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I've used it as my desktop OS since 1999 or so (first on FreeBSD's DEC Alpha port, so as to eat my on dogfood as I was one of the main contributors to the alpha
by drewg123 3y ago
I've used it as my desktop OS since 1999 or so (first on FreeBSD's DEC Alpha port, so as to eat my on dogfood as I was one of the main contributors to the alpha port), with a brief detour running Ubuntu Linux on x86 when I was doing almost 100% linux work from 2010-2015 or so.
I run very basic GPU (GTX 750), use ZFS for everything, run lxde, and use linux firefox as my main web browser (via the LinuxJails project at https://wiki.freebsd.org/LinuxJails https://wiki.freebsd.org/LinuxJails).
For day-to-day use its nearly the same as linux, and runs nearly the same apps as linux. The biggest frustration I have is "linux recipes" for doing things often don't work (naturally, since the OS is different), and electron apps are a crapshoot, since the electron is chrome, and the emulation needed for chrome is incomplete. For example, I'm listening to spotify right now and I can listen to playlists, but can't just play a song..
EDIT: One the things I loved about Ubuntu LTS is the packages being essentially frozen, aside from security fixes. FreeBSD is a "rolling release" OS for 3rd party packages, even on stable branches. That's one of the reasons that I use the ubuntu LTS firefox ... I can apt-get update & apt-get upgrade just the web browser and its dependencies, rather than the 1700 unrelated packages that I'd need to update just to get the newest firefox.
- CoolCold 3y agoYou are probably the first FreeBSD guy who understands [and likes] the LTS option one can get with Linux world. Many from FreeBSD crowd just don't get the plain idea of LTS at all. Kudos!
- wkat4242 3y agoVscode is also Electron and works great though. Chromium itself too. For Spotify I use spotify-qt which is ok (not great) though with the latest version from ports it refuses to store my password in the KDE keychain any longer :( Ps I actually love the rolling packages on FreeBSD while keeping a stable OS. On Linux these things are usually coupled. You can however change FreeBSD to quarterly updated packages if you so desire. Just set it to the quarterly branch instead of latest.
- drewg123 3y agoI use spotifyd and control the music from my phone most of the time. I mostly don't care if I have the latest version of libfoo, but I do care that I have the latest version of anything exposed to the internet (eg, firefox), and any security updates required to libfoo. What I hate is when I do a pkg update; pkg upgrade firefox and it pulls in 1000+ pkg updates via dependency chains, some of which change how things work. That's why I like the linux jail approach. Back in the old days (early/mid 2000s) when things were simpler, I still ran linux web browsers for the same reason. I could just download the tarball from mozilla or opera or whatever and update to the latest browser binary without taking a chance on fubar'ing my system.