If you haven’t read part 1 of this — “Babe in the Woods: A Linux User Migrates to FreeBSD” — you may be at a loss. For those who did read it, many are still at a loss. That is, they didn’t grasp the subtle purpose behind the article. Of those who commented, most were hardcore geeks, the techies who are in a position to really understand computers. Find out how Ed is doing in FreeBSD these days at OfB.biz.
Learning to Walk: A Linux User Migrates to FreeBSD
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
the author of this article is full of crap. biased reporting if you ask me. perhaps he has forgotten everything linux has given him…
So, Ed decided to give FreeBSD a try and decided it was a lot of work but worked well for him… what’s the problem?
I don’t see why FreeBSD can’t be considered a useful desktop just like GNU/Linux. This series is meant to give people a bit of information on the lesser known major Free Software operating system…
Would you complain about it being biased if it was an article that just praised GNU/Linux?
-Tim
the author of this article is full of crap. biased reporting if you ask me. perhaps he has forgotten everything linux has given him…
Does that include the ulcer and extra grey hairs ?
I love BSD, but but don’t use it daily only because of hardware support. That said…
I don’t know HOW he managed to lock up any BSD this bad. The installer is right there with Slack and Debian on the crap scale, but this was terrible.
He tries to say he is going into this experiment as a normal user. There is NO NORMAL user who would do all that he did to correct his botched install.
If you had THIS much trouble, would you keep it as your main OS? Wouldn’t you give up or maybe even try to reinstall again to fix the problems instead of fixing it by hand?
This article is pure biased trollism.
Mutiny
BSD:
Not worth the time. I tried FreeBSD 5.1 a little while and couldnt get my: mouse(optical Labtec), Netword Card( Rhine), and X11 to work.
If you like the port system in BSd, stick with Gentoo(portage)
… being a long-term BSD user, both as desktop (yes) and as server OS, I kinda liked his second article.
Seems like he actually is willing to give FreeBSD a try despite the problems he is having, instead of just giving up when running head-on into a glitch.
The only biased thing I see is that he, as a long-term Linux user, can actually see a positive aspect in a different OS, others, especially Linux zealots, cannot.
Ok, now, flame away…
“BSD:
Not worth the time. I tried FreeBSD 5.1 a little while and couldnt get my: mouse(optical Labtec), Netword Card( Rhine), and X11 to work.”
I don’t want to sound like an ass, but this sounds more like a shortcoming in your ability rather than the OS.
I think what the author went through was pretty normal. I to have had the X11 install bit lock up, well pretty much everytime I have tried. I don’t think freebsd is hard to install, it’s pretty straightforward and you have to be willing to fail a few times, once you try it a few times you can get through it with ease.
Further more, I think Freebsd is very much just as good at being used as a desktop as linux, if not more so. With free-bsd you don’t have differant distro’s if you asks for help with it from someone you are both on the same page, so support is simplified. Also things like the ports tree simplify getting apps greatly. The main reason say people can’t use it seams to be driver support. I don’t think this is much of an issue. Drivers get there in time. Not many people are running bleeding edge hardware. For people with systems that run a year or so behind of the latest and greatest freebsd shouldn’t be an issue. As time goes by I see freebsd taking the slow and steady, reliable path to greater growth. It’s not going to make lots of noise but in the end it’s going to be their solidly with everything else.
PS…the previous posting was not meant as a bash against Debian…just the best example I could think of to counter pepsi_is_better’s braindead post with
Ok…I’m all for FreeBSD and all but he was biased. It seems to me that he used RPM based distros onli-everyone knows those are slow. He obviously never tried slackware. Slackware boots up in 10 seconds on my 1.67 ghz computer. Now, slack is made for older hardware like his so it would most likely be under 30 for him. 60 for BSD, though? Thats horrible. I’m starting to doubt BSD. BSD should have slack-gentoo type documentation. There should be a man file for almost everything.
Selection
Um lets see, how many distros of BSD are their for Desktop use???
If my, lets say graphic card dosent work in Freebsd, does that mean i should abandon all hope of getting it to work and want for the next build.
Atleast in Linux, theres variety.
I hate it when distros or oses put x modules that they *think* goes with your card. My vid card is set to vesa because slack knows about that. So it added vesa drivers. I’m fine with them.
Forgot to mention that there aren’t S3 ProSavage DDR modules for linux…[{(|-yet-|)}].
I like Gentoo is BSD port clone Debian apt-get type and Linux kernel base, this is the pure gold, and come from BSD and Linux combination
It seems to me that he used RPM based distros onli-everyone knows those are slow. He obviously never tried slackware. Slackware boots up in 10 seconds on my 1.67 ghz computer. Now, slack is made for older hardware like his so it would most likely be under 30 for him. 60 for BSD, though?
He’s not using a 1.67 GHz computer. Also, FWIW, he has used non-RPM based distros.
“I tried flying the spaceshuttle but it was a horrible disaster. Gee wiz, I didn’t think you actually needed to know anything to do this”
Look guys, I’m not wiz kid but I figured out the OpenBSD install back when I was in grade 8. This _after_ a few botched linux gui installs. Do you honestly think I knew anything about partitions? I figured it out.
If you want something bad enough you’ll figure out how to make it work. Via’s FreeBSD driver for my crappy onboard nic didn’t work — so I fixed it myself.
I don’t believe all these stories of linux gurus who can’t figure out *BSD. I came to *BSD a number of years ago because linux didn’t make any sense. The docs sucked and different distros did things in a contradicting manner.
If you guys can’t figure out how to install and configure a *BSD system that leads me to believe one of three things:
1. You didn’t read ANY of the online docs
2. Nobody told you about the man pages
3. Your flakey hardware isn’t supported
I apologize if you take offense to this but I honestly don’t think some of you people try very hard.
After using various Linux flavors since the mid-’90s, I recently switch my desktop to FreeBSD 4.8-Release. I’m happy.
Some points and suggestions:
1. The difference between FreeBSD and any Linux flavor is too small to rant about. It’s all Unix, ok? If you don’t like the way one installs, move on. It’s not like we paid for our computers to do nothing else but install operating systems.
2. Like Debian, FreeBSD has excellent online documentaton. A newbie to the OS is well advised to study it before doing an intial install. As with any new OS, assume that the first one or two installs are just for practice.
3. FreeBSD suits me fine on the desktop, but its heritage is in the server room.
4. If you’re thinking of giving FreeBSD a try, go with 4.8. The 5.1 release is still labeled “new technology” and still has debugging code in it. There’s a reason.
5. Assuming you have a broadband connection, here is my recommended way to install 4.8:
a) Grab the 4.8-Release ISO’s.
b) Read all the docs about installing and configuring your network. Pay close attention to how to partition your drives. FreeBSD doesn’t do it like Linux does.
c) Boot from the install CD. Skip the initial option to configure the kernel. That’s only for this boot and has nothing to do with configuring the kernel you’ll install. Odds are you’ll be fine.
d) Select the”Standard” option. Partition the drives, etc. When you’re asked to select the group of packages to install, don’t select anything with XFree86 in it. That comes later. Do agree to install the ports collection.
e)The remainder of the install is straightforward. Unless you’re got a weirdo setup, you’re safe accepting the default options.
f) After the install completes, reboot. Test your network connection — ping something. As root, move over to the ports collection, where you’ll build “cvsup-without-gui”. It’s in /usr/ports/net/cvsup-without-gui. From that directory, enter “make install clean”.
g) While that’s building, open another console screen and go to “/usr/share/examples/cvsup”. Copy the “ports-supfile” to “/usr/src”. This is the config file that controls how you update your ports collection. (Not the actual programs, but the ports collection. Remeber, a “port” is essentially a makefile.) Open this file with an editor. There’s a lot of text to read. Read it. Then, later in the file, you’ll see a line that begins “*default host “. Edit that line to indicate the server you want to use to pull down ports. All the servers are listed online in the docs. Or, just use cvsup1.freebsd.org. Don’t change anything else in the file.
h) In /usr/src, enter this: “cvsup ./ports-supfile” and go away for a long time. When it’s completed, you’ll have an updated ports collection. Now you can install Xfree86. (You should do “make index && make readmes” to build an updated ports index and new readme files, first, though. it takes a very long time.)
i) Gettext seems to be an annoying little bugger. There’s a version on your drive at this point that may cause the XFree86 install to burp. (At least it does here.) So, to avoid that, you need to upgrade gettext. (Don’t build it from the port, since its already on your machine.) We need another program. called “portupgrade”. Go to /usr/ports/sysutils/portupgrade and do the “make install clean” thing.
j) Now that portupgrade is built, do “portupgrade gettext”.
k)Now, we can install XFree86. Go to /usr/ports/x11/XFree86-4. Do “make install clean”. In a while, you’ll have built X for your machine.
l) Check /usr/ports/x11-fonts for any other fonts you might want. The bitsream fonts are there, and the MS fonts are there labelled as “webfonts”.
m) Log off and log on again to update your path, etc. I always configure X with xf86config. (You need to know you monitor and video specs, as well as what FreeBSD calls your mouse. (A ps/2 mouse is /dev/psm0). Save XF86Setup in the default location. Edit it to uncomment the freetype entry and to add the path to any fonts you’ve installed. Set the mouse protocal to “auto” and add “option ZAxisMapping 4 5” if you’ve got a wheel on your mouse. (That’s for a ps/2 mouse.)
n) Go to /usr/ports/x11-wm and build a window manager. Smaller ones take less time to build.
o) When you have a window manager, go to /usr/ports/www/mozilla and build it. It’s the 1.5 version. Read the Makefile for some interesting build options. (They work like this: “make interesting_build_option install clean”.
p) Now, peruse the ports collection and add software to your heart’s delight. KDE 3.14 and gnome 2.4 are in /usr/ports/x11/kde3 and /usr/ports/x11/gnome2. Whilethat stuff is building, troll the web with Mozilla. (The best time to build huge packages like kde and gnome is while you sleep.)
This install process is lengthy, but it’s worked very well for me a number of times.
Again, read the docs! Don’t assume that FreeBSD does things exactly like Linux.
These are the issues MOST OSNews readers face! Most users are on their own when they try something new…that’s a fact boys and girls. This guy seems pretty typical. He grabbed the latest FreeBSD and ran with it.
How would he know 5.0 was still bleeding edge? The most contact I have with other non-Windows OS is slashdot and OSnews. If I see something I like, I’ll track it down: home pages, follow links, google, find forums… It’s not like I have some guru stuffed in the basement I can consult for words of wisdom…the most “wisdom” I get from most people is stop wasting time and use windows!
I have several LiveCDs [knoppix, Lycrois, gnoppix] and even have boxed Suse 7.2 and BeOS 4.5 & 5.0! I also have about a dozen o’reily books on various topics I’m learning. So it’s not like I don’t TRY! TRYING isn’t enough. You have to have a guru [or at least a peer] that can bail you out, or just point you in the right direction. Comments like I see here are nuts. If you want people to use OSS and contribute, they have to have help! Knowlage is the problem. Even the most basic of things can be a huge stumbling block to new users if they can’t simply “see” how it works from somewhere!
Look at what he’s saying because THESE are the real faults of OSS right now. The code is great, performance is great, but LEARNING new stuff is a real problem right now!
I just want to point out one thing: Actually if you’re too lazy to read the handbook you can have FreeBSD automatically choose partition sizes for your hd. During the partition stage there’s an ‘a’ option for “automatic”. I believe it is even labelled at the bottom of the partition screen. It chooses reasonable values for your current system config.
“Look at what he’s saying because THESE are the real faults of OSS right now. The code is great, performance is great, but LEARNING new stuff is a real problem right now!”
Maybe if you don’t know how to read eh?
As mentioned before the *BSDs (and many linuxes) are very well documented on the web. Randomly choosing one to install without reading the docs is plain silly.
You wouldn’t go out and randomly buy a car without first researching it — would you? It’s this kind of thinking that causes people to put diesel in their gas tanks because they’re too lazy to read the 20 page usermanual.
I was under the impression that most OSnews readers were here because they did know more than your average joe-sixpack. Besides this site isn’t “WinNews” now is it?
Nice story, I’m glad to read that he stuck with it and got FreeBSD working. I used FreeBSD for awhile as my main OS and it made a very good desktop for my needs. It is a very fast and stable OS and the ports system rocks. If it wasn’t for OS X, it would still be my main OS today.
“Learning to Fly”
Or perhaps I just listen to too much Tom Petty and Pink Floyd
I currently use Freebsd as my desktop pc at work and Debian at home. While Debian is a little more suited for the desktop, freebsd does a great job. Both operating systems have their pros and cons, but dont they all. If you really want an easy to use BSD distro why dont you use a mac? There are many different operating systems out there with each one excelling at different things. You have to take this into consideration before choosing an operating system. Personally I hate gui’s. I like to have the control, satisfaction, and knowledge that you get by doing everything by hand, but that is just my opinion. The key point here is that everyone has a choice. The draw back to choice is that you have to have some knowledge about the choices in order to make them correctly. It would be a really boring world if all operatings systems were the same. There are only two main choices nowadays as is: unix, windows.
Freebsd has an nice hanbook on there website. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/index.htm…
At least know that it is there before using the operating system.
and I use it in servers, firewalls and the like. The general layout of the system is much better organized than any Linux I saw.
Still, because of hardware support, I think Linux just fits better for desktop. I’m a slack user (and I like it), but I’m thinking to start setup Mandrake boxes for customers.
Which one? Pigs on the Wing? (no offense this is song title from Animals/Pink Floyd – for those not knowing PF)
Back to the article. It is simply funny. Both first and second part. I’d say bad writing and some extra “skills”.
FreeBSD is really unlucky at OSNews: out of four reviews only one was ok (the one about current), one joke about security implementation in FBSD and now this two volumes on FreeBSD mythology. Personally I prefer Greek’s mythes (reason why I visited Greece three times).
I’d like to install BSD but it can’t get it to support my laptop’s 3com Lan/modem combo (3cxem556b) card.
I thought that FreeBSD supported it but it won’t recognize it. I’m trying the 4.9 release
This article was better than part 1, at least, unlike part 1, he didn’t seem to be trying to make things break on purpose then writing as if there was no fix for his problems.
>Slackware boots up in 10 seconds on my 1.67 ghz computer. >Now, slack is made for older hardware like his so it would >most likely be under 30 for him. 60 for BSD, though? Thats >horrible.
Uhmm .. the article states that his FreeBSD box boots in 30 seconds. .. maybe you got 60 from reading it twice
>I’m starting to doubt BSD. BSD should have slack-gentoo type >documentation. There should be a man file for almost >everything.
obviously you’re just talking without checking your facts .. FreeBSD has long been fameous for the fact that almost everything is documented though man pages (amongst others), and not just crappy man pages but real good ones as well.
and then there’s always the handbook to get you going (www.freebsd.org/handbook) .. who knows .. a few linux users might even find it usefull.
Actually i use FreeBSD on my desktop at home .. why ? because it’s the only OOS that currently supports my hardware out of the box.. Promise SATA 20376 raid controller, and SB Audigy 2.
I know the promise linux driver was recently GPL’ed, but i have yet to see a distribution actually distributing it.
anyone ever try to make the xawtv program work with the kernel drivers for it under FreeBSD? Not a pretty picture, literally. If it weren’t for that, I’d say FreeBSD is better to deal with than the recent dog and pony show that I got under Gentoo 1.4 release. And yes, I read the man pages
Uhmm .. i have no problems with my (aging) AverMedia TvPhone 98 (bt848 chip) and xawtv under FreeBSD-5.1.
In fact the linux bt848 driver was first written for FreeBSD and the ported to linux.
But if XawTV doesnt work for you under FreeBSD, you might want to try out fxtv (only for bt848 chipsets)
http://www.freshports.org/multimedia/fxtv
You guys complain about biased opinions?
The writer is talking about a “desktop OS” and everybody argues if Linux or FreeBSD is better suited for this purpose. The core arguments all sound like this
– “mine is booting faster than yours”
– “the GUI runs faster on my installation”
– “mine is more stable than yours”
– “my installer is easier to use”
– “driver support on my OS is superior…”
Everybody who has read the article has to admit -at least- that it’s NOT that easy.
one more thing: FreeBSD is primarily a server OS. Even if it would take 10 minutes to boot – it’s designed the way you don’t HAVE to reboot it very often! A server doesn’t necessarily need a GUI – it just needs to run stable and secure. That its primary purpose and that’s the real strength of FreeBSD.
If you guys want good driver support, easy installation, a decent GUI and a stable “desktop” OS: try MAC OS X or WINDOWS XP – and be UNbiased.
From the looks of many of the posts here, the typical OSNews readers is age 13 and is threatened by anyone who doesn’t succumb to peer pressure.
As far as I can interpret these rants, people are upset because someone wrote a piece about his personal experiences trying to use FreeBSD. Rather than reading it and moving on, or reading it and posting a coherent comment, they explode with ad hominem attacks, as if no one is allowed to do anything but cheer and cheer and cheer for Linux.
Judging from these posts, the most important features of an OS are how it’s installed and how fast it boots up. What do these people do? Spend all day installing and reinstalling Linux? How about some perspective on the reliability of an OS, its security structure, ease of maintenance, networking abilities, etc?
There’s more to an OS than a one-size-fits-all install routine and the ability to let some kid start playing mp3s and his favorite game as soon as possible, all the while getting off because he thinks he’s thumbing his nose at Microsoft.
Mabhatter asks: “How would he know 5.0 was still bleeding edge? The most contact I have with other non-Windows OS is slashdot and OSnews.”
Well, how about trying the FreeBSD website, http://www.freebsd.org? Or jiust googling for it? If you base your decisions on what you learn at Slashdot, or even OSNews (although it usually makes Slashdot seem like a losers’ frat party) , you’re looking in the wrong places.
AS for know 5.0 is “bleeding edge”…well, someone might know that if they bother to read the information that’s posted on the top of the FreeBSD home page, and in the release notes, and elsewhere.
I read the article and decided to give freebsd a try.. Let me count the ways freebsd screwed up my hd…
1. Reversed my disk geometry!
2. Screwed up my MBR!
3. Filched my Fat32 pointers!
Now as a result of that I had to format and partition my HD TWICE!!!! With linux I’ve never had that problem.. I’ve tried Gentoo, RH, Debian, and still using SuSE with great sucess… As far as I’m concerned, what good is an OS if it doesn’t Operate the System!! For all of you using FreeBSD, don’t take it personal, just relating MY experiance with the little daemon.. POWER TO THE PENGUIN!! 🙂
I just love all the Linux zealots coming out to bash a guy who gave another OS a try.. The best is this:
“the author of this article is full of crap. biased reporting if you ask me. perhaps he has forgotten everything linux has given him…”
Like he owes anything to Linux. Like thats his mate and by going to another OS he has somehow cheated.
I have used FREEBSD because for a while that was the only OS we could get Zebra to run on. It worked fine. Kudos to someone else who tried.
by Anonymous on October 23, 2003, 21:37:06 EDT (http://www.ofb.biz/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=269)
“Or maybe you just forgot, and got cocky enough to bite the hand that fed you.” The hand is linux of course.
More! More!
The only thing holding me back from switching to FreeBSD is that I am uncertain of its Java support (or rather Java’s support of FreeBSD).
The fact that J2SDK 1.3 was ported is irrelevant to me.
Has anyone got J2SDK 1.4 to work reliably on FreeBSD?
J2SDK 1.4 is still, as far as I know, more difficult to install in FreeBSD than in Linux. You have to sign in at sun.com (it’s free) and download a couple of files to /usr/ports/distfiles directory using web browser. After that you can install J2SDK 1.4 using ports.
You certainly did not take the time to read the (GREAT) FreeBSD hanbook, because if you had none of those things would have happened to you! That’s just your fault! Sysinstall is extremely user-friendly, and asks the user to accept every action.
I read the article and decided to give freebsd a try.. Let me count the ways freebsd screwed up my hd…
1. Reversed my disk geometry!
2. Screwed up my MBR!
3. Filched my Fat32 pointers!
Now as a result of that I had to format and partition my HD TWICE!!!! With linux I’ve never had that problem.. I’ve tried Gentoo, RH, Debian, and still using SuSE with great sucess… As far as I’m concerned, what good is an OS if it doesn’t Operate the System!! For all of you using FreeBSD, don’t take it personal, just relating MY experiance with the little daemon.. POWER TO THE PENGUIN!! 🙂
I agree, this is nothing more than user error. I know this for a fact, since before I succeeded at triple booting with FreeBSD, Linux and Windows, I screwed up several installs trying to figure out how to do it. I could have saved myself a lot of time by reading the Handbook, but I was a typical Windows-User-On-Mandrake at the time. Not a bash, just Windows users tend to expect everything to be done for them, and why read the handbook if it’s all going to be done for you?
Then, a miraculous thing happened. [i]I read the handbook!</> *gasp*
Once that happened, it’s been a cakewalk to install FreeBSD, even in multi-OS environments. I know about that too; I have done several tri-boot installs for jealous friends.
The approach seems to be:
1. Read about FreeBSD.
2. Try to install it, making no real effort to succeed.
3. Complain that it’s awful, and woe is you.
4. Praise (Linux, Windows, whatever) because it’s (your choice of positive adjectives here).
One thing I’d like to know about the article is… what the heck do his supposed learning disabilities in math (read: dyslexia) have to do with anything? That sounds like BS if I ever heard it. MY math learning disabilities didn’t stop ME from successfully installing FreeBSD… dozens of times.
Excellent post – our installation methods are remarkably similar.
A couple of fairly minor differences:
I cvsup the base system source as well as the ports and make world, just to ensure I have any base system updates the ports might need.
I install Opera (and sometimes Mozilla-Firebird) rather than Mozilla – it’s a lot easier on my 28.8K connection.
An additional point of explanation: “xf86config” is the command for the text-based XFree86 configuration, which I’ve found to be dead easy and virtually foolproof, unlike the GUI config.
I used to consider people who preferred editing text files to be a bit weird, but I have to say after trying Mandrake that I felt very distanced from the “guts” of the OS whenever I wanted to configure something using a GUI. (I do run Gentoo and like it.) Text editing feels simpler and easier to me now than using most GUI tools.
And at last, a comment on the article: I liked it far better than the first installment. He reported honestly on his own experiences – there was none of the rush-to-judgment stuff (like calling the very helpful FreeBSD mailing lists worthless) that I minded in the first part.
Stay with it, Ed – you’ll come to know and love it.
“From the looks of many of the posts here, the typical OSNews readers is age 13 and is threatened by anyone who doesn’t succumb to peer pressure.”
The terrible thing comes when you realize that the typical reader here is about ten years older, i.e. in a phase where the IQ has reached it’s life-time maximum.
Jud, I usually postpone the make world until I build enough ports that I can amuse myself while all the code compiles
(For the penguinistas out there, “make world” is FreBSD shorthand for rebuilding the entire OS from source pulled down from BSD servers. You can upgrade quite nicely.)
I’ve concluded that it is almost always best to install and configure XFree after the base install is working, in Linux or BSD. Going the manual route with xf86config means you need to know your monitor’s refresh rates and the identity of your video card. Given that, you can rip through xf86config in a few minutes. I see people hoarding a working XF86Setup file generated automagically by one Linux distribution or another, and using it on BSD or another Linux. How do they know the fonts are are in the same directories? I wonder how many complaints about “I can’t use verdana!” would be solved if people would just fix their config file. Learning enough to avoid being scared to edit config files like XF86Setup doesn’t take long and it puts you in command of your own computer, not some anonymous developer working for the outfit that distributes your OS.
My biggest worry with FreeBSD these days is finding a window manager that isn’t KDE and isn’t Gnome. I never use their apps, so why install them?
hmmm … I have a via rhine card in my puter. And though I use 5.1 (pretty stable for a technology release, in fact it is more stable than any linux I used) it was automatically recognised during install. I had one thing to do: configure its address.
There are 3 ways to configure X during (or after) install: the first one (X) is broken, both in 4.8 and 5.1 – but the others work. Someone wrote about USB mouse not being recognized. Well, I had the same problem under Debian. After googling up the question, I installed hotplug. Now my mouse was recognized, X started, and crashed immediately. In 5.1 my USB mouse was automatically recognized, I only had to add one line into Xconfig to get the wheel working as well (documented in the FAQ that is installed with FBSD).
Also, if you have an USB mouse, you have to say NO during install when asked to configure a mouse (but that’s right in the documentation, both handbook and during install, explaining that your mouse would be directly handled by X via the usb daemon).
Anyhow, I switched some 2 weeks ago, and I am pretty happy about it. I noticed a HUGE performance difference between FSBD and Linux. FreeBSD after boot up (into console) uses 6Mb memory (SSHD, SENDMAIL, USBD, LINUX ABI, etc. running!!!) and 65Mb after I start XFCE4 with all eyecandies and applets running. NICE!
And its more a bleeding edge desktop OS than Mandrake for instance. I have Mozilla 1.5, KDE 3.1.4, Opera 7.21, XFCE4, GNOME 2.4, OO 1.1, GIMP 1.2.5, etc + the stability. And the often mentioned HANDBOOK is the grimoire of FreeBSD: comprehensive, professional, easy to follow and everything, from installation to advanced networking is pretty much covered. If you are willing to read it, FreeBSD should not be a problem, in fact, its much easier to maintain – if you ever installed Debian successfully, than installing FBSD should be an easy ride.
Victor G: 1) There’s more to an OS than how long it takes to boot up. The idea with Unix is not to have to reboot in the first place. 2) Slackware is not made for older hardware. Slackware 9.1, the current release, is a fine Linux distribution that is at least as uptofate, if not more so, than any other distribution. 3) You want “slack-gentoo” documentation? What is that? You say BSD needs man files. Well, it’s chocked full of them. It’s Unix, after all. (With a legitimate claim to be called Unix, as opposed to Linux). Have you ever type “man” on a BSD system? In addition, it’s got great documentation. The FreeBSD handbook is superb, is free to all at http://www.freebsd,org, and is installed on every FreeBSD machine.
Bytes256: There are no such things as “distributions” in FreeBSD, It is one coherent OS supported by one coherent group of adults. That’s to our benefit. Distributions exist in Linus because business need to find a way to brand what is otherwise an amorphous product. So, they concentrate on install routines and anutomagic XFree setup. When necessary, some of them tweak the kernel slightly to reduce customer noise. Beyond that, all distributions run the same code. And, frankly, it’s pretty much the same code that BSD runs.
Brad: More drivers are available for Linux, and faster, because the heavyweights in Linux-land are commercial enterprises (RedHat, SuSE) who can sometimes use a little influence. Frankly, however, people need to remember that the video drivers are for XFree86, not BSD and not Linux. XFree86 on BSD is the same XFree86 as on Linux. If there’s an XFree86 driver for your card on Linix, the same driver works on BSD.
Slash: Maybe you’d better stay with Windows.
>My biggest worry with FreeBSD these days is finding a window manager that isn’t KDE and isn’t Gnome. I never use their apps, so why install them?
Try XFCE4 – its nice like gnome without the bloat (small memory footprint and very fast + it has an excellent filemanager, with samba browser, fstab, etc. included). Looks like this:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-6/215362/xfce4.jpg
Enloop, I second the suggestion to try xfce4. My preference in window managers had been blackbox/fluxbox, so you know I’m intolerant of bloat. But despite being easy on resources, xfce4 has a very nice appearance and is a cinch to configure (using a GUI, no less:).
I like to add a couple of plugins available in ports/sysutils to the base xfce4 port install: netload- and systemload-.
No sense pasting it here. Excellent tips, thanks for taking the time to right that post. I for one appreciate it. I have FreeBSD working through trial and error, and it runs well. Wish I would have had this article a few months ago
“If my, lets say graphic card dosent work in Freebsd, does that mean i should abandon all hope of getting it to work and want for the next build.”
Umm… just like under linux, this is not the job of the OS, but the job of X…
Yeah, 1.4 works rather bloody nicely under fbsd…
For those of you who are saying “Installing / Configuring / Using operating system ‘X’ is easy — if you know how to read,” are completely missing the point. It isn’t a question of knowing how to read. It isn’t even a question, really, of knowing =what= to read.
When you start from zero knowledge of *nix (or, for that matter, of any system), every fact is new and since you have no framework to put them into they all seem equally significant. Everything you read contains references to dozens of other things you need to dereference and understand in order to understand what you started reading in the first place — and each of those has dozens of references, and so on. There is a definite bootstrapping process you go through as you build a mental model in your mind, categorize the information you’re acquiring, and achieve the critical mass of information you need to have to be able to integrate new facts and put them into context with the information you already know.
If you are proficient with *nix, you take for granted all kinds of information you probably don’t even think of as stuff that you know. You might think it’s all very intuitive, and for you, maybe it is — but there is no intuition without context. You have invested in building that context, whether you remember that investment or even thought about it at all. So give newcomers a break. No, it’s not difficult, but neither is it obvious. It takes time and a desire to learn. Not being called an idiot by the people who got there before you helps too.
I have to say, I am bewildered by the enmity there seems to be directed to BSD by Linux users. Linux, in my view, has become what it is because it gives typical computer users something they have not realistically had for a long time: choice. Yet, freed of the tyranny of the Windows monopoly, some immediately seek to impose a tyranny of Linux.
I came to the BSDs through Linux. Linux, after all, is the ‘other’ operating system everybody seems to know about. Everybody talks about it. It has a huge community of active advocates. I tried several different Linux distributions and spent quite a bit of time in the Linux world. Very little was obvious to me. I was able over time to build enough of an understanding of how things were put together to get Linux to do what I wanted.
I installed FreeBSD, viewing it as just another Unix-like operating system to be considered. It had things I liked and things I didn’t like, just as did Red Hat and Debian and the other Linux distros I tried. FreeBSD didn’t distinguish itself until I had achieved enough information to be able to make critical observations about how these operating systems are constructed, and enough experience to know what was important to me.
After mucking about in the configuration files for all of these operating systems, I came to the conclusion that FreeBSD (OpenBSD, too, for that matter) has a much cleaner layout than the Linuxes I tried. I find it much easier to find the things I want to change. The man pages are excellent. It has Linux binary compatibility. The thing that really did it for me, though, is the ports collection. I love the ports collection.
I know that I’m not the same as everyone else. The things I find important are not the same things others find important. Lots of people seem to hate the idea of building from source, for example, while I don’t see why, having the source, you’d want to do things any other way. Some people need support for bleeding-edge hardware — I don’t. That’s why we have choice. We have the ability to choose an operating system that suits US, not to have some ‘one size fits all’ monstrosity forced down our throats. Ridiculing others because they didn’t make the same choice we did — whether their choice is Linux, BSD, Mac, or even Windows — is pretty sad.
Personally, the thing I found surprising about the review is that the guy kept going after encountering the difficulties he did. He ran fsck? He built /dev/null manually? Anyone who is going to hammer his way through problems like that is =not= equivalent to someone who’s never been exposed to a Unix-like operating system at all. This guy genuinely wants to like FreeBSD — either that or he’s the most stubborn S.O.B. on the planet. There’s nothing wrong with either of those things.
On “How to Install FreeBSD and Be Happy”: That is an excellent guide, and I thank you for posting it (you taught me a couple of things). My process is fairly similar, but I still have a way to go to get my system running the way I want, mainly to get my hardware working perfectly. In particular, there’s a bit of an ordeal to go through to get my video card (Nvidia GeForce somethingorother) and mouse (Microsoft (gasp!) IntelliMouse Explorer) working perfectly in X.
On “Java?”: FreeBSD has good Java support. You actually have a few options for the 1.4.1 JDK — you can run a Linux version or you can build from source (my choice
. The process of building the JDK is not very different from the process of building any other port. The notable difference is that, due to licensing restrictions, you have to manually download the sources from Sun’s web site (as doing so forces you to agree to the license) and put them in /usr/ports/distfiles. Any program I’ve tried to run using this JDK has worked — although some need massaging as the version string printed by the FreeBSD JVM is slightly different and some programs check that before executing. The programs I typically use are different Java IDEs (NetBeans, Eclipse, IntelliJ/IDEA) and Tomcat. They all work well on FreeBSD.
One thing that might hugely smooth the use of FreeBSD for Linux users is to install and use a different shell. I find FreeBSD’s default shell to be quite unfriendly after getting used to bash. So do yourself a favour and make either /usr/ports/shells/bash2 or /usr/ports/shells/zsh (or another shell of your choice).
I believe this post was moderated down in error. The poster is not bashing FreeBSD; he seems to be asking a question in good faith and sincerely interested in the answer.
Gonzo, it would seem your friends are ill-informed. FreeBSD is far from dead. In fact, it is one of the most popular server operating systems in the world. It is much less popular — but still very capable, in my opinion — as a desktop operating system.
It is not published under the GPL license, but under the BSD license. I’m not going to debate which is better — they each have their strong points — but the BSD license actually places fewer restrictions on what you can do with software licensed under it (like FreeBSD) than the GPL. It is a free, open source software license and is in fact compatible with the GPL. See http://www.fsf.org/licenses/license-list.html for more information.
As far as speed and manageability go — well, honestly, you are going to get different answers from different people, depending on what their biases are. It certainly does not feel slower than Linux to me. I don’t think it’s harder to manage than Linux — in fact, to me, it seems easier — but it probably depends on what you’re used to and what your personal preferences are.
It is definitely not analogous to MS-DOS vs Windows. It’s probably much more analogous to OS/2 Warp 4 vs Windows 2000. Which OS is superior is a subject open to debate — but Windows 2000 is unarguably much more popular.
Sigh.
I miss OS/2.
Here’s another one: Install program called Portsman. It’s a very convenient way of browsing your ports collection and it allows you to choose the compile options before starting the installation. (When Portsman starts, don’t let it try to rebuild ports index file. Instead, use ‘portsdb -Uu’ after updating ports tree with cvsup. After you’ve installed and launched Portsman, press ‘h’ key to get help in using it.)