# Is FreeBSD good for me ?



## Nollo (Oct 2, 2010)

Hello everyone !

I am a Student in computer science, and I learned how UNIX systems work. I'm currently on Windows Seven and a Fedora linux.

The next week, I'll receive my brand new notebook. It's for my studies and I want to use it for "professional" tasks, and an UNIX system is the best imo. So I have some questions, because I don't know if FreeBSD agrees me.

1. The hardware, it's a new laptop and I don't know if all composants are supported, but I guess yes, I've seen some parts compatible in the hardware note.
Here is the features:



2. Wine. I heard that FreeBSD 7 and above have some problems with it. So I would like to know if it's more stable under FreeBSD 8. I plan to run Warcraft 3 / Adobe products ( dreamweaver, photoshop ).

3. Flash. I like to listening to music on Deezer and watching video on Youtube, but I don't care playing flash game.

In fact, a Linux would be more suitable for me, but when I was child I loved Beastie ï¿½e, and now I think it's a great system. I prefer the philosophy of FreeBSD than Linux ( I don't like have 349345 files to configure system for example ) and I have sucessfull installed the system on my desktop.

So is Freebsd good for me ? Or an Arch Linux would be better ?

Thanks for any help !


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## lme@ (Oct 2, 2010)

If you choose the nvidia graphics card over the intel one, you should not have big problems with the notebook.
With the binary nvidia driver you should be able to run Warcraft 3. I haven't played a lot with wine but WoW and Heroes of Might and Magic 5 ran without any issues.
Flash 10 works, so you can enjoy Youtube videos.
You could try the notebook first with PCBSD. You can boot into the live mode and see what works and what doesn't.


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## Nollo (Oct 2, 2010)

lme@ said:
			
		

> If you choose the nvidia graphics card over the intel one, you should not have big problems with the notebook.
> With the binary nvidia driver you should be able to run Warcraft 3. I haven't played a lot with wine but WoW and Heroes of Might and Magic 5 ran without any issues.
> Flash 10 works, so you can enjoy Youtube videos.
> You could try the notebook first with PCBSD. You can boot into the live mode and see what works and what doesn't.



Good idea to test the notebook with PCBSD !

For nvidia, that's what I chose, sorry for not having clarified it :stud


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## ahavatar (Oct 3, 2010)

Linux has more hardware supported, so make it sure that yours is supported by FreeBSD. And Adobe Flash is not that smooth on FreeBSD because FreeBSD has no native support and uses Linux compat layer. 

I use Ubuntu for general purpose, Windows for gaming, and FreeBSD for learning UNIX


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## Caliante (Oct 3, 2010)

ahavatar said:
			
		

> And Adobe Flash is not that smooth on FreeBSD



For me it plays as smoothly as my skin after shaving 

e)


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## Dereckson (Oct 3, 2010)

And if the PC-BSD test doesn't give you satisfaction, I'd keep Windows 7 installed so you can launch Photoshop and WoW easily, with the best graphics drivers support.

And FreeBSD in a virtual machine (with 1 to 2 GB RAM) for all other tasks.


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## Nollo (Oct 3, 2010)

I never talk about WoW lol 

Well. In fact I'm really lost. There is a huge choice for a good operating system.

I think it's between these 3 systems I would install :

- FreeBSD
- Debian ( Stable/Testing ? )
- Arch

I love FreeBSD but I'm a bit afraid to use it daily. I don't want a dual boot on the notebook, just one OS.
In fact, it may be the unrecognized of BSD which afraids me, you don't have a lot of discussion on internet whereas Linux is THE alternative OS to Windows.

But I think I torture my mind too much :q. I'm going to test Debian on VirtualBox, but are few days enough to appreciate a linux distribution ?


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## graudeejs (Oct 3, 2010)

Read my signature


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## Nollo (Oct 3, 2010)

killasmurf86 said:
			
		

> Read my signature



:e:e:e:e:e:e

I burst out laughing ! And trust me, I choose the title just by chance :beergrin


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## UNIXgod (Oct 3, 2010)

Nollo said:
			
		

> I love FreeBSD but I'm a bit afraid to use it daily. I don't want a dual boot on the notebook, just one OS.
> In fact, it may be the unrecognized of BSD which afraids me, you don't have a lot of discussion on internet whereas Linux is THE alternative OS to Windows.



I used freebsd as a desktop for years on a laptop. It was a really good experience. Especially since you stated you have already learned how UNIX works. Though I spent much time trying out all the xorg window managers and desktops. installed different versions of movie players and learned how to script and program on the system as well as other common tasks even jails and other specific to bsd features.

Regardless you can't lose. Since your asking if freebsd is right for you on a freebsd forum all I can say is that FreeBSD is perfectly suited for laptop use and Desktop experiences.


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## graudeejs (Oct 3, 2010)

btw, on my latop HP Compaq 6715b FreeBSD works much better than Ubuntu (except wifi, which I didn't bother to get to work)
With FreeBSD my laptop is so cold.... really... It was cold with Linux, but with FreeBSD it's even colder....

Windows was overheating it all the time


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## olav (Oct 5, 2010)

My honest answer when it comes to flash and gaming is that it doesn't work right at all compared to how it works with Windows. As long the game you want to play do not have native support then just forget it. Wine is such a mess, even when it works. Use Windows for those things and use a virtual machine to do Unix things.


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## kpedersen (Oct 5, 2010)

Hi,

Warcraft III runs great under WINE (with nvidia and older intel card)

If PC-BSD generally works, I suggest setting aside a day (or so) to install FreeBSD and go through the handbook step by step (user mounting, wireless config, installing packages and ports etc...) until it all starts to make sense.

The great thing is that if you mess up the install, you can reinstall it without needing online activation .

The learning curve isn't endless and soon it will be a great asset!


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## shitson (Oct 5, 2010)

I have to agree with the guys don't try and re-invent the wheel here. If you can get your hands on Windows 7 (Which does come legally with your laptop [win win]) see if you cannot use something like gParted and re-partition your disk with enough space on the end to install FreeBSD. 

Some guides that may come of use: 

To Repart the Disk - Gparted @ SF
To Repair the Windows 7 Boot loader if you just want windows back Here


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## kpedersen (Oct 5, 2010)

Perhaps, although if someone is serious about learning freebsd FreeBSD, I would suggest having it as the only installed OS, so you are forced to learn how to use it. (I.e quickly reading the man pages to burn a porn dvd when you are in the "mood" lmao)


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## Nollo (Oct 5, 2010)

Although I have almost all MS products with MSDN, the notebook comes with ubuntu ( saved 30â‚¬ ).

Playing game ( old game ) is just a bonus, I just wanted to know if I would be able to play the game named. Dual boot is not a solution, I don't want to reboot my computer just to play a party, and reboot to get back on my workstation.

To finish, I think FreeBSD is great for me, I tested it on a VM and it runs great, I can't wait to test it on the notebook ï¿½e


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## Nollo (Oct 18, 2010)

Hi there !

My notebook may comes today 

I'll burn a PCBSD iso to install FreeBSD/ZFS, and see if all work fine ! I'll put a review too


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## Dereckson (Oct 19, 2010)

What the point to use ZFS with one hard disk?


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## graudeejs (Oct 19, 2010)

Dereckson said:
			
		

> What the point to use ZFS with one hard disk?



Snapshots, rollback, clones


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## danbi (Oct 19, 2010)

Also, you know when and which of your files are corrupt and may reinstall from backup/whatever. With UFS, data goes bad silently and you may never know.


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## sully (Nov 5, 2010)

*Gaming?*

So I don't play WOW or anything, but I just installed 8.1 on my desktop and was surprised as to how many games there are in ports. I just installed linux-americasarmy 2.5 (albeit old but still fun) and linux-enemyterritory + linux-enemyterritory-tce (Love tce, still old but one of my favorite fps games). Also Warzone 2100 and Quake4 actually. I forgot that I had Q4 and am totally impressed as to how well it runs on FreeBSD. Better than what I remembered it being back in the day. So needless to say I wasn't expecting to be able to play any games on here but I am totally happy at what I currently have. Good luck!


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## sully (Nov 5, 2010)

Oh and I for some reason had problems getting flash to work under firefox, but worked flawlessly under Opera! I went to /usr/ports/www/linux-opera && make install clean then /usr/ports/www/opera-linuxplugins && make install clean.


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## Nollo (Nov 8, 2010)

For the moment, I cannot use FreeBSD because my wifi card is not recognized.

Could someone advices me a compatible wifi card. My current card is http://recherche.dell.fr/1/2/1838-dell-wlan-1510-802-11-a-b-g-n-mini-carte-demi-hauteur-kit.html


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## tingo (Nov 11, 2010)

The command `$ apropos wireless` will give you a list of man pages for wireless drivers. Each man page for a driver (ath(4) for example) will list which cards are supported.


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