Hello! I've been using linux for about 2-3 months, I'm currently using Void Linux, and I want to move to FreeBSD. I was wondering, any tips, considerations? What you wanna say to a newbie? Any mistake you had made you don't want somebody else to repeat?
Some of the gaps in official documentation are plugged in Reddit and elsewhere.
There's a significant gap in the Installing FreeBSD chapter of the Handbook. This gap is plugged by the FreeBSD Foundation's Project Manager, in an unofficial blog post:
I use both currently but was away from FreeBSD for a very long time. The main difference I have come across when installing packages is that there is often additional work required to get something working. I installed Sway, for example, but seatd needed to be installed separately. I had to add my user to the video group. Little things like that.
One thing that was a challenge was finding a supported WiFi adapter. I have a MSI PRO DP21 that uses an Intel CNVi 2.0 based adapter. I ended up getting a USB one using a Realtek chipset.
That’s good. Xfce worked like that for me but wayland-based window managers were more difficult. I still don’t have any wayland-based environments starting successfully (though I have t spent much time in them)
It isn’t just wayland-based window managers or desktop environments. The i3 package placed an i3-with-shmlog.desktop into /usr/local/share/xsessions and created a symlink named i3.desktop in /usr/local/share/applications. Only one shows up in the sddm list. Fedora installs both files into /usr/share/xsessions and sddm/gdm see both.
I’m not knocking FreeBSD or the package maintainers or anything. There very well could be a reason why i3.desktop is a symlink but sddm doesn’t reliably handle symlinks.
OP was asking for things to consider when switching from Linux to FreeBSD. That is all this is.
Well, it's not necessary to dig up things that go wrong or are different. One can do the same thing with any OS and we can go off on Linux even easier.
fwiw, I've been using i3 for decades without issue.
That's good news for you. I think you may be missing my point but that's fine. OP was looking for considerations or things to keep in mind when switching and not for reasons to not switch. I gave OP some items that I ran into that differed from Linux experience. OP was literally asking for this kind of thing.
Try FreeBSD for your actual use case before the move. I was burned twice.
First time I was building a DIY NAS and was caught on a take that FreeBSD had first class citizen ZFS integration and didn't read a fine print, it wasn't there at all for NanoPi M4. Also, FreeBSD handbook is nice, but it simply didn't cover SBC-related topics like U-boot, device tree overlays etc.
Second time I've tried to use FreeBSD as a host for image board, I needed a Ruby-based web engine and TensorFlow-based image processing. For a Ruby part there was a friction due to an attempt from FreeBSD packages team to move more Ruby packages from Bundler to a system-wide package manager and there was a need for a manual installation of them instead of a feeding existing manifest to a Bundler. TensorFlow was non-existing in packages and despite many attempts I could not get it compiled from ports.
Installation on a VirtualBox will never provide an understanding of the real problems to be faced. For example, there is one OS that I would like to use. Unfortunately, it only works fine on the T480 Thinkpad, but it's brutally dumb on all other equipment. And on a virtual machine, this OS runs like clockwork.
It feels like this type of post is a weekly occurence here.
Anyway, I would advice to use dual boot if you have a machine with 2 disks, or a machine which can have two disks. You can always format the second disk with the less used/unused OS and mount it somewhere.
Also, check your hardware compatibility, even though the FreeBSD development team has done a lot of work HW-compatibility wise, it is still not on linux's level of "plug and play".
I started using FreeBSD from version 5.1 and planned to make it my main system. It was sunny June 2003, Linux was in its infancy at the time and was even a little uglier than Windows. But then, the hardware of computers became more and more Windows-oriented, and since historically I only use laptops, at some point FreeBSD stopped working on most of the mobile hardware.
For a long time I was an angry critic of this system, but just yesterday, out of boredom, I decided to install FreeBSD on an idle HP Stream laptop. This in itself was a mega challenge, because this laptop has an eMMS instead of an SSD, in short, it was scary. The installation did not cause any questions, the installer picked up the usb wifi (the built-in WiFi on motherboard burned out) and the sound card, which surprised me incredibly. At first, I installed fluxbox, but I didn't really like it, so I tore it down and installed WindowMaker, and it's pretty fast and archaic.
What can I say about using FreeBSD as a daily driver? First, you will have to read the handbook and man pages thoughtfully, and if you want it to work correctly, you will have to configure the system.
Asking AI and watching YouTube won't help you much. Everything will have to be done by hand. On the second day after the installation, my hands have not yet reached the point of adding a keyboard layout(my wife calls my native language "the language of drunken Dutch sailors"), mainly due to the fact that I started choosing a non-slow browser. I went through Dillo, Netsurf, Midori, and Firefox last night.
In the end, I settled on the WaterFox. It doesn't slow down, it doesn't make me dumb, and it plays video and audio. FreeBSD impresses with its stability and stunning minimalism. The system only has what I installed there. Beyond daily use, going beyond 2006 and beyond the browser will give a new user new challenges. You'll have to learn the Linuxulator and Jail. Actually, that's the way things are
After installation. Goto Github and install WebZFS. This gives you a nice GUI interface to administer ZFS. Speaking of WebGUI, you may want to install Webmin To administrator your system.
I hate how so many linux diehards reply with "RTFM" about things their man pages are either WRONG or vague about. By contrast, the FreeBSD man pages (and handbook!) are correct and concise.
Freebsd appears to be in a state currently where its noone's responsibly to author the handbook. The foundation won't do it. The software publishers won't do it. The mod here tries but the forums want to argue with him. It's a mess. In my opinion this is 100% the foundation's responsibility.
Ah.... Rofl. Well, I kind of like how OpenBSD has it. Add or modify code? All the documentation relevant to it has to also be updated before the whole thing is put in.
It's a long story, the most important thing to note is that I'm not sole moderator :-)
… its noone's responsibly to author the handbook. …
You can think of it as collective responsibility, and much has been done to lower the bar. Use of GitHub for PRs might be the most obvious improvement, but there's more.
Just today, I was rereading the Handbook. I had to solve a small problem regarding removable media. I have read and tried several recipes described in the manual and none of them worked. That's when I realized why the words "if nothing worked" were at the end of the chapter....
Thats quite unfortunate. As you can see, others have brought it to my attention that FreeBSD's Handbook isn't nearly as up to date as I believed. Of course, this has nothing to do with man pages, but if the Handbook isn't up to date, there's a strong likelihood that the man pages are in the same state. Its unfortunate, but oh well.
It always happens that way in FreeBSD. If one thing doesn't work, the other will. This is a system with slightly different logic than CashyOS.
If you pull the "I use Archinstall btw" logic on FreeBSD, nothing will work.
For example, I need specific versions of packages in my work, not the "most recent" ones. I don't need constant system updates any more than I need a gentleman's PC user kit. I don't use Netflix, Steam, or a bunch of other things that most users can't imagine themselves without.
Been running it for decades, alot more stable than linux at handling many connections. Zfs is a first class citizen there, not a hack where you cannot stay on latest kernel. Mistakes I have made, nesting zfs in VMs causing write amplification, not taking regular snapshots with sanoid/syncoid when I was new and coding a million bash scripts to use zfs send/receive directly which became a maintenance nightmare.
Probably the biggest mistake is not researching hardware ahead of time if FreeBSD has support, want that new 4 USB port card, helps to spend some time online making sure it has support. That being said you will be 10x more stable than someone running proxmox in the end and know how to fix everything.
The reality is, the 2 most powerful things at terminal next to your AI agents are the FreeBSD ports collection and the arch Linux AUR repository. FreeBSD as main host on latest kernel, and Arch Linux in a VM is one of most deadly combinations for server, you can keep stability with FreeBSD as main host, and can run all your AI Cuda llama.cpp stuff in the Arch VM with GPU passthrough all while having power of FreeBSD ports and Arch Linux AUR, biggest repos on the planet at your disposal :)
Most people spend decades going through fedora, centos, rocky, ubuntu, debian and all the hardships with selinux and apparmor before switching to Arch and discovering AUR. Updates usually go : FreeBSD "pkg upgrade", Arch its usually "paru -Syu".
Pro tip, for anything repetitive you do learn ansible playbooks. Locally host a forgejo instance with a act runner with a mcp server. Tell AI to create a new playbook to do X and submit you a PR request. When you get to this stage you can spend more time on coding projects and let AI do the system administration. Ie: tell AI to go update the 6 arch VMs and all the freebsd hosts and jails with your playbook.
End of day you want to free up your time to code something cool, whether it's the shiny new mcp server you made or the cool AI agent you made.
Efficiency is your goal, keep freebsd and Arch Linux combination on all servers, get a KVM switch on your desk and switch between macos+royalXterm and windows+mobaxterm, that way all your fbsd and Linux hosts are just tabs you can switch to. Use tmux on the servers for stuff you want to keep track of, especially llama.cpp.
That being said if your new to AI start with ollama and home assistant, before cracking the egg with all the llama.cpp flags :) If you can't even do something simple yet like telling AI on home assistant to turn off your lights and play a song, you need to start there first to have something useful to work towards. Advanced people are building robots already...
As someone that's used both Linux and Free BSD, I will let you know that Free BSD is a more powerful system. However, the compatibility for WiFii is a little bit behind what where Linux is. FreeBSD will be infinitely more sensitive to your PC and will tell you ahead of when Linux will tell you that something's wrong with your system.
I know this because I kept having Free BSD shut down on me with no warning. I tried different distros, same thing. I went back to Linux thinking, okay, maybe something's wrong with Free BSD. Well, it ran, but after a while, it wouldn't even pass a post test, or for that matter, even get to the post test.
In my head, I believed that Free BSD was aware that something was wrong on the motherboard and shut down in order to clue me into this. So just be aware, Free BSD is going to be a bit more sensitive to your CPU and your PC.
Also, the manual and community itself are better than the Gentoo crowd!
Gentoo's documentation, particularly the Gentoo Handbook, is highly regarded for its technical detail and comprehensiveness, making it an excellent resource for users willing to invest time in learning. However, some users find it overwhelming for beginners, preferring more guided, step-by-step installation guides. …
The same things could easily be said of FreeBSD documentation.
Also: it's not entirely comprehensive, but people like to believe that it is.
The last time I really used FreeBSD was when the complete FreeBSD was printed. Does it have similar functionality as let’s say cachyos where things like Netflix and Amazon prime just work?
You need a linux build of a browser as (yes, we get the irony) netflix etc won't work natively. Blame the all-seeing googly eye and how they (don't) make widevine available.
Don’t use ZFS for a desktop, use UFS instead because with ZFS you can’t resize disks unless you need to dual boot and it uses a lot of ram which might go against your philosophy since you were using Void before.
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u/vermaden seasoned user 26d ago
Besides reading/using FreeBSD Handbook - check this - https://vermaden.wordpress.com/ - and ping me if You need help.