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I don't have enough experience with FreeBSD (outside of FreeNAS seven years ago), but I've never had any success getting it to run on a laptop. Every time I've

I don't have enough experience with FreeBSD (outside of FreeNAS seven years ago), but I've never had any success getting it to run on a laptop. Every time I've tried installing it on a laptop I get issues with either the WiFi card not working, issues with the 3D accelerator card not working at all, or the lid-close go to sleep functionality not working. I've been using Linux since I was a teenager, so it's not like I am a stranger to fixing driver issues, but it seemed like no amount of Googling was good enough for me fix these problems (googling is much harder when you don't have functioning wifi). As a result I've always just stuck with Linux (or macOS semi-recently, which I suppose is kind of BSD?).

sandworm101 5y ago
>> lid-close go to sleep functionality I've read hundreds of post surrounding this issue. I've used laptops for decades but I don't think I have ever used this feature. It doesn't take even a second to hit a couple keys and sleep a laptop. The only feature lower on my priority list would be syncing the RGB keyboard to soundcloud. But that's just me. Evidently the lid-close-sleep thing is of vital import to millions of laptop users. It's one of those things where I just shake my head in bewilderment.
- trasz 5y ago
  I use it all the time; it boils down to a single line in sysctl.conf: hw.acpi.lid_switch_state=“S3”
- Melatonic 5y ago
  One of the features I always actually make sure to turn off - I am in the same boat and there are many times when I want to close the lid of my laptop but still have some stuff chugging along. Saves a lot of battery that way!
- tombert 5y ago
  I mean, sure, I'm an engineer, I'm sure I can figure out a workaround, but I like the feature of going to sleep on lid close. It's a feature I use, and I couldn't get it working in FreeBSD.
- brimble 5y ago
  Having computers do things automatically is kinda the whole point of what we do. > Evidently the lid-close-sleep thing is of vital import to millions of laptop users. It's one of many little things that takes a laptop from feeling like some weird barely-functioning misfit of a toy to an actual portable tool that you don't have to worry about or baby.
- jodrellblank 5y ago
  Maybe get out of your rut and try it before mocking everyone who uses it and posting long rambling comments about how you “don’t understand” but still think you have enough understanding to judge “millions” of people as beneath you?
GordonS 5y ago
I've had similar issues when trying to run it in Hyper-V or VirtualBox - issues with network adapters and disk not being recognised. I've tried FreeBSD and FireflyBSD, and give it another try ever year or so, but always hit the same walls
- toast0 5y ago
  I've run FreeBSD in Hyper-V and VirtualBox with no issues, are you starting from the virtual machine images or the installer images? If you haven't tried the virtual machine images, they're linked from release notes, and 13.0 is available here: https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/VM-IMAGES/13.0-RELEASE/ https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/VM-IMAGES/13.0-REL... I set up Hyper-V for the first time last summer, and I seem to recall it just working.
  - GordonS 5y ago
    I was in installing from ISOs. Didn't realise there were prebuilt VM images, so thanks for that.
lordgroff 5y ago
I've recently switched my home server to Freebsd after it was on Debian for who even knows how long (Debian still virtualized on bhyve for some tasks). My take: I love FreeBSD as a server os. It's really, really well designed. Spend a bit of time with the handbook and after a while it's really simple to hack on. I really like the separation of the base OS, I like the init, I like jails, documentation puts every Linux distribution to SHAME. But laptop?... Unless you scour for exactly the parts that will work (esp for wifi), you're going to have a bad time, even on old equipment. At the same time as I rebooted my server, I had an old ThinkPad I decided I wanted to FreeBSD for the hell of it. I gave up on it. It may have been possible but it was just too much work. In this day and age when almost any Linux desktop distro boots without a hitch on hardware that's not completely brand spanking new, it was just not worth it
- Melatonic 5y ago
  I would probably just a bare metal hypervisor on the laptop and then make FreeBSD a VM but you might still run into a lot of hardware issues.
- tombert 5y ago
  That was basically my experience. I had tried multiple times on old laptops, thinking that maybe someone had developed a better driver by this point, and it just didn't happen. Usually when this happens in Linux, a few hours of Googling, swearing, and retrying is enough to fix my problems, and I'm sure that with enough time that approach would have worked in FreeBSD as well, but I always grew impatient. > almost any Linux desktop distro boots without a hitch on hardware that's not completely brand spanking new Can't speak for anyone else, but even for brand spanking new hardware, as long as I've stuck with AMD drivers, nowadays Linux "Just Works" when I boot it. Obviously YMMV between systems, but I feel like Linux has finally become competitive with Windows and macOS from a usability standpoint.
- int_19h 5y ago
  You might also end up carefully researching all the parts, only to find out that a new major FreeBSD release breaks hardware support for something. Had that happen to video on one of my netbooks.
kitsunesoba 5y ago
I haven’t actually verified it for myself, but I’ve read several times that for BSD on laptops, OpenBSD is generally a better experience, supposedly because the OpenBSD devs heavily dogfood (using OpenBSD to develop OpenBSD) whereas FreeBSD devs tend to use other operating systems (predominantly macOS, apparently) on their laptops/desktops.
- tombert 5y ago
  I have heard that too, and at some point I might try it out. Honestly I just wish there was a way to run ZFS as a core partition on macOS. APFS is pretty good, but a full on ZFS thing is really cool, and makes FreeBSD so much more appealing as a result.
  - philkrylov 5y ago
    Have you seen https://openzfsonosx.org/wiki/ZFS_on_Boot https://openzfsonosx.org/wiki/ZFS_on_Boot ?
    - tombert 5y ago
      I have not...if I weren't afraid of losing all my stuff I'd do it tonight... Maybe I'll just back up to S3 or something. You have peeked my interest.
    - asveikau 5y ago
      I don't think relying on kernel extensions on Mac is a good idea. It takes a lot to get it working and I suspect it will be brittle. I've had a hard enough time in the past with out of tree drivers on Linux. I can't imagine what it's like with an OS vendor as hostile to the concept as Apple is.
- koeng 5y ago
  I use OpenBSD on my laptop. Honestly it was a better experience than even Arch Linux or the like. More things worked out of box (ran on thinkpad) and there is love put into some simple commands - zzz and ZZZ alias built-ins are actually super useful and you can really tell the people building the OS use em themselves.
mrtweetyhack 5y ago

sandworm101 5y ago

>> lid-close go to sleep functionality I've read hundreds of post surrounding this issue. I've used laptops for decades but I don't think I have ever used this feature. It doesn't take even a second to hit a couple keys and sleep a laptop. The only feature lower on my priority list would be syncing the RGB keyboard to soundcloud. But that's just me. Evidently the lid-close-sleep thing is of vital import to millions of laptop users. It's one of those things where I just shake my head in bewilderment.

trasz 5y ago
I use it all the time; it boils down to a single line in sysctl.conf: hw.acpi.lid_switch_state=“S3”
Melatonic 5y ago
One of the features I always actually make sure to turn off - I am in the same boat and there are many times when I want to close the lid of my laptop but still have some stuff chugging along. Saves a lot of battery that way!
tombert 5y ago
I mean, sure, I'm an engineer, I'm sure I can figure out a workaround, but I like the feature of going to sleep on lid close. It's a feature I use, and I couldn't get it working in FreeBSD.
brimble 5y ago
Having computers do things automatically is kinda the whole point of what we do. > Evidently the lid-close-sleep thing is of vital import to millions of laptop users. It's one of many little things that takes a laptop from feeling like some weird barely-functioning misfit of a toy to an actual portable tool that you don't have to worry about or baby.
jodrellblank 5y ago
Maybe get out of your rut and try it before mocking everyone who uses it and posting long rambling comments about how you “don’t understand” but still think you have enough understanding to judge “millions” of people as beneath you?

GordonS 5y ago

I've had similar issues when trying to run it in Hyper-V or VirtualBox - issues with network adapters and disk not being recognised. I've tried FreeBSD and FireflyBSD, and give it another try ever year or so, but always hit the same walls

toast0 5y ago
I've run FreeBSD in Hyper-V and VirtualBox with no issues, are you starting from the virtual machine images or the installer images? If you haven't tried the virtual machine images, they're linked from release notes, and 13.0 is available here: https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/VM-IMAGES/13.0-RELEASE/ https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/VM-IMAGES/13.0-REL... I set up Hyper-V for the first time last summer, and I seem to recall it just working.
- GordonS 5y ago
  I was in installing from ISOs. Didn't realise there were prebuilt VM images, so thanks for that.

lordgroff 5y ago

I've recently switched my home server to Freebsd after it was on Debian for who even knows how long (Debian still virtualized on bhyve for some tasks). My take: I love FreeBSD as a server os. It's really, really well designed. Spend a bit of time with the handbook and after a while it's really simple to hack on. I really like the separation of the base OS, I like the init, I like jails, documentation puts every Linux distribution to SHAME. But laptop?... Unless you scour for exactly the parts that will work (esp for wifi), you're going to have a bad time, even on old equipment. At the same time as I rebooted my server, I had an old ThinkPad I decided I wanted to FreeBSD for the hell of it. I gave up on it. It may have been possible but it was just too much work. In this day and age when almost any Linux desktop distro boots without a hitch on hardware that's not completely brand spanking new, it was just not worth it

Melatonic 5y ago
I would probably just a bare metal hypervisor on the laptop and then make FreeBSD a VM but you might still run into a lot of hardware issues.
tombert 5y ago
That was basically my experience. I had tried multiple times on old laptops, thinking that maybe someone had developed a better driver by this point, and it just didn't happen. Usually when this happens in Linux, a few hours of Googling, swearing, and retrying is enough to fix my problems, and I'm sure that with enough time that approach would have worked in FreeBSD as well, but I always grew impatient. > almost any Linux desktop distro boots without a hitch on hardware that's not completely brand spanking new Can't speak for anyone else, but even for brand spanking new hardware, as long as I've stuck with AMD drivers, nowadays Linux "Just Works" when I boot it. Obviously YMMV between systems, but I feel like Linux has finally become competitive with Windows and macOS from a usability standpoint.
int_19h 5y ago
You might also end up carefully researching all the parts, only to find out that a new major FreeBSD release breaks hardware support for something. Had that happen to video on one of my netbooks.

kitsunesoba 5y ago

I haven’t actually verified it for myself, but I’ve read several times that for BSD on laptops, OpenBSD is generally a better experience, supposedly because the OpenBSD devs heavily dogfood (using OpenBSD to develop OpenBSD) whereas FreeBSD devs tend to use other operating systems (predominantly macOS, apparently) on their laptops/desktops.

tombert 5y ago
I have heard that too, and at some point I might try it out. Honestly I just wish there was a way to run ZFS as a core partition on macOS. APFS is pretty good, but a full on ZFS thing is really cool, and makes FreeBSD so much more appealing as a result.
- philkrylov 5y ago
  Have you seen https://openzfsonosx.org/wiki/ZFS_on_Boot https://openzfsonosx.org/wiki/ZFS_on_Boot ?
  - tombert 5y ago
    I have not...if I weren't afraid of losing all my stuff I'd do it tonight... Maybe I'll just back up to S3 or something. You have peeked my interest.
  - asveikau 5y ago
    I don't think relying on kernel extensions on Mac is a good idea. It takes a lot to get it working and I suspect it will be brittle. I've had a hard enough time in the past with out of tree drivers on Linux. I can't imagine what it's like with an OS vendor as hostile to the concept as Apple is.
koeng 5y ago
I use OpenBSD on my laptop. Honestly it was a better experience than even Arch Linux or the like. More things worked out of box (ran on thinkpad) and there is love put into some simple commands - zzz and ZZZ alias built-ins are actually super useful and you can really tell the people building the OS use em themselves.

mrtweetyhack 5y ago