# Innacurate minimum hardware requirement



## Deleted member 67029 (Jul 5, 2021)

Section 2.2. 'Minimum Hardware Requirements' of the handbook states that 8GB hard drive space is a good starting point for a general-purpose desktop system. Well, I created a 8GB hard drive, installed FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE, the X Windows System and GNOME, I haven't even used the system yet and I am already out of space!

The handbook starts off by stating "This book is the result of ongoing work by many individuals. Some sections might be outdated."

This really isn't acceptable. If information is outdated then the product is not ready and shouldn't be released.


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## SirDice (Jul 5, 2021)

I suggest you learn about the documentation project: https://www.freebsd.org/docproj/
Then learn how to contribute: https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/fdp-primer/
Then you can submit your improvements.


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## Deleted member 67029 (Jul 5, 2021)

Thanks


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## ralphbsz (Jul 5, 2021)

A: Define "general-purpose desktop system". Personally, I would say: If a shell comes up and you can log in, that fulfills the requirement. Perhaps adding a lightweight X environment (so you can run view images or PDF files) might be useful. A full-fledged DE environment is overkill in my mind.

Just as an example: Before breakfast, I was using a machine on my basement lab bench. I started X for a moment to view a PDF file, then I brought it back down to console shell windows.

B: How much disk space does it actually need?

C: Feel free to improve the documentation. FreeBSD is (unlike Linux, Windows and MacOS) mostly a volunteer-driven project. If the product is not ready, then help make it ready. If you feel it should not be released, we can have a discussion, but I'm 100% sure that you will be outvoted about 99-to-1.


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## Deleted member 67029 (Jul 5, 2021)

*A:*

Thank you for your personal opinion.

I like GNOME 3.


*B:* Well, I run a full installation of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS on a 25GB drive, and it is utilising only 15 GB. So that may give you an indication.


*C:*

I may do this.

I would bet on your vote.


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## ShelLuser (Jul 5, 2021)

Dare I ask how you installed those environments? Because something tells me you build 'm yourself through the ports collection, which is obviously beyond the scope of the handbook; that implies using binary packages.

Common sense really: if you build ("compile") stuff you're in for overhead like compilers, compiler dependencies, extra libraries, etc, etc. Obviously that's going to gobble up additional diskspace.


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## ralphbsz (Jul 6, 2021)

Kolusion said:


> I would bet on your vote.


You probably won't like this answer ... but in my personal opinion, the FreeBSD project should not waste any effort on GUI / X / DE work. It should focus on being a great server and embedded OS, and leave user interfaces (above and beyond a functioning console and shells) to someone else.


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## bakul (Jul 6, 2021)

ralphbsz said:


> B: How much disk space does it actually need?


Kolusion has a valid point here and I hope he at least files a bug report. I created a VM with 32GB "disk" (the FreeBSD UFS partition is 30GB). I use it for recompiling -current kernel + it has Xorg + twm and some more packages. Already 24GB are used. Of that 16GB are in /usr/obj, 1.3GB in /usr/src (no .git locally). Only 3.1GB are left. So even for embedded OS work 32GB are barely enough, especially if you store /usr/src/.git locally .+ have a couple of experimental kernel images. The documentation should suggest 64GB as default or can break out some estimates for various use cases.


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## Datapanic (Jul 6, 2021)

What's the size of your swap partition?  Did you install the ports tree and debug options at install time? Did you copy the ports tree to your VM and build the packages there or what?

I tried to install the gnome3 meta port but it seems to be missing from the FreeBSD pkg repository for me - maybe it's broken again.  But even after installing Mate 1.24.1 on a test FreeBSD 11.4, which is a lot newer than Ubuntu 18, I still have about 36% of the freebsd-ufs / partition free.


```
Filesystem    Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/da0p2    7.3G    4.3G    2.4G    64%    /
```


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## ralphbsz (Jul 6, 2021)

bakul said:


> I created a VM with 32GB "disk" (the FreeBSD UFS partition is 30GB). I use it for recompiling -current kernel + it has Xorg + twm and some more packages. Already 24GB are used. Of that 16GB are in /usr/obj, 1.3GB in /usr/src (no .git locally). Only 3.1GB are left. ...


So of the 30 GB of space (I'm presuming all the following numbers are also usage), you are using 16 + 1.3 for /usr/obj + /usr/src (which is only needed to recompile FreeBSD itself from sources), and you have 3.1 GB free (by the way, if we want to be precise, we really need to be specific on whether this is GB or GiB, the 12% will make a difference). So you are actually using 9.6 GB. I would say that recompiling everything from source is not normal desktop usage, and also simply not necessary in the BSDs. So while 8 GB is perhaps too small (depending on one's definition of desktop), it doesn't seem to take much more.

I just looked on my machine, which is a server installation (without X, without a DE), and total usage excluding /home but including /var and /tmp is 3.5 GiB. And I haven't cleaned up in ages; I bet I could squeeze half a gig out of that with just purging things like old logs (I save log files forever) and the cache of updated packages. But then, I don't compile the system itself from sources. For fun, I just looked on a Raspberry Pi (running Raspbian) which has X-Windows and I think some form of DE (I don't even know which one), and total usage is 7.45 G. But honestly, I don't know how wrong 8 GB is for a FreeBSD installation with desktop environment.


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## bakul (Jul 6, 2021)

I agreed my use is not "normal" but the point is that 8GB can be easily exceeded if you do anything more than use it as a server with binaries installed from packages.

Section 2.2 of the handbook says "General-purpose desktop systems need more resources. 2-4 GB RAM and at least 8 GB hard drive space is a good starting point". These numbers may have made sense in the past but no more. If you run gnome or kde it is going to eat up a bunch of memory. If you build anything locally it will need more space. If you upgrade using FreeBSD-update a couple of releases and all the security patches, that will eat up more space [I don't know how much because I gave up on FreeBSD-update]. My view is that the default recommendation in a handbook should be *conservative*. Or as I said,  break out  estimates for common use cases.


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## bakul (Jul 6, 2021)

Datapanic said:


> What's the size of your swap partition? Did you install the ports tree and debug options at install time? Did you copy the ports tree to your VM and build the packages there or what?


Ports under a Gig. No debug options.


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## mark_j (Jul 6, 2021)

Kolusion said:


> Section 2.2. 'Minimum Hardware Requirements' of the handbook states that 8GB hard drive space is a good starting point for a general-purpose desktop system. Well, I created a 8GB hard drive, installed FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE, the X Windows System and GNOME, I haven't even used the system yet and I am already out of space!
> 
> The handbook starts off by stating "This book is the result of ongoing work by many individuals. Some sections might be outdated."
> 
> This really isn't acceptable. If information is outdated then the product is not ready and shouldn't be released.


The key word here is "minimum".
Does the handbook mention this space caters for something like a bloated gnome install? If not, then stop taking things so literally.
And besides I can infer from 'created a 8gb hard drive', that this is a VM? Just add another logical disk and move on.


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## jmos (Jul 6, 2021)

bakul said:


> Kolusion has a valid point here


A default installation of FreeBSD 13 actually takes 2.0 GB. A `pkg install gnome3 xorg` on a 8 GB drive results in this:

```
root@freebsd:~ % df -h
Filesystem      Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/vtbd0p2    7.1G    6.2G    325M    95%    /
[…]
root@freebsd:~ # pkg clean
[…]
root@freebsd:~ # df -h
Filesystem      Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/vtbd0p2    7.1G    5.5G    1.0G    84%    /
[…]
```
So I've got 1 GB free disk space after installing a monster; Note that GNOME is far beyond something lightweight, and to both - GNOME3 and Xorg - there exists a "lite" package for user who want to go with minimized setups. The named handbook section describes "minimum", and it doesn't say your fine with 8 GB - it says "at least". And that works.

So no, the OP has no valid point.


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## sidetone (Jul 6, 2021)

Because Gnome is a bloated desktop.


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## ct85711 (Jul 6, 2021)

I will give a point to the OP, in the part of when that handbook section was made; 8GB would have been sufficient.  The part that isn't often acknowledged is that packages have been rapidly increasing their size over time, let alone a package set like Gnome/KDE (which is several packages combined together to provide the experience).  Sadly, developers overall has gotten the mindset of storage space is cheap; so why worry about trimming stuff down, when you can throw and kitchen sink and the entire bathroom in to make it look "pretty" (hence the part of bloated/feature creep being mentioned often).


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jul 6, 2021)

bakul said:


> Section 2.2 of the handbook says "General-purpose desktop systems need more resources. 2-4 GB RAM and at least 8 GB hard drive space is a good starting point". These numbers may have made sense in the past but no more.


"Made sense" is subjective.

What I do may not make sense to you at all, but it doesn't mean I don't know where it's going with sense and purpose. What I see as good you may see differently. You saying that makes no sense to me.

See how that works?

I have 7 laptops running FreeBSD as General purpose desktops. One has 2GB RAM, two have 8GB and the rest 4GB RAM.

My smallest HDD is 100GB and that won't even hold my .mp3 files Directory at 109.6GB. But a 100GB HDD will hold all my 3rd party programs with room for documents or images I generate.

I have an IBM 13.6GB HDD from the first PC I owned that was the perfect size for a FreeBSD based router/firewall. 8GB before my time with computers,


bakul said:


> If...


There's where you went off the rails.

If I had done this that wouldn't have happened. If wishes were dollar bills we'd all be rich.

If I had known there was an If Clause in the Marriage License I would never have gotten married 3 times.

If you use Fluxbox instead of Gnome it won't use as much memory. If, you did. If you do.


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## reddy (Jul 6, 2021)

I think it's important to keep the lowest possible minimum in the handbook, because people assessing using FreeBSD for embedded projects / appliances will decide whether or not there is a fit largely based on this section of the handbook.


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## jmos (Jul 6, 2021)

ct85711 said:


> I will give a point to the OP, in the part of when that handbook section was made; 8GB would have been sufficient.


I showed that 8 GB is enough for a full (!) GNOME3 and Xorg installation (1 GB still remains). So tell me: When it comes to a minimum, how much disk space is needed *at least* in your opinion?

Once again: The handbook section is about *minimum* and says to 8 GB *at least*.


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## hardworkingnewbie (Jul 6, 2021)

Kolusion said:


> Section 2.2. 'Minimum Hardware Requirements' of the handbook states that 8GB hard drive space is a good starting point for a general-purpose desktop system. Well, I created a 8GB hard drive, installed FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE, the X Windows System and GNOME, I haven't even used the system yet and I am already out of space!
> 
> The handbook starts off by stating "This book is the result of ongoing work by many individuals. Some sections might be outdated."
> 
> This really isn't acceptable. If information is outdated then the product is not ready and shouldn't be released.


Obvious troll is obvious.


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## Deleted member 67029 (Jul 6, 2021)

ShelLuser

I installed them from packages.

Building from source is actually within the scope of the handbook. See section 4.5.1. 'Installing the Ports Collection'.


ralphbsz 

I have no like or dislike for your desire for FreeBSD to not waste any effort on a GUI, that's your opinion. If that's what you like, then I am happy for you. 


Datapanic

I am not sure what size the swap was. Everything related to the hard drive was default.


mark_j

8GB of hard drive space is not the minimum for a general-purpose desktop. My experience demonstrated this. GNOME 3 is only bloated in your opinion, the general-purpose desktop user does not care about bloat. In fact, such a user doesn't even know what bloat is. They are not even thinking of it, they are thinking about the task they have sat down to do.

Who is talking literly? You don't seem to know how to use the word.

"Just add another logical disk" <<< lol, yes, I am sure the general-purpose desktop user will add another logical disk.

jmos

You are comparing apples with oranges. You think in 2021 I am going to use a command line operating system for general desktop use? I am a normal person, not some loser that uses shell for everything 247 just so I can make myself feel superior.

As for my opinion on minimum hard drive space for general desktop usage? The last 750MB of my 8GB was jumping up and down. Not sure what was causing that, maybe a swap file? So, 8GB plus what ever is causing it to jump? 10GB? But the purpose of an operating system is to serve other applications. Plus we need to take into account future updates and the users personal files. Let's say the piece of string is 20 GB.

sidetone

If you find it bloated, get a better computer. I have 8GB of RAM and 1 TB hard drive space to throw at it. If GNOME consumes half of it I won't care. It won't affect my power bill or my ability to carry out tasks on the computer.


reddy

The lowest RAM usage is 96 GB, but I gave it 2GB because that's what it states is minimum for desktop use. Minimum must be used in context. As for hard drive space, the handbook is a fail.


hardworkingnewbie

You're a dog.


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## mer (Jul 6, 2021)

Windows 10 minimum hardware requirements for desktop editions says 2GB RAM and 20GB storage for 64bit systems.

I wonder how well that would work if you actually say tried to edit a file on it.


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## hardworkingnewbie (Jul 6, 2021)

Kolusion said:


> hardworkingnewbie
> 
> You're a dog.


It's a pity that most modern trolls just don't have the drive any longer to be at least somewhat entertaining. That's the best you can come up with? You're just really bland and a minor annoyance, that's all there is about it.


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## Alexander88207 (Jul 6, 2021)

sidetone said:


> Because Gnome is a bloated desktop.



Dont forget that gnome3-lite also exists which dont install the entire gnome3 stack.


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## SirDice (Jul 6, 2021)

Alright, I've had enough of this. Thread locked.

Kolusion you better get your act together or you will inevitably end up on the chopping block.


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