# Best BSD alternative(s) to FreeBSD?



## Spartrekus (Jun 16, 2019)

Hello,

In any case you cannot run, install,... FreeBSD, which other option would you have ?
e.g. OpenBSD, NetBSD, ... 

which one would be the best alternative ?

thank you!
With best regards


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## Cthulhux (Jun 16, 2019)

illumos, probably. If you absolutely want something named BSD, OpenBSD.


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## Nicola Mingotti (Jun 16, 2019)

OpenBSD and NetBSD are both good. i used them in the past. To get a feeling of the different culture just look at their equivalent of our handbook.


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## ralphbsz (Jun 16, 2019)

I've run OpenBSD before, and was very happy with it. Honestly, even happier than with FreeBSD, because the system is even more clean and organized. I had to give up on it due to missing features.

The question is though: in what scenario would one not be able to run FreeBSD? There might be exotic hardware platforms where FreeBSD isn't supported, but I doubt that OpenBSD would support them. NetBSD has a long tradition of running on a lot of older and more diverse hardware.

In reality, the correct question to ask is not "which alternate BSD would one use in general". The correct question to ask is this: What is the intended hardware platform, what is the intended use of the system, what is the desired operation/maintenance/upgrade mode, and is the system for production or for education/tinkering/hobby. That will really determine what OS to use.


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## scottro (Jun 16, 2019)

Like ralphbsz, I'm curious about the situation. OpenBSD often runs, with less work for X, mouse, and so on, on laptops.  Otherwise, I'd like to hear the situation, but if it is a matter of the hardware not working well with FreeBSD, my first choice for another BSD would be OpenBSD.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 17, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> which one would be the best alternative ?


Do you not know? Have you never tried? After all, you've been around here for a year, and constantly have something to say about everything on a daily basis, so I am curious why you feel the need to ask this question and have not discovered it on your own.


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## rigoletto@ (Jun 17, 2019)

Alternative to FreeBSD for what, and what architecture?

Server? Muen (if x86/64) + MirageOS/Solo5.
Desktop? DragonFlyBSD.
Ports system? Ravenports


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jun 17, 2019)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Do you not know? Have you never tried? After all, you've been around here for a year, and constantly have something to say about everything on a daily basis, so I am curious why you feel the need to ask this question and have not discovered it on your own.


I think he's asking what our opinion is on the matter.


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## tedbell (Jun 17, 2019)

OpenBSD. I used it for a bit but FreeBSD has more software that's up to date.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 17, 2019)

drhowarddrfine said:


> ...


I asked because it is an interesting area. Many to test.
Nice interesting discussions.
That's nice that there are already cool alternatives.


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## joancatala (Jun 19, 2019)

NomadBSD is absolutely awesome. Try it from a USB pendrive. You won't touch your hardisk, but you will have FreeBSD 12 with lot of hardware detected by default.


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## vermaden (Jun 19, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> In any case you cannot run, install,... FreeBSD, which other option would you have ?
> e.g. OpenBSD, NetBSD, ...
> 
> which one would be the best alternative ?



None actually ...

You can not replicate all these on anther system ... Linux is close but definitely Illumos/OpenBSD/NetBSD are not.


WINE
ZFS
beadm
up-to-date packages (latest) with pkg(8)
Jails
performance
VirtualBox
Bhyve
FUSE
exFAT/ext4/NTFS filesystem support
GELI
GEOM framework
pkg(8) + Ports Framework with 32000+ packages


In the past:


Opera 12.x and earlier browser was available for FreeBSD only.
I used Nvidia binary drivers (they are FreeBSD only)


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## hitest (Jun 19, 2019)

OpenBSD would be my first choice; it is elegant, simple, robust, with exceptional documentation.


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## Nicola Mingotti (Jun 19, 2019)

As vermaden points out if you chose FreeBSD you had reasons to do so

But, here is a real world example where we needed to try another *BSD.

My cousin found a Sun workstation in our building, we wanted to install FreeBSD, we failed, here is the reference post. Since what we really wanted was `pf`, then we gave OpenBSD a try and it run. That machine is still running OpenBSD.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 19, 2019)

Nicola Mingotti said:


> As vermaden points out if you chose FreeBSD you had reasons to do so
> 
> But, here is a real world example where we needed to try another *BSD.
> 
> My cousin found a Sun workstation in our building, we wanted to install FreeBSD, we failed, here is the reference post. Since what we really wanted was `pf`, then we gave OpenBSD a try and it run. That machine is still running OpenBSD.



I guess OpenBSD and NetBSD have the best references.

Illumos and driver issues is common.


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## vermaden (Jun 19, 2019)

Nicola Mingotti said:


> As vermaden points out if you chose FreeBSD you had reasons to do so
> 
> But, here is a real world example where we needed to try another *BSD.
> 
> My cousin found a Sun workstation in our building, we wanted to install FreeBSD, we failed, here is the reference post. Since what we really wanted was `pf`, then we gave OpenBSD a try and it run. That machine is still running OpenBSD.




If its SUN workstation then its possible that Solaris or Illumos is the best choose.


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## Nicola Mingotti (Jun 20, 2019)

vermaden said:


> If its SUN workstation then its possible that Solaris or Illumos is the best choose.



What is best depend no what you want
We wanted to use a *BSD, pf and we wanted a system we are already familiar with. OpenBSD was the first to run. NetBSD would have been next attempt.

P.S. I think i saw the documentation of Solaris many years ago. In print, it was very good AFAIremember. But, i never used it nor Illumos.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 20, 2019)

Nicola Mingotti said:


> What is best depend no what you want
> We wanted to use a *BSD, pf and we wanted a system we are already familiar with. OpenBSD was the first to run. NetBSD would have been next attempt.
> 
> P.S. I think i saw the documentation of Solaris many years ago. In print, it was very good AFAIremember. But, i never used it nor Illumos.


...actually, I would have attempted to run NetBSD (NB) first, and then OpenBSD, because NB could even run on a toaster


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jun 20, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> . . .  because NB could even run on a toaster



In these days of IoT, I think it's light bulbs.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 20, 2019)

OJ said:


> In these days of IoT, I think it's light bulbs.


what do you mean? More info would be helpful.  IoT?


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jun 20, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> what do you mean? More info would be helpful.  IoT?


Internet of Things = IoT
Light bulbs with a web server are pretty common these days, and cheap too. Here's the first link that came up for me.
Also, IKEA has a whole line of them.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 20, 2019)

OJ said:


> Internet of Things = IoT
> Light bulbs with a web server are pretty common these days, and cheap too. Here's the first link that came up for me.
> Also, IKEA has a whole line of them.



Internet of things
Description
The Internet of things is the extension of Internet connectivity into physical devices and everyday objects. Embedded with electronics, Internet connectivity, and other forms of hardware, these devices can communicate and interact with others over the Internet, and they can be remotely monitored and controlled. Wikipedia

What do you think about "Internet of things"? Do You like this thing?


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jun 20, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> What do you think about "Internet of things"? Do You like this thing?


I'm going to start another thread because we're getting too far off topic here. And yes, I have a thing or two to say about it, and I'm sure others do too.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 20, 2019)

OJ said:


> I'm going to start another thread because we're getting too far off topic here. And yes, I have a thing or two to say about it, and I'm sure others do too.


Ok, good idea, please let us know about your thinking about it. 

Sincerely, With best regards OJ.


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## Nicola Mingotti (Jun 20, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> ...actually, I would have attempted to run NetBSD (NB) first, and then OpenBSD, because NB could even run on a toaster



My cousin set up other servers with OpenBSD and FreeBSD in the past but has never used NetBSD. The SUN is his hardware so our order of testing was pretty much the one of lest surprise.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 20, 2019)

Nicola Mingotti said:


> My cousin set up other servers with OpenBSD and FreeBSD in the past but has never used NetBSD. The SUN is his hardware so our order of testing was pretty much the one of lest surprise.



Maybe he still wanna try the NetBSD on it? Why not run a live netbsd.


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## aht0 (Jun 20, 2019)

ralphbsz said:


> The question is though: in what scenario would one not be able to run FreeBSD? There might be exotic hardware platforms where FreeBSD isn't supported, but I doubt that OpenBSD would support them. NetBSD has a long tradition of running on a lot of older and more diverse hardware.


Probably NetBSD is better when you have laptop with Optimus hybrid GPU. From Linux I know that Nouveau driver is able to handle it, NetBSD has Nouveau port too, been waiting for it's ZFS port get properly squared away before installing it again on Optimus laptops. FreeBSD can only do LLVM-piped GL there.


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## hruodr (Jun 20, 2019)

I can recommend OpenBSD. I used it many years long as my only Desktop OS, and still use it, I like it very much. I began to use FreeBSD (again) only because of ZFS: (a) it corrects redundant stored files using checksums, (b) runs not in only 
one OS, (c) it has the chance to live a lot of time. But ZFS is an exaggeration and bloated for my only archival use, a 
waste of resources: it is a compromise, because I did not find a better alternative.

OpenBSD and FreeBSD are in some way very different. OpenBSD is more modern, transparent, clean, innovative, coherent:
it is not a surprise that it does not support ZFS. FreeBSD is more traditional, collects a lot of very different things that
developed in the time, perhaps less ideological and more pragmatical: FreeBSD is more BSD than OpenBSD.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 20, 2019)

hruodr said:


> I can recommend OpenBSD. I used it many years long as my only Desktop OS, and still use it, I like it very much. I began to use FreeBSD (again) only because of ZFS: (a) it corrects redundant stored files using checksums, (b) runs not in only
> one OS, (c) it has the chance to live a lot of time. But ZFS is an exaggeration and bloated for my only archival use, a
> waste of resources: it is a compromise, because I did not find a better alternative.
> 
> ...


Why you do need ZFS in particularly? Maybe bigger harddisks, then move all to other FS.

NetBSD isn't more BSD than Free/OpenBSD?


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## ralphbsz (Jun 20, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> Why you do need ZFS in particularly? Maybe bigger harddisks, then move all to other FS.


ZFS is just a better file system. It has checksums (not quite end-to-end but close), CoW, built-in RAID, all these good things.  For large systems (high capacity) this is vital, but even for small systems (one or two medium size disks), it is good.



> NetBSD isn't more BSD than Free/OpenBSD?


The term "more BSD" is contentless.


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## Nicola Mingotti (Jun 20, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> Maybe he still wanna try the NetBSD on it? Why not run a live netbsd.



Oh I really doubt so. My cousin is back to Italy and his OpenBSD SUN is one of the few computers he still has running here in Menlo Park.


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## hruodr (Jun 20, 2019)

With "more BSD" I though nearer to the original idea: (Berkeley) *Software Distribution*. OpenBSD ist not a Software
Distribution, but an Operating System with a clear idea. I wrote coherent: all its pieces tend to obey a specific standard and 
so the whole. Just test it, or read the mailing list, and you will see what I mean.

I clearly wrote for what I need ZFS: not for the lot of wonderful cool features, but as a file system that (1) cares on data
integrity and corrects when it finds errors, that (2) do not make me dependent of only one operating system, (3) 
that hopefully will be readable in 30 years.

I think, since long ago one should have invented a file system for only doing good archiving. The conditions for archiving are not the same as for a running system.


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## Spartrekus (Jul 13, 2019)

The big thing of OpenBSD is the installer.
The Openbsd installer is from antiquity. The Openbsd installer is not much user friendly. It is always cool to fire up another console with F2...F6 to check what is going on.
Furthermore, the mounted directories /usr... is a lot.
uname ? none.
a: b: c: ... is not much clear.

NetBSD for that matters goes better.
NetBSD is far more user friendly.
NetBSD  i386 / x86  interests is actually reminding us today's Microsoft.
NetBSD has already good CPU machine availability.
The usb image installer has live shell directly.
/dev/sd0a ... until ... infinite  shall be simplified. 
The size of the image to install is terrific. About 1 GB 


CPU​Machines​Install media​amd6464-bit x86-family machines with AMD and Intel CPUsDVD, USB image, UEFI USB image (see instructions)armARM development boards like Raspberry Pi, Banana Pi, ODROID, moreARMv6, ARMv7i38632-bit x86-family generic machines ("PC clones")CD, USB imagemipsMIPS development boards like EdgeRouter, Loongson, Malta,moremips64, mips32sparc64Sun UltraSPARC (64-bit)CDothersamiga, alpha, cats, dreamcast, M68k, PowerPC, sparc32, VAX,more


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## Alain De Vos (Jul 13, 2019)

It's weird in netbsd that it uses rpcbind on the desktop which opens ports.


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## Spartrekus (Jul 13, 2019)

Alain De Vos said:


> It's weird in netbsd that it uses rpcbind on the desktop which opens ports.



It is a bit weird indeed. There are few things about security about NetBSD.

There are not so much choices actually.

- FreeBSD : if you have luck that it works. There are not much fixing possibilities if there is an entropy or an important issue with the packages. 13. is not already working. 12. has the known entropy issue. Once there is a broken package, then, you need another BSD alt.
- NetBSD : if you manage to get it working. The kernel and hardware support quite better than FreeBSD, but it is not FreeBSD inside.

Finally, you run Linux with Gnome and Wayland


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## kpedersen (Jul 13, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> The big thing of OpenBSD is the installer.
> The Openbsd installer is from antiquity. The Openbsd installer is not much user friendly.



I disagree, I wish all installers were like this. I can install OpenBSD with my eyes closed (I just hammer the enter key until I hear my computer restart).
I also had to install over a serial port recently (actually a SunFire V210) and I really did appreciate the simple effective installer.

Don't get me wrong, FreeBSD's installer is still pretty good but I actually think the TUI is a little unnecessary over a series of CLI prompts. Also, after all is said and done, I even think the OpenBSD one ends up doing more for you; such as setting up xenodm, aparture, ssh server, etc.

Both are better than Linux where you either have this useless X11 Bloatware one (Fedora) or you simply do not have an installer (Arch) so you have to waste your time entering commands manually (most users just copy the wiki anyway). These guys just haven't *quite* got it


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## xtremae (Jul 13, 2019)

I don't know, I just prefer a plain shell install over any other method. In this case, both {Free,Open}BSD are exemplary to the point where I don't even have to look up the wiki or copy / paste any boilerplate. I also find the Anaconda installer, featured in most RedHat sponsored distros to be the most horrible among existing GUI installers. Not only is it slow and bloated but also unlike most, it follows a non linear process which can be quite confusing to a new user.


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## Spartrekus (Jul 13, 2019)

kpedersen said:


> I disagree, I wish all installers were like this. I can install OpenBSD with my eyes closed (I just hammer the enter key until I hear my computer restart).
> I also had to install over a serial port recently (actually a SunFire V210) and I really did appreciate the simple effective installer.
> 
> Don't get me wrong, FreeBSD's installer is still pretty good but I actually think the TUI is a little unnecessary over a series of CLI prompts. Also, after all is said and done, I even think the OpenBSD one ends up doing more for you; such as setting up xenodm, aparture, ssh server, etc.
> ...


thank you very much
I give a try to OpenBSD ...

I like the concept of FreeBSD, it is really old good thing with the bsdinstall :
Step 1) the keyboard - wow Linux cannot never imagine that it is the most important.
Step 2) the partition and just unpack the base and kernel - just this is enough
Step 3) enter root passwd.
Step 4) done. restart and configure by hand with rc.conf single file.

You just do not care about how to start it. Just chainloader +1 if necessary.
It works, it boots, it finds the network, you remove the usb wifi dongle, it can get back to the network, you can bring back and again devices, does not matter at all, and FreeBSD continues to work like nothing happens. Well, that's really awesome.

However, an entropy boot fix would be cool some day 

You do not have bsdinstall? no worries
You just install BSD anywhere with just 2 stuffs:   gpart + tar
Done, installed.

In any case you do want to install from source. clang is there to make you dream come true. You can survive and recompile by hand.
clang by default is cool. 

One can see that FreeBSD is really mature and very very high quality OS.

The base is more or less little and fast.

No bash, no perl, no python  lol


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## ucomp (Jul 13, 2019)

on OpenBSD installer I like the question :
ssh root access yes or no


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## Alain De Vos (Jul 14, 2019)

Some ideas to have some fun , i mean don't try it,
-Install openbsd on a disk with two openbsd partitions of partition type A6.
-Run the automatic fsck of freebsd on a openbsd slice
-Run the automatic fsck of openbsd on a freebsd slice
-Install openbsd on a gpt partition created in linux with gparted.
-Try to go back in the openbsd installer


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## ucomp (Jul 14, 2019)

yep, as far as I remember , it was quite easy escaping  by command '!' from the installer to prompt  ... do some operations and go back to the installer...


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## Alain De Vos (Jul 14, 2019)

I think a good installer should behave like a tree. Where you can go up and down forward and backward.


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## scottro (Jul 14, 2019)

OpenBSD's installer is pretty good, but I find the docs for partitioning are written for someone smarter than me. The old docs made it easy, so maybe I've just gotten dumber. 

However, (this may be unique to OpenBSD, you can't do it with Free and I've not used Net or Dragonfly in a long time) if you're multibooting, like Linux, it can use a logical drive and doesn't require a primary partition.  It works pretty well on a lot of thinkpads as its developers seem to use those a lot.  I have a page on multibooting it--last time I looked the FAQ said it's complex and such, but I find it quite straightforward, at least on a Linux machine.




__





						Multibooting OpenBSD
					





					srobb.net
				




Going back into the reasoning--lots of times, folks just want a BSD on their laptop. There doesn't have to be a reason. I remember this great statement, which at present I can only paraphrase.  It was when alpine, the mail client, was called pine and it was one of the many arguments about pine vs. mutt. The author said, People pull out all sorts of technical reasons to justify what is, in the end, an emotional decision. So if someone asks me why I want a BSD on my laptop, I feel justified saying because I want to. (Which makes me think I should put a link to the video that, I think, first got Billie Piper, Rose in Doctor Who, known in England. It was a song called Because we want to or something similar. With the confidence of youth it has lines like Why ya gotta play that song so loud, Because we want to.


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## Alain De Vos (Jul 14, 2019)

In openbsd I ended up using the autolayout, following removing all the slices, using a calculator to calculate start end size ...
An installer should not in any case expect an empty disk or leave you in the air, unless you are Windows.
Dragonfly has the same problem to my feeling.
Then Openbsd expect "b" partition as swap if its not there it will not boot.


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## ucomp (Jul 14, 2019)

Alain De Vos said:


> In openbsd I ended up using the autolayout, following removing all the slices, using a calculator to calculate start end size ...
> An installer should not in any case expect an empty disk or leave you in the air, unless you are Windows.
> Dragonfly has the same problem to my feeling.
> Then Openbsd expect "b" partition as swap if its not there it will not boot.



I deleted all autolayout-slices(except msdos(aarch64))  by typing 'd' as far as I remember , 
then created only a(root partition mount point /)  and b(swap), didn't need a calculator..


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## kpedersen (Jul 14, 2019)

Alain De Vos said:


> -Try to go back in the openbsd installer



I guess it lets you into the shell still where you can do a

```
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rsd0c bs=1M
```
Then I can just blast all my worries away 



Alain De Vos said:


> In openbsd I ended up using the autolayout, following removing all the slices, using a calculator to calculate start end size ...



Yep, I always start with the autolayout. I then realized that if I wanted a bigger /usr partition (usually the case because I put the ports tree there), then I just resize it with 'R' and very smartly it automatically reduces the size of the /home partition to make room for it. After this I was less frightened of this tool and now actually prefer it.

Either way, almost anything is better than FreeBSD's old sysinstall (https://docs.freebsd.org/doc/6.1-RELEASE/usr/share/doc/handbook/using-sysinstall.html)
But I do remember getting nervous when they replaced it with bsdinstall. Due to a bug my machine had with the early bsdinstall, I couldn't actually install FreeBSD any more


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## Spartrekus (Jul 14, 2019)

scottro said:


> OpenBSD's installer is pretty good, but I find the docs for partitioning are written for someone smarter than me. The old docs made it easy, so maybe I've just gotten dumber.
> 
> However, (this may be unique to OpenBSD, you can't do it with Free and I've not used Net or Dragonfly in a long time) if you're multibooting, like Linux, it can use a logical drive and doesn't require a primary partition.  It works pretty well on a lot of thinkpads as its developers seem to use those a lot.  I have a page on multibooting it--last time I looked the FAQ said it's complex and such, but I find it quite straightforward, at least on a Linux machine.
> 
> ...



I think that it is always good to have a workaround like with tar or alternative to unpack and go, and make settings by hands. This allows to install it if hardware fails during installation from media or tui menu failure.


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## ronaldlees (Jul 14, 2019)

I wonder which BSD distribution has the largest contributor pool (outside of FreeBSD, which of course is largest)?  Likely NetBSD has the smallest development group?  Typically I run NetBSD when using an unusual architecture that doesn't have a working FreeBSD port, because (as was said) - the devs there quickly jump aboard new architecture-porting projects.  Given what I've read about their small (official) development group - it seems they do a herculean job.  However; I suspect they simply don't have the time/resources to cover all the bases so much as would happen in the FreeBSD camp.  The installation is easy, and pkgsrc surprisingly versatile once you get the hang of it.

Have never seriously used OpenBSD, so can't compare it to anything.


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## Remington (Jul 14, 2019)

I used to work with Solaris OS and I would pick Illumos for 2 reasons: Zones and ZFS.  Solaris/Illumos have excellent virtual containers and generally much better than FreeBSD's Jail.  The reason why I switched to FreeBSD is native ZFS support and ports are very often up to date.  If it wasn't for FreeBSD then I would stay with Solaris or Illumos.  I wouldn't touch Linux as it's a mess.


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## badbrain (Jul 14, 2019)

kpedersen said:


> I disagree, I wish all installers were like this. I can install OpenBSD with my eyes closed (I just hammer the enter key until I hear my computer restart).
> I also had to install over a serial port recently (actually a SunFire V210) and I really did appreciate the simple effective installer.
> 
> Don't get me wrong, FreeBSD's installer is still pretty good but I actually think the TUI is a little unnecessary over a series of CLI prompts. Also, after all is said and done, I even think the OpenBSD one ends up doing more for you; such as setting up xenodm, aparture, ssh server, etc.
> ...



I disagree. The OpenBSD installer treat me like I'm a noob (OK I'm indeed an amateur but know enough how to do thing and I can google). I hate interactive questions like this it requires me to read the questions and give appropriate answers even though most of the time just hit enter is enough. My eyes are very bad so I hate this so much. With the NetBSD installer I can really done it while I'm very tired/nearly felt asleep, the steps are predictive and after you've done it more than 3 times you could do it with light speed like an automated robot 

I disagree again. The modern FreeBSD installer give you more power to customize the installation than OpenBSD, for example choosing which services to start and hardening system.

I also disagree. Except exotic distro like Arch, Gentoo,... Linux graphical installers are superior to any of the BSDs, it even allows people that know nothing about LVM to setup a fully working LVM PV with LUKS encrypting. Before FreeBSD (to be clear PCBSD at this time) has an installer allow graphically automatic Root On ZFS we have enjoy Root On Btrfs on Ubuntu with @ subvol for / and @home subvol for /home a long time. And I don't think X11 is useless too, and I don't have the authority to judge it is bloatware or not. Linux Live desktop is very useful and time saving indeed. I only try to be minimal only when I want to setup a server that I will manage via ssh


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## Spartrekus (Jul 14, 2019)

ronaldlees said:


> I wonder which BSD distribution has the largest contributor pool (outside of FreeBSD, which of course is largest)?  Likely NetBSD has the smallest development group?  Typically I run NetBSD when using an unusual architecture that doesn't have a working FreeBSD port, because (as was said) - the devs there quickly jump aboard new architecture-porting projects.  Given what I've read about their small (official) development group - it seems they do a herculean job.  However; I suspect they simply don't have the time/resources to cover all the bases so much as would happen in the FreeBSD camp.  The installation is easy, and pkgsrc surprisingly versatile once you get the hang of it.
> 
> Have never seriously used OpenBSD, so can't compare it to anything.



Considering NetBSD, the system is minimalist and has a good minimalist layer, then it does not need much developers.

It needs only a good Boot, with EFI or Legacy, regular boot, UFS or ZFS, a good TUI installer, and few good packages, such as : cp, mv, dd, sh... and a good compiler such as clang.
If the system is based on txz it is easy to install.

The basic default system, like the FreeBSD base + kernel, is the most important.

The more you have, the less ; - considering something else than the base.


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## badbrain (Jul 14, 2019)

Remington said:


> I used to work with Solaris OS and I would pick Illumos for 2 reasons: Zones and ZFS.  Solaris/Illumos have excellent virtual containers and generally much better than FreeBSD's Jail.  The reason why I switched to FreeBSD is native ZFS support and ports are very often up to date.  If it wasn't for FreeBSD then I would stay with Solaris or Illumos.  I wouldn't touch Linux as it's a mess.


Partially disagree. I installed OpenIndiana on VBox and I would say no, even though it's very good it's nearly frozen in time. Linux desktop involves far better than it state. I always has problem with PulseAudio prevent me shutdown that annoy me much I disabled both PulseAudio and Volume control applet. Even when Pulse running, sound doesn't work. With full VBox addition installed, I still can't watch any youtube video or hear any mp3 file from VLC, it's just hang and I have to kill it. I can watch youtube HD video on Windows or Linux guests normally. Software packages is very outdated and missing very much, I added both the hipster-encumbered  and SFE IPS repo but it's still very limited. I even use Joyent pkgsrc but it's nearly I install another userland it has it own modular-xorg and use it own set of libs without reuse the system wide installed libs. Many software still lacked or just crash, geany installed from pkgsrc gives segmentfault immediately and can't even run.

Overall I still think it's far smoother than the default FreeBSD mate desktop, specially about scrolling on Firefox but the most killing issue left me go for FreeBSD is poor disk performance. By default VBox disabled Use host IO cache so installation of OI take nearly 30mins. After enable IO cache and move the VM to SSD it's still cost more than 15 mins, compared to 5 mins to install FreeBSD.

Forcing ashift 12 is a nightmare. There's no option like -o ashift 12 and their zpool-12 no longer works. Their solution is via /kernel/drv/sd.conf that I found patchy and after I followed the tutorial of a guy from DelphixOS just to find out cfgadm can't unconfigure my disk so it's no affect, it must be unconfigure and reconfigure to have affect like the guy stated, I wasted more than 4 hours just to know it's no way to force 4k. I still have an OI VM running on SSD with ashift 9 now, slow like hell, both boot up and shut down takes mins but fast enough when already loaded for more than 10mins. Use swap like hell even I assigned 5G ram to it.

And I found SMF to be very slow indeed and the OI guys seem to be abused services too much so boot up (load services) and shutdown (close services) suffers. Don't accuse me, I found systemD to be far faster than SMF, which you guys claimed the golden standard.


----------



## shepper (Jul 14, 2019)

Getting back to the original post, I think the most common reason that one could not run FreeBSD is hardware support.  In terms of hardware support only linux is more up-to-date.

This brings up Crux linux which uses a BSD style /etc/rc.d init and has a very flexible ports system.  I don't use zfs, and the license is not compatible with GPL-2.0, but it is possible to add
ZFS on Linux

The Crux installer is non-existent - everything is done manually.


----------



## Spartrekus (Jul 14, 2019)

shepper said:


> Getting back to the original post, I think the most common reason that one could not run FreeBSD is hardware support.  In terms of hardware support only linux is more up-to-date.
> 
> This brings up Crux linux which uses a BSD style /etc/rc.d init and has a very flexible ports system.  I don't use zfs, and the license is not compatible with GPL-2.0, but it is possible to add
> ZFS on Linux
> ...


linux is linux, not BSD.


----------



## Sevendogsbsd (Jul 14, 2019)

I have only tried FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD (desktop usage). I did try GhostBSD a few years ago but had problems. I personally found FreeBSD to be the best for my hardware and use case. Use case being many of the things Vermaden listed. OpenBSD was so slow on my hardware it was was nearly unuseable. Screen and window redraws reminded me of the speed at which web pages would draw back when we used dial-up. My hardware is quite beefy so it was not my hardware that was at fault. FreeBSD is very fast on my hardware.Also, the OpenBSD installer is (IMHO), terrible in comparison to the FreeBSD installer.

FreeBSD is obviously my favorite


----------



## Remington (Jul 14, 2019)

badbrain said:


> Partially disagree. I installed OpenIndiana on VBox and I would say no, even though it's very good it's nearly frozen in time. Linux desktop involves far better than it state. I always has problem with PulseAudio prevent me shutdown that annoy me much I disabled both PulseAudio and Volume control applet. Even when Pulse running, sound doesn't work. With full VBox addition installed, I still can't watch any youtube video or hear any mp3 file from VLC, it's just hang and I have to kill it. I can watch youtube HD video on Windows or Linux guests normally. Software packages is very outdated and missing very much, I added both the hipster-encumbered  and SFE IPS repo but it's still very limited. I even use Joyent pkgsrc but it's nearly I install another userland it has it own modular-xorg and use it own set of libs without reuse the system wide installed libs. Many software still lacked or just crash, geany installed from pkgsrc gives segmentfault immediately and can't even run.



Solaris or OpenIndiana is best known for its robust server, security, virtualization and ZFS operations.  Linux is best for desktop.  FreeBSD is in the middle since it doesn't come with preinstalled windows manager as you have to build it from ports or packages plus tweaking the Xorg config.  It all comes in different flavors and needs.

I know Solaris or OpenIndiana's desktop is ugly and bland as it was designed to function as a server.  It also had very limited hardware support.  You can compile a better windows manager for it though.


----------



## Spartrekus (Jul 14, 2019)

Remington said:


> Solaris or OpenIndiana is best known for its robust server, security, virtualization and ZFS operations.  Linux is best for desktop.  FreeBSD is in the middle since it doesn't come with preinstalled windows manager as you have to build it from ports or packages plus tweaking the Xorg config.  It all comes in different flavors and needs.


Nice review


----------



## shepper (Jul 14, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> linux is linux, not BSD.


I'll concede in terms of a semantic distinction.  In reality there are large chunks of linux code in the FreeBSD kernel.  An OpenBSD developer noted that the recent amdgpu kernel code, imported from linux, was several fold larger than the source for the OpenBSD kernel.  FreeBSD imported the same linux code.


----------



## ronaldlees (Jul 14, 2019)

> amdgpu kernel code, imported from Linux was several fold larger than the source for the OpenBSD kernel.,  ...



Does this not scare anybody?


----------



## Remington (Jul 15, 2019)

ronaldlees said:


> Does this not scare anybody?



Not really as long as the codes are stable.  FreeBSD's ZFS codes was imported from OpenSolaris.


----------



## ralphbsz (Jul 15, 2019)

shepper said:


> In reality there are large chunks of linux code in the FreeBSD kernel.


If that were true, I'd think that the copyright and GPL lawyers would be all over it. It seems implausible.


----------



## badbrain (Jul 15, 2019)

shepper said:


> I'll concede in terms of a semantic distinction.  In reality there are large chunks of linux code in the FreeBSD kernel.  An OpenBSD developer noted that the recent amdgpu kernel code, imported from linux, was several fold larger than the source for the OpenBSD kernel.  FreeBSD imported the same linux code.


You mentioned about the newly ZoF don't you? ZoL is a out of tree kernel module and it's also under CDDL so I don't think saying it's Linux code to be fair. Correct me if I'm wrong, I think a kernel module on FreeBSD could be GPL or even proprietary as long as we don't link it statically and let the user install it from ports and load it manually on boot (via loader.conf)


----------



## badbrain (Jul 15, 2019)

Remington said:


> I know Solaris or OpenIndiana's desktop is ugly and bland as it was designed to function as a server.  It also had very limited hardware support.  You can compile a better windows manager for it though.


I didn't said OI desktop to be ugly. I even think it's much smoother than the default FreeBSD mate desktop installed from pkg. Everything feel well integrated but sound is sucks. To be clear PulseAudio sucks. Sound doesn't work and PulseAudio only prevent the system to shutdown. It's so bad they don't have the resource to even merge improvements from OmniOS like LX Zones let alone import another sound server like OpenBSD sndio.

And yes. It hardware support sucks. I can't even boot it on my bare system, the system just stuck until I remove the Live USB and Reset. I can only virtualize it via VBox. And I would prefer binary packages over build everything myself. My suffering with pkgsrc on NetBSD is enough. I don't understand why they could deliver to me binary packages while their pkgsrc can't even build without errors? Document is nearly nothing. I have to trial and error and search the mailing list of netbsd and smartos for hours to find just a one mk.conf option and see it doesn't work. NetBSD does have a xf86-video-vboxvideo but I can't compile it, it also not in packages even it exists for a long time and I have to use CustomVesaMode to be full screen on NetBSD. So no, I will rely on binary packages from Joyent.

The most important is could you let me know how to change ashift to 12 on the OI live so the installation just pick it and the created zpool will has ashift 12? It's so cumbersome. I followed this guide from a guy from DelphixOS and I would say it doesn't work: https://www.delphix.com/blog/delphix-engineering/4k-sectors-and-zfs


----------



## cynwulf (Jul 15, 2019)

ralphbsz said:


> If that were true, I'd think that the copyright and GPL lawyers would be all over it. It seems implausible.


It's true, but it's not GPL.

From, mesa/drm licence docs:


```
Component         Location               License
------------------------------------------------------------------
Main Mesa code    src/mesa/              MIT

Device drivers    src/mesa/drivers/*     MIT, generally

Gallium code      src/gallium/           MIT

Ext headers       include/GL/glext.h     Khronos
                  include/GL/glxext.h

GLX client code   src/glx/               SGI Free Software License B
```

MIT licence present in amdgpu Linux kernel source code:

```
/*
 * Copyright 2008 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
 * Copyright 2008 Red Hat Inc.
 * Copyright 2009 Jerome Glisse.
 *
 * Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
 * copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"),
 * to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation
 * the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense,
 * and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
 * Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
 *
 * The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
 * all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
 *
 * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
 * IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
 * FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.  IN NO EVENT SHALL
 * THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER(S) OR AUTHOR(S) BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR
 * OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE,
 * ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
 * OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
```






						preferred « LICENSES - kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git - Linux kernel source tree
					






					git.kernel.org


----------



## badbrain (Jul 15, 2019)

cynwulf said:


> It's true, but it's not GPL.
> 
> From, mesa/drm licence docs:
> 
> ...


Think of Linux as the upstream like the ZoL/ZoF relation. These hardware vendors contribute to Linux kernel because Linux is the most widely used server OS, but also want/(implicit)allow other OSes to take and reuse/port the code. So these code mostly licensed with permissive licenses. But kernel modules (in-tree, mainlined) are a different story, they're forced to be GPLed.


----------



## ucomp (Jul 15, 2019)

OpenIndiana & FreeBSD work perfectly together on servers , I have done this a longer time -
both servers were directly connected together via hardware.
the 1st person here who can tell me , why this is the case, will receive a "Thanks" from me ,
but the answer may only have 3 Letters


----------



## Remington (Jul 15, 2019)

ucomp said:


> OpenIndiana & FreeBSD work perfectly together on servers , I have done this a longer time -
> both servers were directly connected together via hardware.
> the 1st person here who can tell me , why this is the case, will receive a "Thanks" from me ,
> but the answer may only have 3 Letters



ZFS


----------



## ucomp (Jul 15, 2019)

Remington said:


> ZFS



OI & FreeBSD is a great combination, I connected both via FibreChannel, stmfadm etc are cool tools and there were absolutely no problems to share ZFS-storage in both directions.
OI has KVM integrated and can share many very performant FreeBSD- VMs...
so if you have CPUs on your server  which are not good supported by e.g. bhyve, KVM will do the job...


----------



## CraigHB (Jul 15, 2019)

Remington said:


> ronaldlees said:
> 
> 
> > Does this not scare anybody?
> ...



The thing about the FreeBSD license is it does not limit FreeBSD developers in utilizing any available code unless that code has restrictions itself.  I'm fine with it as long as the use of that code conforms to the way FreeBSD operates at a philosophical level  and of course the code itself is good code.

Though I do have to say, FreeBSD developers should be wary of adopting Linux/GNU code and really scrutinize what they're doing with it.  Sometimes Linux/GNU can get pretty far out there in the way things are done.


----------



## Remington (Jul 15, 2019)

CraigHB said:


> Though I do have to say, FreeBSD developers should be wary of adopting Linux/GNU code and really scrutinize what they're doing with it.  Sometimes Linux/GNU can get pretty far out there in the way things are done.



Same could be said for FreeBSD ports or packages as most of them were developed for Linux but modified to work with FreeBSD by the maintainers.


----------



## CraigHB (Jul 15, 2019)

That's okay for the most part as long as they aren't turning FreeBSD into Linux.  In other words, as long as they still do things the FreeBSD way.  In my mind allowing packages to operate like they do in Linux by giving them non FreeBSD style file locations and configurations is Linux pollution.

Of course that's not to imply there should be no Linux compatibility layer.  When I run a Linux package under FreeBSD, that's me allowing my system to do that.  The landscape of FreeBSD is preserved.


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Jul 15, 2019)

badbrain said:


> Think of Linux as the upstream like the ZoL/ZoF relation.


That was a merger, not an upstream to Linux. Linux people and reddit posters always get that wrong.


----------



## xtremae (Jul 15, 2019)

badbrain said:


> Think of Linux as the upstream like the ZoL/ZoF relation. These hardware vendors contribute to Linux kernel because Linux is the most widely used server OS...


That is correct. ZFS-on-Linux is the upstream for OpenZFS and contributing parties have agreed to rename the project (to OpenZFS) to reflect this.
From the FreeBSD mailing list:


> The sources for FreeBSD's ZFS support are currently taken directly
> from Illumos with local ifdefs to support the peculiarities of FreeBSD
> where the Solaris Portability Layer (SPL) shims fall short. FreeBSD
> has regularly pulled changes from Illumos and tried to push back any
> bug fixes and new features done in the context of FreeBSD.



After the rebase is complete, FreeBSD will be doing the above (ZoL has allowed developers to upstream their ifdefs) but instead of using Illumos they will directly be using Linux.

Unfortunately, things are not as streamlined for other projects, like the aforementioned amdgpu driver, since there is no common upstream for drivers and firmware. Thus, developers across the entire open source landscape need to invest a significant amount of time, effort and money in order to port these codebases, repeating the process for each and every platform.


----------



## christhegeek (Jul 15, 2019)

OpenBSD , DragonflyBSD are very good but for desktop use I don't think I could suggest them to anyone because they have no amdgpu or nvidia drivers support so you left with old radeon driver and nouveau ? or even worse if you have nvidia?




Nicola Mingotti said:


> OpenBSD and NetBSD are both good. i used them in the past. To get a feeling of the different culture just look at their equivalent of our handbook.


----------



## Alain De Vos (Jul 15, 2019)

As if a desktop with an intel card or a radeon card is bad ?
Not everybody does video editing or 3D games.


----------



## CraigHB (Jul 15, 2019)

FreeBSD is usually the first of the BSD systems to support new hardware, that's why I use it on my desktop.  Video drivers are one of the more critical ones.  Video processing is a big part of a desktop computer's usefulness for me.


----------



## Deleted member 9563 (Jul 16, 2019)

Alain De Vos said:


> Not everybody does video editing or 3D games.


For sure! I don't think that video people and gamers will ever find out about that though. We're invisible to them.


----------



## Alain De Vos (Jul 16, 2019)

I've read the number of lines of code in the host driver for recent accelerated 3D cards is exploding. Making it problematic in resources to port.


----------



## Spartrekus (Jul 16, 2019)

OJ said:


> For sure! I don't think that video people and gamers will ever find out about that though. We're invisible to them.


2OJ: is it maybe possible to do video editing under freedos? I guess yes, no?


----------



## Deleted member 9563 (Jul 16, 2019)

I've played a video on DOS once, but never tried any editing. I doubt there's any viable program for that. I actually never was a fan of applications and only use DOS with small utilities which I sometimes string together. That's why I found *nix comfortable eventually. 

BTW, my comment about  video was a semi-sarcastic one stemming from the difficulty of searching for information about video performance for non-game or video-editing usage.


----------



## scottro (Jul 16, 2019)

I don't do any complex editing that requires a GUI program, but ffmpeg works quite well on FreeBSD.  I do have to use the port which usually winds up, a few months later, causing conflicts with packages as I want a few non-standard things.  I should add that I requested x265 be included in the default package and the maintainers and others who saw the RFE agreed.  I repeat my stuff is all pretty simple, adding an audio track, perhaps combining videos, perhaps re-encoding so a Mac can easily play it, stuff like that.


----------



## cynwulf (Jul 16, 2019)

badbrain said:


> These hardware vendors contribute to Linux kernel because Linux is the most widely used server OS, *but also want/(implicit)allow other OSes to take and reuse/port the code. So these code mostly licensed with permissive licenses. But kernel modules (in-tree, mainlined) are a different story, they're forced to be GPLed.*


I doubt their intentions are so altruistic.  They are simply avoiding using copy left licences for their code.

Also the code in question is actually "in-tree".  Refer to the link I posted and you'll observe the licences used in the Linux kernel itself and that the amdgpu driver is part of the source tree (as with the intel, radeon, nouveau GPU drivers).


----------



## Spartrekus (Jul 16, 2019)

cynwulf said:


> I doubt their intentions are so altruistic.  They are simply avoiding using copy left licences for their code.
> 
> Also the code in question is actually "in-tree".  Refer to the link I posted and you'll observe the licences used in the Linux kernel itself and that the amdgpu driver is part of the source tree (as with the intel, radeon, nouveau GPU drivers).


I guess they would have more benefits to use FreeBSD, OpenBSD or NetBSD, because they would have increased stability of their products.
Licensing is a long story. Since Linux is being used for Servers, they go for it.

Looking the logs, it seems that _sourceforge_ uses _Nginx_ on _ubuntu_ server


----------



## ronaldlees (Jul 16, 2019)

OJ said:


> I've played a video on DOS once, but never tried any editing. I doubt there's any viable program for that. I actually never was a fan of applications and only use DOS with small utilities which I sometimes string together. That's why I found *nix comfortable eventually.



Does Canada have patents?  If not, there's a DOS version of ffmpeg that you could use for video editing.


----------



## CraigHB (Jul 16, 2019)

Alain De Vos said:


> I've read the number of lines of code in the host driver for recent accelerated 3D cards is exploding. Making it problematic in resources to port.



3D games have always been the motivation behind advances in 3D acceleration, but there are other uses for it such as 3D modeling.  Though it seems those other applications don't get much attention.   But yeah those drivers are surprisingly large.  I wouldn't want to be the one to sift though all that code.


----------



## mod3777 (Jul 28, 2019)

I think Linux can fill a gap where hardware support concerns. Distros like Alpine Linux is minimal enough to build your system. One can install Xserver/Wayland, window managers etc. However Alpine Linux uses musl which is lightweight glibc alternative. Therefore to use nonfree applications, one must (i.e. the author etc) need to build those against musl libc. However there is a libc6-compat mode where certain statically liked glibc apps claim to run. I am a minimalist guy and I like both FreeBSD and minimalist Linux systems (except those general purpose systems with tons of internal complexity, such as Ubuntu, and desktop oriented distros , mostly). FreeBSD chroot system is quite simple, due to availability of base system as tar.xz package. I think I can get some luck with stage 3 tarball 

You can try experimental, minimalist, DIY distros like Alpine Linux, Void Linux, Sabotage Linux, Gentoo, GoboLinux, GuixSD, Slackware and CRUX.



xtremae said:


> I don't know, I just prefer a plain shell install over any other method. In this case, both {Free,Open}BSD are exemplary to the point where I don't even have to look up the wiki or copy / paste any boilerplate. I also find the Anaconda installer, featured in most RedHat sponsored distros to be the most horrible among existing GUI installers. Not only is it slow and bloated but also unlike most, it follows a non linear process which can be quite confusing to a new user.



"RedHat sponsored distros" - There you go. Advertisement leads to consumerism.


----------



## kpedersen (Jul 28, 2019)

OJ said:


> For sure! I don't think that video people and gamers will ever find out about that though. We're invisible to them.



I agree with this! I am a computer graphics person but I see a worrying trend these days, especially with Linux (and more specifically, what Linux users want) which will possibly pull through into FreeBSD unfortunately.

*Everything* is becoming about the desktop visual experience, high performance graphics and smooth playback. We have things like Wayland which is destroying crucial enterprise features such as multiple user sessions for VNC. Yes, X11 directly is a bit old hat for remote desktops across the internet but VNC relies on XDMCP to kickstart a remote session. Without this VNC will be like Windows where you can only stream the one session (the same as what appears on the monitor).

Likewise a lot of cli tools now in Linux are seemingly designed to be automated by GUI tools. They are far too verbose to be used directly from a terminal. For example ifconfig has been replaced by "ip" which requires a lot of instructions to achieve simple tasks. Another one is the firewall, getting that to kick in is not very elegant, having to write a bunch of post.ip.rules.d crud.

One day perhaps we will have a beautiful desktop with fancy transition effects (ugh!), but such a stupid useless operating system, it isn't actually worth interacting with XD

This could possibly be due to the companies behind Linux (and ultimately FOSS) need cool graphics to sell their products. Or it could be due to Windows "migrants" who want to keep their flashy and inefficient Windows lifestyle in Linux.


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Jul 28, 2019)

Because Linux target is Windows and the desktop and not technical competence. 

mod3777  I would like to remind everybody that technical discussion of the Linux operating system, even here in the Off Topic board, is off topic still.


----------



## Crivens (Jul 29, 2019)

kpedersen said:


> One day perhaps we will have a beautiful desktop with fancy transition effects (ugh!), but such a stupid useless operating system, it isn't actually worth interacting with XD


.oO(Fisher Price OS)


----------



## garry (Jul 30, 2019)

kpedersen said:


> ..... I see a worrying trend these days, especially with Linux and more specifically, _what Linux users want_.....



After my real engineering job went away (the whole company went away) I spent a year selling Apple computers (Apple Solutions Consultant ) I doubled sales at my CompUSA store in one year. For the rare techie customer I could hit a key and switch into a KDE interface and show "unix" but for most customers all I had to do was slowly pull the mouse pointer down to the dock, watch the beautiful icons expand as I hovered over them, click one of the icons and watch it do its cute little jumping up and down while the window opened. Sold!


----------



## badbrain (Jul 31, 2019)

I would say it's OpenBSD.

My first BSD is FreeBSD. After that I played a bit with virtualization but unfortunately my CPU too old and not supports VMX. NetBSD is the only BSD could run on Virtualbox with this trick. So I love NetBSD. Where other OSes refused to work, only NetBSD runs. It reminds me of my loyalty black dogs. But they both gone. I'm also given up on NetBSD. Now I've an upgraded system with full VMX and VT-d capable. I could play with NetBSD further. So bad I realize, the system is blazing fast with 4 cores and 4G ram, even boot up faster FreeBSD with the same configuration, but software is severely lacked. I means binary packages I could install with pkgin. Sometimes pkgsrc.se list the port as available but it corresponding binary package is not found (not yet built? I don't think so. I think it can't be built, so it's unavailable, it's also means the port is indeed broken). You know, packages for firefox, codeblocks, codelite, chromium,... and so many commonly used software are unavailable. Left me with only seamonkey that works and reliable, but the porter forgot to create a desktop entry for it, so I've to start it from the terminal. I tried my best to bring the system to a working state, and I partially succeed with a MATE desktop started via .xinitrc (there's only slim-themes but no slim package, ironically!), seamonkey, geany, libreoffice, ibus. I also not have much success with pkgsrc other than building basic port like bash, joe, nano,... whenever you started to build gui based apps it will be full of problems. Made me wonder, it's the same pkgsrc, how could they deliver binary packages to me, when I can't built the ports myself at all? And I switched to use NetBSD as a server, I not yet want to give up on it. But the lacked of software stopped me again. I want to setup a svn server with NetBSD VM, and I can't found mod_dav_svn anywhere. I changed to make it a NFS server, despite it's only has NFSv3 but if I could find a useage for it it's better than nothing. Then I also realized I've to use brigde interface and to my surprise, how fast it is with NAT how slow and unreliable it is with bridge. So I given up on it completely.

To my sincere, I advised NetBSD to follow the way of SmartOS, become a hypervisor OS and only that. It has many potential: going to have up to date ZFS ported from FreeBSD and the new NVMM. When you can't compete with other on the server side (web servers, mail, file servers,...) and don't have the resource to catch up Linux on the desktop side this is the safest way for you. I heard people said NetBSD also has potential on the embedded side but I don't know anything about embedded so I don't mention it.

Someday I would try NetBSD again and check if I could use it as a hypervisor OS or not.

Back to the topic, I choose OpenBSD because I think it's a better NetBSD than our current NetBSD. DragonFly also has many impressed features but the last time I tried it on Virtualbox (5.6.1?), the HAMMER2 FS just unreliable, after I installed MATE and set everything up in rc.conf I restarted and HAMMER started to fail, if I'm not wrong something about malloc error. But I don't blame the developers, though. They've done incredible job even though they're such a small group.


----------



## aht0 (Aug 15, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> Hello,
> 
> In any case you cannot run, install,... FreeBSD, which other option would you have ?
> e.g. OpenBSD, NetBSD, ...
> ...


DragonFly actually. More-or-less equal WiFi chipset support (AR93xx/94xx also supported for example), 'em' driver is in it's older stable form, uses modified variant of FreeBSD ports, familiar userland. Just kernel is different, tho that "just" is different a great deal.
At once very familiar ('old pre-fork FreeBSD shows through') and strange OS. Learning curve is less than with other BSD's if you want to start using it right after install. Often, when you can't find DragonFly's examples or docs, FreeBSD's work. Huge downside: no driver support for Nvidia. but Radeon's driver support might even be a bit better. No forums, mailing list is pretty inactive, everything communication-wise seems to flow through IRC. Worth trying out.


----------



## hukadan (Aug 16, 2019)

aht0 said:


> No forums, mailing list is pretty inactive, everything communication-wise seems to flow through IRC.


This could change in the near future :


> The mailing lists are not seeing much if any activity any more.  This is
> more a generational issue... people kinda prefer web-based forums these
> days and younger generations do not use mailing lists at all for group
> stuff (not really).  Even the devs almost universally use IRC and not
> ...


Source : http://lists.dragonflybsd.org/pipermail/users/2019-July/358226.html


----------



## aht0 (Aug 16, 2019)

Yeah, I have subscription there, I've seen it and have read it. Most follow-up replies were content to proceed without creating web-based forum.


----------



## badbrain (Aug 16, 2019)

aht0 said:


> Yeah, I have subscription there, I've seen it and have read it. *Most follow-up replies were content to proceed without creating web-based forum.*


That's very wrong. A user friendly web forums is a big plus for any OS/distribution.


----------



## freq (Aug 16, 2019)

OJ said:


> I think he's asking what our opinion is on the matter.





OJ said:


> I'm going to start another thread because we're getting too far off topic here. And yes, I have a thing or two to say about it, and I'm sure others do too.


Please link to thread!


----------



## CraigHB (Aug 16, 2019)

I find web based forums hugely easier to use than mailing lists.  I would be happy if FreeBSD made more use of them.  I'm not a developer, but I would like to be able to browse developer communications more easily.  For example my interest in FreeBSD is mainly as a desktop user and I'd like to be able to follow development for the latest processors and graphics.  I find it rather difficult to zero in on info about that from the lists.


----------



## badbrain (Aug 16, 2019)

CraigHB said:


> I find web based forums hugely easier to use than mailing lists.  I would be happy if FreeBSD made more use of them.  I'm not a developer, but I would like to be able to browse developer communications more easily.  For example my interest in FreeBSD is mainly as a desktop user and I'd like to be able to follow development for the latest processors and graphics.  I find it rather difficult to zero in on info about that from the lists.


No. This time I disagree. I would like a web forums to replace the users related mailing list but not the devs related mailing lists. An automatically mechanic to import messages from the devs related mailing lists into forums threads and posts should be welcome. But I could sure no devs would ever agree with your proposal to replace the devs related mailing lists with web forums. I think devs need their own space. We as users also need our own space. Some devs hanging around users' forums should be great, though 

p/s: you're a little off topic here, as we said about DFBSD's mailing lists and the needs of a user friendly web forums for it. FreeBSD already has a great web forums


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## CraigHB (Aug 16, 2019)

Yeah I was going to say that would probably never happen.  They started with lists and they're probably here to stay.  Just saying it would be better for me, but I'm not the one doing the development.  And that's a good point, putting development stuff on a forum would probably cause problems. 

One option would be a forum read-only for users where only the developers actually have the ability to post.  I did find one site mentioned on the forum that compiles the lists into a forum-like format, but still not as a clean in terms of how a forum looks.  Helps though; http://freebsd.1045724.x6.nabble.com/


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## badbrain (Aug 16, 2019)

CraigHB said:


> Yeah I was going to say that would probably never happen.  They started with lists and they're probably here to stay.  Just saying it would be better for me, but I'm not the one doing the development.  And that's a good point, putting development stuff on a forum would probably cause problems.
> 
> *One option would be a forum read-only for users where only the developers actually have the ability to post.*  I did find one site that compiles the lists into a forum-like format, but still not as a clean in terms of how a forum looks.  Helps though; http://freebsd.1045724.x6.nabble.com/


I already proposed a similar idea  Instead of only the devs allowed to post I think they just done everything on their mailing lists, the conversations then synced to us on web forums.


> *An automatically mechanic to import messages from the devs related mailing lists into forums threads and posts should be welcome.*


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## CraigHB (Aug 16, 2019)

blackdog said:


> I already proposed a similar idea  Instead of only the devs allowed to post I think they just done everything on their mailing lists, the conversations then synced to us on web forums.



Well, I'll second that if anyone asks


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## Deleted member 9563 (Aug 16, 2019)

freq said:


> Please link to thread!


Took me a while to find it back there.  https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/internet-of-things.71182/


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## freq (Aug 16, 2019)

As always, a model privacy advocate! Much appreciated.


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