6 ms·

Is anyone using FreeBSD on their development machine? Are there any gotchas compared to Linux?

drvdevd 10y ago
I've used it on and off for many years. It makes for a fine development environment. #1 gotcha is what you'd expect: commodity hardware support. Purchase a machine that's known to be good for FreeBSD...
laxd 10y ago
It really depends on what kind of development you do. It's great as long as the tools you need are actually supported. And the tools would presumably work the same on linux so it's more a matter of what kind of system you prefer to administer. I just switched to linux on my main machine after 12 years due to getting hooked on the jetbrains crack. That and the lack of dart-sdk/dartium. I'd switch back if those two things got supported.
- floatboth 10y ago
  sudo pkg install intellij :-) PyCharm/RubyMine/etc. aren't officially supported, you might be able to get them to work by manually doing the same things the intellij port does. But pure IntelliJ IDEA works perfectly.
  - laxd 10y ago
    I tried the community edition a while back. Can't remember much by now but it definately was'nt the same experience as the commercial one. (Actually I'm using the phpstorm edition).
djsumdog 10y ago
I started using it on my X1 carbon. It installed fine. I hadn't used it since 2006, and I was quite impressed with the binary package manager and init/service system (I'm not a big systemd fan). I'd still be using it, but I got the laptop used and it has had frequent reboot problems (even on Linux) and I get an error when I try to update the bios. I looked up the beep code and it just says the motherboard is bad and to send it in for warranty. :(
platform 10y ago
I do not think Android dev on freebsd works that well My understanding was that various android emulator features that are better at supporting on Linux or Windows, and do not work on FreeBSD. Happy to be corrected though. Also if your development depends (or benefits from) ATI device drivers, freeBSD (or any BSD for that matter) is not the best choice.
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  I'd be interested to see if Android can boot in bhyve.
floatboth 10y ago
Using FreeBSD -CURRENT on my ThinkPad X240. Mostly works great. Can't resume from suspend on that particular laptop, but I can live without the sleep thing. For development, it's excellent! (Favorite things: non-GPL not-breaking-compatibility-every-day libc that doesn't cause any problems ever. Simple init system. Simple configuration files, moving towards using libucl everywhere. And libxo for output. Good documentation. Jails. ZFS. DTrace. Capsicum.) I do get annoyed at people who use linuxisms like "/bin/bash" in their code though >_<
- X86BSD 10y ago
  We have been dealing with that since Linux was created. And we are still dealing with it today.
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  Is /usr/bin/env bash good enough? Or should I assume that only a "sh" is available? (I found tcsh tricky when I first started using FreeBSD, and I think a few of my accounts have the default shell set to bash)
  - toast0 10y ago
    if you actually need bash, /usr/bin/env bash works; but often something could actually be a sh script with a bit of care. Some Linux distributions have been changing /bin/sh to something other than bash, which helps. if bash is installed; if not, at least it's a fairly clear indication that you should install bash
  - VLM 10y ago
    Most times yes. In practice I suspect most deployed servers have something like ln -sf /usr/local/bin/bash /bin/bash Infinitely more entertaining is running unzip at the command prompt results in /usr/bin/unzip which is extremely limited compared to (installed via pkg) infozip at /usr/local/bin/unzip. At least one specific example I ran into was Play/Activate Scala framework can be convinced via "dist" target to make a zip file of all the jars necessary to run a project, and you guessed it, /usr/bin/unzip doesn't understand that zipfile format and /usr/local/bin/unzip works perfectly. So you can't have a script that automatically runs unzip because you need to run /usr/local/bin/unzip specifically. Lack of a Debian-like alternatives system is really the only systemic problem I run into on a regular basis. Then again it creates an inconsistency across multiple servers and I would not enjoy playing "update-alternatives whack a mole" to figure out which of my frontends have infozip provide unzip, and which fail.
loeg 10y ago
I use CURRENT on a Thinkpad X230. It works ok. Main gotchas: * No SSL CA certificates out of the box. FreeBSD security team has taken the curious posture of claiming that shipping no CAs is better than just shipping e.g. Mozilla's CA bundle.[0] * rc.d is like Linux init from 5 years ago. Dynamic network configuration is not handled well. * Intel GPU driver support for anything above Haswell is still waiting to be merged. But work is ongoing.[1] * No Xorg or session management out of the box. You get dropped to a terminal console. Good luck starting a session. * Some packages conflict with each other needlessly. For example, you cannot install gitk and git-svn at the same time. * Finally, the installer has some limited choices. You can't enable full disk encryption for UFS with the installer (last time I checked, anyway). Other than all that, it works well. [0]: https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=189811 https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=189811 [1]: https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/freebsd-base-graphics/wiki https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/freebsd-base-graphics/wiki
- dTal 10y ago
  Hmph. I remember when "session management" was echo startx >> .loginrc I sure miss being able to understand and control my machine...
  - voltagex_ 10y ago
    I reached the point of not understanding my machine when mounting a disk on Linux required udisks2/dbus and parts of Gnome. FreeBSD can be pretty spartan, but I do feel like I'm more in control.
    - groovy2shoes 10y ago
      Is this a thing? I'm running Slackware and mounting a disk is still done with good ol' `mount`, same as it ever was.
      - voltagex_ 10y ago
gkya 10y ago
No suspend/hibernate (suspend is available, but fiddly and does not work with X). Apart from that I've been quite happy to this day since last January when I moved to FreeBSD. Though I intend to check-out OpenBSD when I'll have time, as AFAIK it is more laptop-friendly (has working suspend and/or hibernate). The BSD land is better than any linux distro with its docs and community, and the OSes are really clean and well put-together from the bottom up. Only Arch can come close to them, but then it has no stable releases and breaking changes are often. BSDs run nearly all the software that GNU/Linux runs, and ports tree is exhaustive. I only have Emacs and Xombrero that I build and install seperately because I'm patching them.
- lorenzfx 10y ago
  Really depends on your machine. Suspend (and wakeup!) works great on my Lenovo X220, no fiddling needed at all.
  - gkya 10y ago
    With X? Because the docs themselves say it doesn't work well with X [1]. Would you mind sharing your relevant config? [1] https://wiki.freebsd.org/SuspendResume https://wiki.freebsd.org/SuspendResume
    - lorenzfx 10y ago
      No, I don't mind at all, but what would the relevant configuration files be? As I said, there was no fiddling necessary. The only thing I remember doing is putting `echo kern.vty=vt >> /boot/loader.conf`.
      - floatboth 10y ago
        vt is the default anyway! (At least on EFI)
        lorenzfx 10y ago
citrin_ru 10y ago
I use 11-rc on Thinkpad X220. Compare to Linux I miss a lot native Dropbox client (Currently I use rclone, but it is not convenient: sync dropbox->local, change, sync local->dropbox). Skype probably will work via Linux emulation, but I haven't tried yet. Update: also almost all closed source products are not available for FreeBSD, e. g. I'd like to try Jetbrains CLion - it has version for Linux, but not for FreeBSD.
- loeg 10y ago
  Linux emulation works pretty well.
- Cieplak 10y ago
  I'm running CLion on FreeBSD, have never had any issues with it.

I've used it on and off for many years. It makes for a fine development environment. #1 gotcha is what you'd expect: commodity hardware support. Purchase a machine that's known to be good for FreeBSD...

laxd 10y ago

It really depends on what kind of development you do. It's great as long as the tools you need are actually supported. And the tools would presumably work the same on linux so it's more a matter of what kind of system you prefer to administer. I just switched to linux on my main machine after 12 years due to getting hooked on the jetbrains crack. That and the lack of dart-sdk/dartium. I'd switch back if those two things got supported.

floatboth 10y ago
sudo pkg install intellij :-) PyCharm/RubyMine/etc. aren't officially supported, you might be able to get them to work by manually doing the same things the intellij port does. But pure IntelliJ IDEA works perfectly.
- laxd 10y ago
  I tried the community edition a while back. Can't remember much by now but it definately was'nt the same experience as the commercial one. (Actually I'm using the phpstorm edition).

djsumdog 10y ago

I started using it on my X1 carbon. It installed fine. I hadn't used it since 2006, and I was quite impressed with the binary package manager and init/service system (I'm not a big systemd fan). I'd still be using it, but I got the laptop used and it has had frequent reboot problems (even on Linux) and I get an error when I try to update the bios. I looked up the beep code and it just says the motherboard is bad and to send it in for warranty. :(

platform 10y ago

I do not think Android dev on freebsd works that well My understanding was that various android emulator features that are better at supporting on Linux or Windows, and do not work on FreeBSD. Happy to be corrected though. Also if your development depends (or benefits from) ATI device drivers, freeBSD (or any BSD for that matter) is not the best choice.

voltagex_ 10y ago
I'd be interested to see if Android can boot in bhyve.

floatboth 10y ago

Using FreeBSD -CURRENT on my ThinkPad X240. Mostly works great. Can't resume from suspend on that particular laptop, but I can live without the sleep thing. For development, it's excellent! (Favorite things: non-GPL not-breaking-compatibility-every-day libc that doesn't cause any problems ever. Simple init system. Simple configuration files, moving towards using libucl everywhere. And libxo for output. Good documentation. Jails. ZFS. DTrace. Capsicum.) I do get annoyed at people who use linuxisms like "/bin/bash" in their code though >_<

X86BSD 10y ago
We have been dealing with that since Linux was created. And we are still dealing with it today.
voltagex_ 10y ago
Is /usr/bin/env bash good enough? Or should I assume that only a "sh" is available? (I found tcsh tricky when I first started using FreeBSD, and I think a few of my accounts have the default shell set to bash)
- toast0 10y ago
  if you actually need bash, /usr/bin/env bash works; but often something could actually be a sh script with a bit of care. Some Linux distributions have been changing /bin/sh to something other than bash, which helps. if bash is installed; if not, at least it's a fairly clear indication that you should install bash
- VLM 10y ago
  Most times yes. In practice I suspect most deployed servers have something like ln -sf /usr/local/bin/bash /bin/bash Infinitely more entertaining is running unzip at the command prompt results in /usr/bin/unzip which is extremely limited compared to (installed via pkg) infozip at /usr/local/bin/unzip. At least one specific example I ran into was Play/Activate Scala framework can be convinced via "dist" target to make a zip file of all the jars necessary to run a project, and you guessed it, /usr/bin/unzip doesn't understand that zipfile format and /usr/local/bin/unzip works perfectly. So you can't have a script that automatically runs unzip because you need to run /usr/local/bin/unzip specifically. Lack of a Debian-like alternatives system is really the only systemic problem I run into on a regular basis. Then again it creates an inconsistency across multiple servers and I would not enjoy playing "update-alternatives whack a mole" to figure out which of my frontends have infozip provide unzip, and which fail.

loeg 10y ago

I use CURRENT on a Thinkpad X230. It works ok. Main gotchas: * No SSL CA certificates out of the box. FreeBSD security team has taken the curious posture of claiming that shipping no CAs is better than just shipping e.g. Mozilla's CA bundle.[0] * rc.d is like Linux init from 5 years ago. Dynamic network configuration is not handled well. * Intel GPU driver support for anything above Haswell is still waiting to be merged. But work is ongoing.[1] * No Xorg or session management out of the box. You get dropped to a terminal console. Good luck starting a session. * Some packages conflict with each other needlessly. For example, you cannot install gitk and git-svn at the same time. * Finally, the installer has some limited choices. You can't enable full disk encryption for UFS with the installer (last time I checked, anyway). Other than all that, it works well. [0]: https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=189811 https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=189811 [1]: https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/freebsd-base-graphics/wiki https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/freebsd-base-graphics/wiki

dTal 10y ago
Hmph. I remember when "session management" was echo startx >> .loginrc I sure miss being able to understand and control my machine...
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  I reached the point of not understanding my machine when mounting a disk on Linux required udisks2/dbus and parts of Gnome. FreeBSD can be pretty spartan, but I do feel like I'm more in control.
  - groovy2shoes 10y ago
    Is this a thing? I'm running Slackware and mounting a disk is still done with good ol' `mount`, same as it ever was.
    - voltagex_ 10y ago

gkya 10y ago

No suspend/hibernate (suspend is available, but fiddly and does not work with X). Apart from that I've been quite happy to this day since last January when I moved to FreeBSD. Though I intend to check-out OpenBSD when I'll have time, as AFAIK it is more laptop-friendly (has working suspend and/or hibernate). The BSD land is better than any linux distro with its docs and community, and the OSes are really clean and well put-together from the bottom up. Only Arch can come close to them, but then it has no stable releases and breaking changes are often. BSDs run nearly all the software that GNU/Linux runs, and ports tree is exhaustive. I only have Emacs and Xombrero that I build and install seperately because I'm patching them.

lorenzfx 10y ago
Really depends on your machine. Suspend (and wakeup!) works great on my Lenovo X220, no fiddling needed at all.
- gkya 10y ago
  With X? Because the docs themselves say it doesn't work well with X [1]. Would you mind sharing your relevant config? [1] https://wiki.freebsd.org/SuspendResume https://wiki.freebsd.org/SuspendResume
  - lorenzfx 10y ago
    No, I don't mind at all, but what would the relevant configuration files be? As I said, there was no fiddling necessary. The only thing I remember doing is putting `echo kern.vty=vt >> /boot/loader.conf`.
    - floatboth 10y ago
      vt is the default anyway! (At least on EFI)
      - lorenzfx 10y ago

citrin_ru 10y ago

I use 11-rc on Thinkpad X220. Compare to Linux I miss a lot native Dropbox client (Currently I use rclone, but it is not convenient: sync dropbox->local, change, sync local->dropbox). Skype probably will work via Linux emulation, but I haven't tried yet. Update: also almost all closed source products are not available for FreeBSD, e. g. I'd like to try Jetbrains CLion - it has version for Linux, but not for FreeBSD.

loeg 10y ago
Linux emulation works pretty well.
Cieplak 10y ago
I'm running CLion on FreeBSD, have never had any issues with it.