /gradient clear outer border of where the menu would normally be. I clicked on icon in task bar to view like connected USB drive and couldn't see nothing but a border of where the menu should be. Did same for the main menu in left corner.. couldn't see any programs, icons, etc.

I like FreeBSD and it works, just dunno about the partitioning manually bit. I tried to edit it after installer did suggested partitions but I couldn't change the amounts for the partitions. Not sure if I can drop the console before running installer and do "CFDISK" and set up partitions first.. but what's the invoking command to restart installer... I removed the KDE5 and tried doing Slackware Current and had some issues, and now on Feren OS lol.

Even with Feren OS the installer only gave me 976MB of Ram out of 8GB ram.. no wonder the dang browser froze up/locked up on me before... LOL. I'd go with FreeBSD... just might need Chrome for certain things and doubt Chrome is installable in FreeBSD. I like LVM on LUKS too but that's a bit complicated to setup in FreeBSD installer. Just wish Swap would automatically be made 1.5 to 2 times the RAM installed in computer automatically by installers.

Oh, and not sure how to add myself to other groups like "audio,video,lp,scanner,cdrom,floppy,etc"...and edit login.conf file with "YOURGROUPHERE" for SDDM login manager for XFCE.


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## Vull (Apr 7, 2019)

smooey said:


> I had installed FreeBSD twice on host/main machine I'm currently using. Once with XFCE and other time with KDE5 (Plasma). For some odd reason though, the installer appears to only give me 3.5GB SWAP, when I have 8GB RAM installed in tower/hardware. Unless that's Swap being sliced up in 3rds (3.5, 3.5, and 3.5 = 10.5GB ram) ?


I also had this problem and had to use manual partitioning to get my swap partitions up to a suitable size.


> Also, issue with KDE5 at some point the background of menus and menu items disappeared and only saw the beveled /gradient clear outer border of where the menu would normally be. I clicked on icon in task bar to view like connected USB drive and couldn't see nothing but a border of where the menu should be. Did same for the main menu in left corner.. couldn't see any programs, icons, etc.


To make this problem go away I switched the compositor from OpenGL to XRender in System Settings > Display and Monitor > Compositor > Rendering backend.


> I like FreeBSD and it works, just dunno about the partitioning manually bit. I tried to edit it after installer did suggested partitions but I couldn't change the amounts for the partitions. Not sure if I can drop the console before running installer and do "CFDISK" and set up partitions first.. but what's the invoking command to restart installer...


To return to the installer, enter the `exit` command at the shell prompt.


> I removed the KDE5 and tried doing Slackware Current and had some issues, and now on Feren OS lol.


Good luck with all that. I'm still using MATE on Debian, but still prefer to use kde5 or plasma5-plasma over any other pre-packaged DE's I tried on FreeBSD.


> Even with Feren OS the installer only gave me 976MB of Ram out of 8GB ram.. no wonder the dang browser froze up/locked up on me before... LOL. I'd go with FreeBSD... just might need Chrome for certain things and doubt Chrome is installable in FreeBSD.


I'm pretty sure you have to use Chromium instead of Chrome. I don't care too much for either one and continue using Firefox.





> I like LVM on LUKS too but that's a bit complicated to setup in FreeBSD installer. Just wish Swap would automatically be made 1.5 to 2 times the RAM installed in computer automatically by installers.
> 
> Oh, and not sure how to add myself to other groups like "audio,video,lp,scanner,cdrom,floppy,etc"


You can add a short list of groups, separated by spaces, for your primary non-root user account in the installer, but your list  might be too long to squeeze them all in. Another way to do it from a root shell prompt is like this: `pw groupmod audio -m username`.





> ...and edit login.conf file with "YOURGROUPHERE" for SDDM login manager for XFCE.


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## smooey (Apr 8, 2019)

Vull said:


> I also had this problem and had to use manual partitioning to get my swap partitions up to a suitable size.



Ah okay, well what I did was just make the 512K or whatever boot one, 16GB Swap one, and left the rest to Root and didn't bother trying to figure out how to partition size the /var, /tmp, etc directories. Since those other ones mount under /root anyway the rest of drive space should work I hope. 



Vull said:


> To make this problem go away I switched the compositor from OpenGL to XRender in System Settings > Display and Monitor > Compositor > Rendering backend.



Thanks! I know it's a bit late now though cause I already dban'd the hard drive and installed XFCE4 this time with FreeBSD. That's one thing I hate about KDE in general, the bugs, issues, or settings that could fix issues AFTER you can't see what you're doing to get to the settings to change them. Lol. Like last time, I had all the menus disappear, so I wouldn't be able to SEE where to go and get into them to change them. 



Vull said:


> To return to the installer, enter the  exit command at the shell prompt.



Thanks! That worked, I found a youtube video online about how to manual partition as well, so it helped.



Vull said:


> Good luck with all that. I'm still using MATE on Debian, but still prefer to use kde5 or plasma5-plasma over any other pre-packaged DE's I tried on FreeBSD.



Yeah, Feren OS is nice but not nice either. For some reason no matter what size I make the swap partition, the Chrome/Chromium browsers freeze up / lock up and the CPU spikes like crazy. Now as far as I know it don't happen on FreeBSD (XFCE4). 



Vull said:


> I'm pretty sure you have to use Chromium instead of Chrome. I don't care too much for either one and continue using Firefox.



Yeah, just sucks cause some sites like gov't related sites, or survey sites, are picky about the browsers and want Chrome, and only Chrome. So that's another reason why I'm limited to certain distros or BSDs to use for an OS. 



Vull said:


> You can add a short list of groups, separated by spaces, for your primary non-root user account in the installer, but your list might be too long to squeeze them all in. Another way to do it from a root shell prompt is like this:  pw groupmod audio -m username.



Thank you!  

Now another thing with XFCE, and you don't miss the little things until they're not there... and I miss the Network Manager applet in top task bar, and audio slider etc. I managed to get a Network Manager installed with little applet. But still no audio applet. I tried installing PulseAudio and the PulseAudioVolumed thing ... and nope, still no applet. 

I also installed XFCE-goodies or whatever, and still no applets. So not sure what to do to get the applets... 

Another thing that spit out in terminal after installing PulseAudio stuff.. is this stuff here, and I did the bottom part of it.. but not sure how to do the kernel stuff... 


```
You will need to enable CAM support in the kernel.  Your kernel
configuation should include:
    for SCSI CD/DVD devices:
    device scbus
    device cd
    device pass
    for ATA CD/DVD devices you will need the above, plus:
    device atapicam

You will also want to make the CD devices world read- and writable.
In /etc/devfs.rules, add the following:
    [system=10]
    add path 'acd*' mode 0666
    add path 'cd*' mode 0666
    add path 'pass*' mode 0666
    add path 'xpt*' mode 0666
```


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## Vull (Apr 8, 2019)

smooey said:


> Ah okay, well what I did was just make the 512K or whatever boot one, 16GB Swap one, and left the rest to Root and didn't bother trying to figure out how to partition size the /var, /tmp, etc directories. Since those other ones mount under /root anyway the rest of drive space should work I hope.


That's the same way I do it; 3 partitions and 3 partitition types: 1) either freebsd-boot for MBR booting or EFI for uefi booting, 2) freebsd-ufs, and 3) freebsd-swap. There are other ways but this way is pretty simple.


> Thanks! I know it's a bit late now though cause I already dban'd the hard drive and installed XFCE4 this time with FreeBSD. That's one thing I hate about KDE in general, the bugs, issues, or settings that could fix issues AFTER you can't see what you're doing to get to the settings to change them. Lol. Like last time, I had all the menus disappear, so I wouldn't be able to SEE where to go and get into them to change them.


I had to reboot the server the first time it happened to me and try again. Now changing the compositor is one of the first things I do when booting X for the first time on a new install. I also use `startx` and this .xinitrc to start X so I can use the [CTRL][ALT][BACKSPACE] key combination to terminate the X session even when I'm "blind" because of graphics problems:
	
	



```
setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp
exec ck-launch-session dbus-launch --exit-with-session startkde
```



> ...
> Yeah, just sucks cause some sites like gov't related sites, or survey sites, are picky about the browsers and want Chrome, and only Chrome. So that's another reason why I'm limited to certain distros or BSDs to use for an OS.


Haven't had that problem with Firefox yet, but I don't visit that many sites either.

... Can't help with the pulseaudio problem either since I don't use pulseaudio on FreeBSD. Good luck with your endeavors. It took a lot of tweaking and retries for me to finally get to the DE I wanted on FreeBSD, but overall I felt and still feel it was more than worth the effort.


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## smooey (Apr 8, 2019)

Vull said:


> That's the same way I do it; 3 partitions and 3 partitition types: 1) either freebsd-boot for MBR booting or EFI for uefi booting, 2) freebsd-ufs, and 3) freebsd-swap. There are other ways but this way is pretty simple.


Nice, now I know what to do next time and it's easier this way lol. I was thinking other day how nice it would be if FreeBSD or someone made a "UFS/ZFS Partition Schemer" thing... where you just enter in the size of your hard drive and push submit and it spits out automatically a good suggested partitioning scheme for you to use.

It's hard to just mentally figure it out like, "ok, I have 250GB hard drive..so should 50GB go to root and so forth or split 200GB in half a 100GB for root and 100GB for /usr and then 50GB divided up amongst Swap, /Var, and /tmp...or.." If there was a "schemer" some where, it would be helpful.



Vull said:


> I had to reboot the server the first time it happened to me and try again. Now changing the compositor is one of the first things I do when booting X for the first time on a new install. I also use  startx and this .xinitrc to start X so I can use the [CTRL][ALT][BACKSPACE] key combination to terminate the X session even when I'm "blind" because of graphics problems:



Ah okay, I'll have to try that then. I've been thinking about downloading KDE5 and Sddm again, and change the files (rc.conf / .xinitrc) from XFCE to KDE stuff... and try that adjustment you said above there in other post. Then just remove all XFCE stuff and audio stuff I did... cause KDE5 has the audio volume bar, and so forth in it.



Vull said:


> ... Can't help with the pulseaudio problem either since I don't use pulseaudio on FreeBSD. Good luck with your endeavors. It took a lot of tweaking and retries for me to finally get to the DE I wanted on FreeBSD, but overall I felt and still feel it was more than worth the effort.


Thanks and I'm assuming you're using KDE5 as DE for FreeBSD right.. lol


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