8 ms·

FreeBSD Desktop – Part 3 – X11 Window System

81 points by rodrigo975 6y ago

simlevesque 6y ago
Hacker news blocks emojis, it should do the same for "vermaden"
- LukeShu 6y ago
  Surely the "Mathematical Monospace" set of characters have merit in being allowed on HN, this misuse of them notwithstanding?
  - suprfsat 6y ago
    People should simply use characters in correct ways and not in incorrect ways.
    - enriquto 6y ago
      what does that even mean?
- chippy 6y ago
  Even worse, in Firefox, I see the title of the submission appear to be on a newline underneath the upvote arrow. The special characters are making the height of the div to be 33px http://i.imgur.com/nuA4TBe.png http://i.imgur.com/nuA4TBe.png
  - arendtio 6y ago
    In my Firefox, I see 2 newlines above and 2 newlines beneath... Version 83.0 on Arch Linux
    - LukeShu 6y ago
      Indeed, this is what I see https://i.imgur.com/jVWhV49.png https://i.imgur.com/jVWhV49.png with Arch's Firefox 83.0 on Parabola (downstream of Arch). It seems that the issue is the "LatinModernMathJax_Monospace-Regular" font being broken. This font is part of the "mathjax2" package, which is a dependency of my PDF reader.
      - gravitas 6y ago
        For my own learning, the poster "vermanden" is (ab)using the U+1F600 to U+1F6FF table of Mayan/mathematical symbols (except for the first right arrow, it's another set) which you can reference here: https://www.utf8-chartable.de/unicode-utf8-table.pl https://www.utf8-chartable.de/unicode-utf8-table.pl It breaks down like so in hex mode: E2 80 93 20 -> F0 9D 9A 9F v F0 9D 9A 8E e F0 9D 9A 9B r F0 9D 9A 96 m F0 9D 9A 8A a F0 9D 9A 8D d F0 9D 9A 8E e F0 9D 9A 97 n
        vermaden 6y ago
        I used 'generator' from here: http://qaz.wtf/u/convert.cgi?text=vermaden http://qaz.wtf/u/convert.cgi?text=vermaden
        arendtio 6y ago
        Thanks for sharing. Kinda funny to see a simplistic and technology embracing site like HN 'broken' due to insufficient input sanitization ;-)
- willio58 6y ago
  Agreed. Let’s avoid avoid becoming another Twitter please
llarsson 6y ago
This feels both useful (should I need to do desktop FreeBSD) and like a walk down memory lane (from when this was how you had to manage Linux, too). Thank you for both. And thank you to all the countless developers who have made this level of fiddling mostly a thing of the past. At least this blog did not have to mention modelines.
- spijdar 6y ago
  FreeBSD feels more difficult to use in this sense even compared to Net/OpenBSD. While some of this configuring is strictly unnecessary (changing the keyboard layout in xorg.conf is only relevant if you aren't using a DE with that functionality), FreeBSD seems more ... finicky with GPU drivers and their DRM/KMS compat layer from Linux than Net/Open. On NetBSD you can usually just "starts" and get an accelerated X session with no config, from just a "full sets" install. You usually have to install at least some extra kernel modules in FreeBSD.
  - trasz 6y ago
    It's an unfortunate consequence of GPL licensing of some of the linuxkpi parts, which graphics drivers use. I believe the amount of problematic code is slowly decreasing, so eventually things will get back to normal.
  - anthk 6y ago
    What's modular xorg for then?
  - vermaden 6y ago
    I just tried to start X11 on FreeBSD 12.2 with all these configs removed and it started with accelerated graphics. Only Synaptics touchpad had 'tap to click' disabled. I create these configs to be sure that X11 will start the way I want it to start, not that all of it is needed.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
ggm 6y ago
(2018)
- andoriyu 6y ago
  He constantly updates it. Update 4 for example talks about libinput.
- vermaden 6y ago
  2018 is indeed the date of the 'original' post but the later adde UPDATES are from other dates. For example UPDATE 4 is from today. Maybe I should also add the date to that 'UPDATES'? :)
annadane 6y ago
Something that strikes me about FreeBSD is you need a certain amount of knowledge going in. On Linux, you can set up a desktop pretty easily. Then you can find out more advanced stuff later on. BSD just dumps you into a shell. You have to know to install this or that metapackage to get a graphical display going and the concepts are different enough from Linux land so that it takes you a while to get going and feel comfortable
- anthk 6y ago
  >BSD just dumps you into a shell False. OpenBSD assk you at the install process if you want to launch Xenodm from Xenocara at boot. You get fvwm, right, but X is totally configured.
- vermaden 6y ago
  There are also 'zero configuration' FreeBSD based systems like GhostBSD or NomadBSD. You should try them instead if you want Ubuntu-like experience.
- tetraca 6y ago
  I found the FreeBSD handbook to be extremely helpful in both installing the system and trying to navigate my way around it. It's what made me finally comfortable moving around in *nix systems when I was in a "install every weird operating system that exists" phase. https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/index.html https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/index.html
- jjt-yn_t 6y ago
  Well, as a FreeBSD user earlier this year I tried about 3 distros to install anew [ previously arch ] from a thumbdrive. None would bring up the install screen properly [ I suppose my monitor has the wrong input or something... ] and IIRC one that would would not let me complete partitioning without errors. [ Not to be overly critical of linux, but I ran out of time... ]
- pjmlp 6y ago
  That depends on when one started with UNIX, cough xmodconfig.
kdasme 6y ago
FreeBSD is such a great OS and has a very powerful kernel. So much potential, it is sad to see Linux is the only unix OS that gets traction. They've had Jails in BSD long before Docker was a thing. Debian GNU/kFreeBSD was promising but it probably just doesn't make sense to maintain that project given lack of attention. :(
- danieldk 6y ago
  Linux is the only unix OS that gets traction Darwin (macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS)? And I guess that technically Minix is one of the most successful Unix-like systems. [1] [1] https://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/intel/ https://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/intel/
  - wayneftw 6y ago
    > iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS Those are systems for Apple to control you and their devices that you paid for, not for you to control any device that you own. Therefore, the only traction they've really gotten is with one single user - Apple. > macOS For now. (Relax everybody, I'm at least half kidding.)
    - lrvick 6y ago
      I would say that is pretty spot on, and I would include MacOS in that list to a lesser extent too. You can't change much about how MacOS works under the hood anymore. If you don't like how it works, tough. The device and OS are not yours. Also why no one could pay me enough to rely on Apple hardware or software at this point for anything but entertainment.
  - spijdar 6y ago
    Probably worth pointing out a significant portion of the BSD "personality" in the XNU kernel is just straight FreeBSD. You could kind of say XNU is a superset of the FreeBSD kernel. On top of that, the unix userland resembles FreeBSD, although it's pretty eclectic in choices, e.g. it ships with GNU grep and GNU make by default IIRC while I think FreeBSD uses BSD grep and make by default? (Darwin is pretty eclectic overall -- some portions are more NetBSDish. Kernel is mostly Free I think)
liendolucas 6y ago
What do I love about FreeBSD? You can bring back to life old hardware and put it to do useful things (this is also true with other BSDs and low footprint Linux distros, but so far my experience with FreeBSD has been superb). At the moment the only machine I'm running it is a ThinkPad X230 and everything works perfectly and the documentation is top notch. The FreeBSD Handbook is an excellent place to start for newcomers. vermaden's guide on setting up automount (who also wrote automount) on FreeBSD has been really really useful, thanks a lot for that! One gotcha that I've learnt about FreeBSD is that you have to run RELEASE in order to be able to upgrade the system!
- freetonik 6y ago
  Did you have to install and tweak drivers for the wifi module on the x230?
  - vermaden 6y ago
    Only this is needed: https://twitter.com/vermaden/status/1317864099053785090 https://twitter.com/vermaden/status/1317864099053785090
  - liendolucas 6y ago
    Not at all. WiFi worked out of the box. However I had to use the i915kms driver from ports as I could get the video working as it was with the previous version of FreeBSD that I was using (I can't recall the version). These are the steps that I had to do after trying many i915kms drivers (both the basic one included and also the ones available from pkg): 1. Get the ports. 2. cd /usr/ports/graphics/drm-kmod; make install 3. Add: kld_list="${kld_list} /boot/modules/i915kms.ko" in /etc/rc.conf 4. Optionally install the `mesa-demos` package and run `glx-gears` to test acceleration. I think there were some changes to the i915kms driver because the previous version I was using (non-stable) the driver was working absolutely fine. Hope that helps if you're experiencing the same issue! Edit: Blank lines between instructions.
    - freetonik 6y ago
lifeisstillgood 6y ago
From about 2005 to 2012 i ran everything on FreeBSD, laptop, desktop and every server I had at two companies. Eventually I moved where I did not have CTO authority (Beggars and choosers) and by 2015 I realised that I was spending more time configuring drivers and trying to get the display manger just right than actually delivering value. What I really wanted about 2010 was a company that sold a laptop pre installed with FreeBSD that just worked - kept the drivers and everything else Shipshape and Bristol fashion . I thought then I would happily pay a annual fee for it - I guess Tim Cook has that fee now.
- dijit 6y ago
  If we're sharing anecdotes: I was forced into using Windows for 1yr when I started at Ubisoft. (Visual Studio, MS office, Skype!! grumble). Eventually I got tired of doing all of my infrastructure development in a VM, so I wiped out my desktop OS and stuck FreeBSD on it (I was also on a tirade against systemd at the time). -- I was given a crappy PC to run windows/skype/office on. Overall, aside from how absolutely horrendously slow the browser was (and, it's even slower on OpenBSD which is what I stuck on my laptop)- it was significantly less 'breaky' than my windows machine was. Windows had crapped out a whole bunch of times; randomly stopping devices from working and needing a reboot to fix, the VM software(s) had completely wrecked the networking stack in the OS- it was really painful. But FreeBSD (once set up) made that desktop the most solid it had ever been.
  - eatonphil 6y ago
    I ran FreeBSD on all my personal laptops from 2015-2018 and I didn't notice any difference in speeds on Chromium between personal and work laptops. All my personal laptops are Windows now (partially for some low-key gaming and partially ease of use). I thought I'd like using Hyper-V but it's a pain in the ass to configure static ips. So I do all my development in a Fedora VM on Linode... In writing this up I realize there's not really great reason to be using Windows after all. More and more important software is available in the browser (i.e. Figma finally made Sketch/macOS less of an issue, Google Docs is Google Docs). Maybe I'll switch back to FreeBSD.
jeromenerf 6y ago
Iirc, FreeBSD has some early support for wayland. I have found running sway on Debian testing really refreshing. Everything is simpler in configuration and usage.

81 points by rodrigo975 6y ago

simlevesque 6y ago

Hacker news blocks emojis, it should do the same for "vermaden"

LukeShu 6y ago
Surely the "Mathematical Monospace" set of characters have merit in being allowed on HN, this misuse of them notwithstanding?
- suprfsat 6y ago
  People should simply use characters in correct ways and not in incorrect ways.
  - enriquto 6y ago
    what does that even mean?
chippy 6y ago
Even worse, in Firefox, I see the title of the submission appear to be on a newline underneath the upvote arrow. The special characters are making the height of the div to be 33px http://i.imgur.com/nuA4TBe.png http://i.imgur.com/nuA4TBe.png
- arendtio 6y ago
  In my Firefox, I see 2 newlines above and 2 newlines beneath... Version 83.0 on Arch Linux
  - LukeShu 6y ago
    Indeed, this is what I see https://i.imgur.com/jVWhV49.png https://i.imgur.com/jVWhV49.png with Arch's Firefox 83.0 on Parabola (downstream of Arch). It seems that the issue is the "LatinModernMathJax_Monospace-Regular" font being broken. This font is part of the "mathjax2" package, which is a dependency of my PDF reader.
    - gravitas 6y ago
      For my own learning, the poster "vermanden" is (ab)using the U+1F600 to U+1F6FF table of Mayan/mathematical symbols (except for the first right arrow, it's another set) which you can reference here: https://www.utf8-chartable.de/unicode-utf8-table.pl https://www.utf8-chartable.de/unicode-utf8-table.pl It breaks down like so in hex mode: E2 80 93 20 -> F0 9D 9A 9F v F0 9D 9A 8E e F0 9D 9A 9B r F0 9D 9A 96 m F0 9D 9A 8A a F0 9D 9A 8D d F0 9D 9A 8E e F0 9D 9A 97 n
      - vermaden 6y ago
        I used 'generator' from here: http://qaz.wtf/u/convert.cgi?text=vermaden http://qaz.wtf/u/convert.cgi?text=vermaden
        arendtio 6y ago
        Thanks for sharing. Kinda funny to see a simplistic and technology embracing site like HN 'broken' due to insufficient input sanitization ;-)
willio58 6y ago
Agreed. Let’s avoid avoid becoming another Twitter please

llarsson 6y ago

This feels both useful (should I need to do desktop FreeBSD) and like a walk down memory lane (from when this was how you had to manage Linux, too). Thank you for both. And thank you to all the countless developers who have made this level of fiddling mostly a thing of the past. At least this blog did not have to mention modelines.

spijdar 6y ago
FreeBSD feels more difficult to use in this sense even compared to Net/OpenBSD. While some of this configuring is strictly unnecessary (changing the keyboard layout in xorg.conf is only relevant if you aren't using a DE with that functionality), FreeBSD seems more ... finicky with GPU drivers and their DRM/KMS compat layer from Linux than Net/Open. On NetBSD you can usually just "starts" and get an accelerated X session with no config, from just a "full sets" install. You usually have to install at least some extra kernel modules in FreeBSD.
- trasz 6y ago
  It's an unfortunate consequence of GPL licensing of some of the linuxkpi parts, which graphics drivers use. I believe the amount of problematic code is slowly decreasing, so eventually things will get back to normal.
- anthk 6y ago
  What's modular xorg for then?
- vermaden 6y ago
  I just tried to start X11 on FreeBSD 12.2 with all these configs removed and it started with accelerated graphics. Only Synaptics touchpad had 'tap to click' disabled. I create these configs to be sure that X11 will start the way I want it to start, not that all of it is needed.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

ggm 6y ago

(2018)

andoriyu 6y ago
He constantly updates it. Update 4 for example talks about libinput.
vermaden 6y ago
2018 is indeed the date of the 'original' post but the later adde UPDATES are from other dates. For example UPDATE 4 is from today. Maybe I should also add the date to that 'UPDATES'? :)

annadane 6y ago

Something that strikes me about FreeBSD is you need a certain amount of knowledge going in. On Linux, you can set up a desktop pretty easily. Then you can find out more advanced stuff later on. BSD just dumps you into a shell. You have to know to install this or that metapackage to get a graphical display going and the concepts are different enough from Linux land so that it takes you a while to get going and feel comfortable

anthk 6y ago
>BSD just dumps you into a shell False. OpenBSD assk you at the install process if you want to launch Xenodm from Xenocara at boot. You get fvwm, right, but X is totally configured.
vermaden 6y ago
There are also 'zero configuration' FreeBSD based systems like GhostBSD or NomadBSD. You should try them instead if you want Ubuntu-like experience.
tetraca 6y ago
I found the FreeBSD handbook to be extremely helpful in both installing the system and trying to navigate my way around it. It's what made me finally comfortable moving around in *nix systems when I was in a "install every weird operating system that exists" phase. https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/index.html https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/index.html
jjt-yn_t 6y ago
Well, as a FreeBSD user earlier this year I tried about 3 distros to install anew [ previously arch ] from a thumbdrive. None would bring up the install screen properly [ I suppose my monitor has the wrong input or something... ] and IIRC one that would would not let me complete partitioning without errors. [ Not to be overly critical of linux, but I ran out of time... ]
pjmlp 6y ago
That depends on when one started with UNIX, cough xmodconfig.

kdasme 6y ago

FreeBSD is such a great OS and has a very powerful kernel. So much potential, it is sad to see Linux is the only unix OS that gets traction. They've had Jails in BSD long before Docker was a thing. Debian GNU/kFreeBSD was promising but it probably just doesn't make sense to maintain that project given lack of attention. :(

danieldk 6y ago
Linux is the only unix OS that gets traction Darwin (macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS)? And I guess that technically Minix is one of the most successful Unix-like systems. [1] [1] https://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/intel/ https://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/intel/
- wayneftw 6y ago
  > iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS Those are systems for Apple to control you and their devices that you paid for, not for you to control any device that you own. Therefore, the only traction they've really gotten is with one single user - Apple. > macOS For now. (Relax everybody, I'm at least half kidding.)
  - lrvick 6y ago
    I would say that is pretty spot on, and I would include MacOS in that list to a lesser extent too. You can't change much about how MacOS works under the hood anymore. If you don't like how it works, tough. The device and OS are not yours. Also why no one could pay me enough to rely on Apple hardware or software at this point for anything but entertainment.
- spijdar 6y ago
  Probably worth pointing out a significant portion of the BSD "personality" in the XNU kernel is just straight FreeBSD. You could kind of say XNU is a superset of the FreeBSD kernel. On top of that, the unix userland resembles FreeBSD, although it's pretty eclectic in choices, e.g. it ships with GNU grep and GNU make by default IIRC while I think FreeBSD uses BSD grep and make by default? (Darwin is pretty eclectic overall -- some portions are more NetBSDish. Kernel is mostly Free I think)

liendolucas 6y ago

What do I love about FreeBSD? You can bring back to life old hardware and put it to do useful things (this is also true with other BSDs and low footprint Linux distros, but so far my experience with FreeBSD has been superb). At the moment the only machine I'm running it is a ThinkPad X230 and everything works perfectly and the documentation is top notch. The FreeBSD Handbook is an excellent place to start for newcomers. vermaden's guide on setting up automount (who also wrote automount) on FreeBSD has been really really useful, thanks a lot for that! One gotcha that I've learnt about FreeBSD is that you have to run RELEASE in order to be able to upgrade the system!

freetonik 6y ago
Did you have to install and tweak drivers for the wifi module on the x230?
- vermaden 6y ago
  Only this is needed: https://twitter.com/vermaden/status/1317864099053785090 https://twitter.com/vermaden/status/1317864099053785090
- liendolucas 6y ago
  Not at all. WiFi worked out of the box. However I had to use the i915kms driver from ports as I could get the video working as it was with the previous version of FreeBSD that I was using (I can't recall the version). These are the steps that I had to do after trying many i915kms drivers (both the basic one included and also the ones available from pkg): 1. Get the ports. 2. cd /usr/ports/graphics/drm-kmod; make install 3. Add: kld_list="${kld_list} /boot/modules/i915kms.ko" in /etc/rc.conf 4. Optionally install the `mesa-demos` package and run `glx-gears` to test acceleration. I think there were some changes to the i915kms driver because the previous version I was using (non-stable) the driver was working absolutely fine. Hope that helps if you're experiencing the same issue! Edit: Blank lines between instructions.
  - freetonik 6y ago

lifeisstillgood 6y ago

From about 2005 to 2012 i ran everything on FreeBSD, laptop, desktop and every server I had at two companies. Eventually I moved where I did not have CTO authority (Beggars and choosers) and by 2015 I realised that I was spending more time configuring drivers and trying to get the display manger just right than actually delivering value. What I really wanted about 2010 was a company that sold a laptop pre installed with FreeBSD that just worked - kept the drivers and everything else Shipshape and Bristol fashion . I thought then I would happily pay a annual fee for it - I guess Tim Cook has that fee now.

dijit 6y ago
If we're sharing anecdotes: I was forced into using Windows for 1yr when I started at Ubisoft. (Visual Studio, MS office, Skype!! grumble). Eventually I got tired of doing all of my infrastructure development in a VM, so I wiped out my desktop OS and stuck FreeBSD on it (I was also on a tirade against systemd at the time). -- I was given a crappy PC to run windows/skype/office on. Overall, aside from how absolutely horrendously slow the browser was (and, it's even slower on OpenBSD which is what I stuck on my laptop)- it was significantly less 'breaky' than my windows machine was. Windows had crapped out a whole bunch of times; randomly stopping devices from working and needing a reboot to fix, the VM software(s) had completely wrecked the networking stack in the OS- it was really painful. But FreeBSD (once set up) made that desktop the most solid it had ever been.
- eatonphil 6y ago
  I ran FreeBSD on all my personal laptops from 2015-2018 and I didn't notice any difference in speeds on Chromium between personal and work laptops. All my personal laptops are Windows now (partially for some low-key gaming and partially ease of use). I thought I'd like using Hyper-V but it's a pain in the ass to configure static ips. So I do all my development in a Fedora VM on Linode... In writing this up I realize there's not really great reason to be using Windows after all. More and more important software is available in the browser (i.e. Figma finally made Sketch/macOS less of an issue, Google Docs is Google Docs). Maybe I'll switch back to FreeBSD.

jeromenerf 6y ago

Iirc, FreeBSD has some early support for wayland. I have found running sway on Debian testing really refreshing. Everything is simpler in configuration and usage.