6 ms·

Have never used FreeBSD, and am curious about using it on my laptop -- so an honest and perhaps naive question for people who do use it as their main system: D

Have never used FreeBSD, and am curious about using it on my laptop -- so an honest and perhaps naive question for people who do use it as their main system: Does it JustWork on the majority of average-user things, like connecting to your Wi-Fi access point, displaying your desktop at its maximum resolution without crying, playing your multimedia files, etc? Ubuntu gets this just right, providing a perfect balance between core technologies for developers, and ease of software installation for common activities like, say, watching a Youtube video. Support for 500 virtualisation technologies and no easy support for, say, playing mp4 files is going to make me not want to use it on my laptop. Then again, the average user might not exactly be who FreeBSD is targeting for their software.

untothebreach 13y ago
If you want to use BSD on a laptop, your best bet is PC-BSD[1]. I love using FreeBSD on my laptop, but it definitely didn't "just work," you definitely have to tinker with it. PC-BSD is based on FreeBSD but attempts to "just work" in the way you are looking for. 1: http://www.pcbsd.org/ http://www.pcbsd.org/
lmm 13y ago
It's not like ubuntu, it's more like 2005-era linux. That is, it will work, and once you've got a working configuration it will keep working - but you do have to manually configure it. I don't know how good the laptop hardware support is - my impression is more people use it on the server. My wifi works fine, but you should probably check yours is supported.
nolok 13y ago
For a laptop, if you're looking for a "just work" solution, I would say forget it. Automagic full support for touchpad, energy management and such is not there yet. Not too surprising, even linux still has trouble here and there with laptops, but I think trying it in that context would make you dislike freebsd for the wrong reason. But on a server or even a desktop computer, it's really great
belorn 13y ago
If you are looking for a pragmatic operative system, freeBSD is going to be at the bottom of the list thanks to it having the hardest licensing requirement for included software projects. Ubuntu include anything from proprietary freeware blobs, to GPL, to permissive licensed software. So long the inclusion improves the practical use, it is included. The more ideological free software operative systems excludes the proprietary freeware blobs, but keeps the GPL licensed and permissive licensed software. FreeBSD excluded both proprietary freeware blobs and GPL licensed software, and only uses software that is permissive licensed accordantly to the OSI standard. This methodology also cover driver support for hardware, as they won't port a linux driver to BSD if the linux driver is GPL. However, most commonly used GPL software has an permissive alternative, so if you are lucky, using those alternative won't impact you too much. On the server side, I would think that is more true than for the laptop.
- bunderbunder 13y ago
  > they won't port a linux driver to BSD if the linux driver is GPL. It's more a "can't" than a "won't". They can't incorporate GPL code into the BSD kernel without violating the GPL. LGPL-licensed code might be something they could port as a pluggable driver, though don't quote me on the details there.
  - lmm 13y ago
    It seems perverse to say the least that freebsd was willing to incorporate the (more restrictive) CDDL[?]-licensed ZFS driver into their kernel, but won't include GPL code.
    - emaste 13y ago
      The CDDL is a file-scope weak copyleft license, and is (broadly) less restrictive than the GPL. As bunderbunder pointed out FreeBSD is not able to include GPL code, because the GPL is not compatible with the distribution terms for the kernel.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
scythe 13y ago
>curious about using it on my laptop I don't think you should use it on your laptop. See, the thing is: >Does it JustWork on the majority of average-user things Not on most hardware. The problem is basically drivers, it's always been drivers, I doubt it'll ever stop being drivers. When it comes to off-the-beaten-path OS's like BSD, Haiku, etc (maybe even Linux), it really makes sense to buy a machine with it in mind. That way you can look at specs and make sure all of the hardware is fully supported. Unfortunately it's not rare that even one unsupported thing can become a huge pain in the ass. So you can put it on a* laptop, but I wouldn't put it on your current laptop unless you've done plenty of research and you're sure everything is supported. And it's become my opinion that new and unpopular OS's can provide a better user experience by recommending or even targeting a two or three series of hardware (e.g. Samsung Chromebooks) where everything should work out of the box. Which isn't to say a user couldn't install the OS on something else, but a set of preferred hardware never hurt OS X, and even hackers prefer to have something available that "just works". Especially when developer resources are limited, it could be an advantage to prioritize in a way that manages to deliver a very good user experience to the people who are willing to make a little investment to use the OS. As the project grows, the list can get larger, it's not like you're limiting yourself forever. ps: FreeBSD actually has in my experience (~2 years ago) a very nice audio system (OSS4), so playing mp4s should be no issue.
Wilya 13y ago
Laptops aren't really where FreeBSD shines. It's possible, but linux is clearly more advanced on that front. I'm not sure many people bother with it, I certainly don't. (I run a FreeBSD VM on a Windows host) Some thoughts: * Support for things like Wifi and suspend isn't a given at all (I never had reliable wifi on linux either, but I think I'm an outlier in that). * Nvidia release official drivers for FreeBSD, which tend to work fine. For the rest, you're on your own. I'm not sure of the state of Intel drivers, haven't tested for some time. * Audio tends to just work. The lack of pulseaudio actually makes things simpler than linux.
- icebraining 13y ago
  Audio tends to just work. The lack of pulseaudio actually makes things simpler than linux. You know, you don't actually have to use pulseaudio on Linux. Both Alsa and OSSv4 work fine.
  - speeder 13y ago
    Except PA suck, Alsa suck less than PA, and OSSv4 is hated by kernel devs and is hard as fuck to install. (yet on some of my machines audio only "just work" if I install OSSv4 :/)
    - networked 13y ago
      >OSSv4 is hated by kernel devs Honest question: why?
      - speeder 13y ago
        It is a long story, that I do not remember entirely and corretly, but it was mostly politics... Part of it was because OSSv4 was briefly not open source, and this pissed off lots of people, when it became open again, there was some political fights (that I don't remember the reasons), and there is some technical details of OSSv4 that irritate the kernel people (like the fact that instead of being entirely on userland it rely on Kernel space to reduce latency, specially for games, and the kernel people say they believe it should be userland only).
protomyth 13y ago
Here is a nice listing of FreeBSD on laptops http://laptop.bsdgroup.de/freebsd/ http://laptop.bsdgroup.de/freebsd/
mwfunk 13y ago
It is definitely not something likely to "just work" on your laptop, a la Ubuntu. I absolutely love FreeBSD and enjoy learning about it and using it and digging into its internals, but it is not intended to be a replacement for Ubuntu. For example, the installer only installs FreeBSD itself, which does not include any GUI components such as an X server. I don't really see this as a failing of FreeBSD at all- it has a very specific scope and the developers are focused on fulfilling the requirements of that scope with the highest degree of quality and architectural coherence that they can muster. However, people looking for an Ubuntu replacement that don't want to mess around on the command line or edit text files for system configuration are going to be disappointed. This isn't to say that it can't do all of the things that desktop-focused Linux distros can do. It has a really nice system for building third-party open source software (the ports system), or you can just install prebuilt binary packages with its package manager. So, you can pretty easily get X and your preferred desktop or window manager and your favorite apps on there, but it requires learning how to use ports (and therefore, building everything) or figuring out how to install the binaries from the command line with the package manager. Having said that, you might want to try out PC-BSD. PC-BSD is a desktop-oriented system that uses FreeBSD as its core. My understanding is that every PC-BSD release is tied to a corresponding FreeBSD release, and what you are doing when you install PC-BSD is installing a stock FreeBSD system plus a graphical interface (including an X server, the desktop of your choice, and a graphical package manager), using a nice, simple GUI installer that attempts to "just work" and do the right thing with minimal input from the user. You can think of the relationship between PC-BSD and FreeBSD as analagous to the relationship between Ubuntu and the Linux kernel, in the sense that PC-BSD builds a complete desktop system by shipping a bunch of integrated higher-level components layered on top of an upstream core system. FreeBSD is a standalone project focused on providing that core system, and PC-BSD is more of a distro that brings together a bunch of other pieces to build a complete desktop system around that core. I also get the impression (someone please correct me if I'm wrong, or go into more detail if I'm right) that there's a high degree of commonality between people working on the two projects, and that there is a pseudo-official relationship whereby PC-BSD is considered by many people to be the blessed desktop version of FreeBSD.
mvanotti 13y ago
Hi, I have gone trough this process last week. I'm new to freeBSD and wanted to install it in my notebook. For me it was painful. I couldn't tweak it to work as I wanted. - Wifi worked out of the box. - The people from #freebsd chan on irc were very helpful - The handbook is very useful The problems that I couldn't fix: - Somehow I can't go back to terminal if I start x environment, afaik this is a problem of Intel HD Graphic cards (onboard on my notebook). - No acpi support to adjust the brightness level, I have to rely on an app but it isn't the same. - Touchpad support.. In ubuntu it works out of the box, two-finger scrolling and all, in freebsd I have to struggle a little with xorg and the end result is a little worse than ubuntu. - I can't suspend my computer. It never wakes up :( I still have to configure a lot of things (keyboard shortcuts, install better fonts, network manager). It's not that I jumped from ubuntu to freeBSD, I've used archlinux for a few years before I got tired of it breaking my apps with the updates :P I regret installing it on my notebook before trying it on my desktop or on a virtual machine.
Ziomislaw 13y ago
I've been using FreeBSD as my main system since version 9.0 (before that ~8years of using linux - slack, arch, crux, suse, debian). Graphics: intel and nvidia will work fine (well, except you can't switch back to text mode once you load intel module - will be fixed, just not a priority). Wifi: works flawlessly. Multimedia: I use mplayer/emacs. No difference from linux. Flash: Works, sometimes hangs (once a week? I'm use youtube a lot). You will have to remember to manually update your plugins (running nspluginwrapper), if you don't - expect pain. Wine: same as linux, depends on your graphics card support (if playing games). User friendliness: If you can get around in archlinux, you will manage just fine with FreeBSD. Not a technical person/don't like to play with your system? I highly recommend giving PC-BSD a look - imho it is comparable (slightly worse) to openSUSE - you can configure almost everything with a mouse. And the system is fast. Suspend/hibernation: never managed to make it work (thinkpad e320). Other: First of all, I love to tweak. FreeBSD is only *nix I tried that worked well no matter what I changed and worked AS I EXPECTED IT WOULD! Once you configure your system you are done. Expect it to behave properly and not require any fixes because you updated at a wrong time etc. (I hated ubuntu for it - I had to roll back packages manually THREE TIMES! - yes I am spoiled by FreeBSD :D ). You can use ZFS as your root partition. There is almost no documentation and tutorials in the web (compared to linux), the reason for that is EVERYTHING IS DOCUMENTED. Just RTFMan/Handbook. It takes a while to get used to it if you used linux before.
ams6110 13y ago
Can't comment on FreeBSD but I run OpenBSD on my laptop and for me it "just works" (wifi, trackpad, display, etc.) but I did have to swap out the stock wifi adapter for a supported one. What doesn't work is suspend/resume. I haven't tried the latest -current yet though, which I did recently install on my desktop and finally got native resolution on my dual 30" monitors. That said, things I don't do on my computer include playing games, watching videos and listening to music, so my definition of "just works" may not be the same as yours.
- grigio 13y ago
  which are are your hw spec?

untothebreach 13y ago

If you want to use BSD on a laptop, your best bet is PC-BSD[1]. I love using FreeBSD on my laptop, but it definitely didn't "just work," you definitely have to tinker with it. PC-BSD is based on FreeBSD but attempts to "just work" in the way you are looking for. 1: http://www.pcbsd.org/ http://www.pcbsd.org/

lmm 13y ago

It's not like ubuntu, it's more like 2005-era linux. That is, it will work, and once you've got a working configuration it will keep working - but you do have to manually configure it. I don't know how good the laptop hardware support is - my impression is more people use it on the server. My wifi works fine, but you should probably check yours is supported.

nolok 13y ago

For a laptop, if you're looking for a "just work" solution, I would say forget it. Automagic full support for touchpad, energy management and such is not there yet. Not too surprising, even linux still has trouble here and there with laptops, but I think trying it in that context would make you dislike freebsd for the wrong reason. But on a server or even a desktop computer, it's really great

belorn 13y ago

If you are looking for a pragmatic operative system, freeBSD is going to be at the bottom of the list thanks to it having the hardest licensing requirement for included software projects. Ubuntu include anything from proprietary freeware blobs, to GPL, to permissive licensed software. So long the inclusion improves the practical use, it is included. The more ideological free software operative systems excludes the proprietary freeware blobs, but keeps the GPL licensed and permissive licensed software. FreeBSD excluded both proprietary freeware blobs and GPL licensed software, and only uses software that is permissive licensed accordantly to the OSI standard. This methodology also cover driver support for hardware, as they won't port a linux driver to BSD if the linux driver is GPL. However, most commonly used GPL software has an permissive alternative, so if you are lucky, using those alternative won't impact you too much. On the server side, I would think that is more true than for the laptop.

bunderbunder 13y ago
> they won't port a linux driver to BSD if the linux driver is GPL. It's more a "can't" than a "won't". They can't incorporate GPL code into the BSD kernel without violating the GPL. LGPL-licensed code might be something they could port as a pluggable driver, though don't quote me on the details there.
- lmm 13y ago
  It seems perverse to say the least that freebsd was willing to incorporate the (more restrictive) CDDL[?]-licensed ZFS driver into their kernel, but won't include GPL code.
  - emaste 13y ago
    The CDDL is a file-scope weak copyleft license, and is (broadly) less restrictive than the GPL. As bunderbunder pointed out FreeBSD is not able to include GPL code, because the GPL is not compatible with the distribution terms for the kernel.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]

scythe 13y ago

>curious about using it on my laptop I don't think you should use it on your laptop. See, the thing is: >Does it JustWork on the majority of average-user things Not on most hardware. The problem is basically drivers, it's always been drivers, I doubt it'll ever stop being drivers. When it comes to off-the-beaten-path OS's like BSD, Haiku, etc (maybe even Linux), it really makes sense to buy a machine with it in mind. That way you can look at specs and make sure all of the hardware is fully supported. Unfortunately it's not rare that even one unsupported thing can become a huge pain in the ass. So you can put it on a* laptop, but I wouldn't put it on your current laptop unless you've done plenty of research and you're sure everything is supported. And it's become my opinion that new and unpopular OS's can provide a better user experience by recommending or even targeting a two or three series of hardware (e.g. Samsung Chromebooks) where everything should work out of the box. Which isn't to say a user couldn't install the OS on something else, but a set of preferred hardware never hurt OS X, and even hackers prefer to have something available that "just works". Especially when developer resources are limited, it could be an advantage to prioritize in a way that manages to deliver a very good user experience to the people who are willing to make a little investment to use the OS. As the project grows, the list can get larger, it's not like you're limiting yourself forever. ps: FreeBSD actually has in my experience (~2 years ago) a very nice audio system (OSS4), so playing mp4s should be no issue.

Wilya 13y ago

Laptops aren't really where FreeBSD shines. It's possible, but linux is clearly more advanced on that front. I'm not sure many people bother with it, I certainly don't. (I run a FreeBSD VM on a Windows host) Some thoughts: * Support for things like Wifi and suspend isn't a given at all (I never had reliable wifi on linux either, but I think I'm an outlier in that). * Nvidia release official drivers for FreeBSD, which tend to work fine. For the rest, you're on your own. I'm not sure of the state of Intel drivers, haven't tested for some time. * Audio tends to just work. The lack of pulseaudio actually makes things simpler than linux.

icebraining 13y ago
Audio tends to just work. The lack of pulseaudio actually makes things simpler than linux. You know, you don't actually have to use pulseaudio on Linux. Both Alsa and OSSv4 work fine.
- speeder 13y ago
  Except PA suck, Alsa suck less than PA, and OSSv4 is hated by kernel devs and is hard as fuck to install. (yet on some of my machines audio only "just work" if I install OSSv4 :/)
  - networked 13y ago
    >OSSv4 is hated by kernel devs Honest question: why?
    - speeder 13y ago
      It is a long story, that I do not remember entirely and corretly, but it was mostly politics... Part of it was because OSSv4 was briefly not open source, and this pissed off lots of people, when it became open again, there was some political fights (that I don't remember the reasons), and there is some technical details of OSSv4 that irritate the kernel people (like the fact that instead of being entirely on userland it rely on Kernel space to reduce latency, specially for games, and the kernel people say they believe it should be userland only).

protomyth 13y ago

Here is a nice listing of FreeBSD on laptops http://laptop.bsdgroup.de/freebsd/ http://laptop.bsdgroup.de/freebsd/

mwfunk 13y ago

It is definitely not something likely to "just work" on your laptop, a la Ubuntu. I absolutely love FreeBSD and enjoy learning about it and using it and digging into its internals, but it is not intended to be a replacement for Ubuntu. For example, the installer only installs FreeBSD itself, which does not include any GUI components such as an X server. I don't really see this as a failing of FreeBSD at all- it has a very specific scope and the developers are focused on fulfilling the requirements of that scope with the highest degree of quality and architectural coherence that they can muster. However, people looking for an Ubuntu replacement that don't want to mess around on the command line or edit text files for system configuration are going to be disappointed. This isn't to say that it can't do all of the things that desktop-focused Linux distros can do. It has a really nice system for building third-party open source software (the ports system), or you can just install prebuilt binary packages with its package manager. So, you can pretty easily get X and your preferred desktop or window manager and your favorite apps on there, but it requires learning how to use ports (and therefore, building everything) or figuring out how to install the binaries from the command line with the package manager. Having said that, you might want to try out PC-BSD. PC-BSD is a desktop-oriented system that uses FreeBSD as its core. My understanding is that every PC-BSD release is tied to a corresponding FreeBSD release, and what you are doing when you install PC-BSD is installing a stock FreeBSD system plus a graphical interface (including an X server, the desktop of your choice, and a graphical package manager), using a nice, simple GUI installer that attempts to "just work" and do the right thing with minimal input from the user. You can think of the relationship between PC-BSD and FreeBSD as analagous to the relationship between Ubuntu and the Linux kernel, in the sense that PC-BSD builds a complete desktop system by shipping a bunch of integrated higher-level components layered on top of an upstream core system. FreeBSD is a standalone project focused on providing that core system, and PC-BSD is more of a distro that brings together a bunch of other pieces to build a complete desktop system around that core. I also get the impression (someone please correct me if I'm wrong, or go into more detail if I'm right) that there's a high degree of commonality between people working on the two projects, and that there is a pseudo-official relationship whereby PC-BSD is considered by many people to be the blessed desktop version of FreeBSD.

mvanotti 13y ago

Hi, I have gone trough this process last week. I'm new to freeBSD and wanted to install it in my notebook. For me it was painful. I couldn't tweak it to work as I wanted. - Wifi worked out of the box. - The people from #freebsd chan on irc were very helpful - The handbook is very useful The problems that I couldn't fix: - Somehow I can't go back to terminal if I start x environment, afaik this is a problem of Intel HD Graphic cards (onboard on my notebook). - No acpi support to adjust the brightness level, I have to rely on an app but it isn't the same. - Touchpad support.. In ubuntu it works out of the box, two-finger scrolling and all, in freebsd I have to struggle a little with xorg and the end result is a little worse than ubuntu. - I can't suspend my computer. It never wakes up :( I still have to configure a lot of things (keyboard shortcuts, install better fonts, network manager). It's not that I jumped from ubuntu to freeBSD, I've used archlinux for a few years before I got tired of it breaking my apps with the updates :P I regret installing it on my notebook before trying it on my desktop or on a virtual machine.

Ziomislaw 13y ago

I've been using FreeBSD as my main system since version 9.0 (before that ~8years of using linux - slack, arch, crux, suse, debian). Graphics: intel and nvidia will work fine (well, except you can't switch back to text mode once you load intel module - will be fixed, just not a priority). Wifi: works flawlessly. Multimedia: I use mplayer/emacs. No difference from linux. Flash: Works, sometimes hangs (once a week? I'm use youtube a lot). You will have to remember to manually update your plugins (running nspluginwrapper), if you don't - expect pain. Wine: same as linux, depends on your graphics card support (if playing games). User friendliness: If you can get around in archlinux, you will manage just fine with FreeBSD. Not a technical person/don't like to play with your system? I highly recommend giving PC-BSD a look - imho it is comparable (slightly worse) to openSUSE - you can configure almost everything with a mouse. And the system is fast. Suspend/hibernation: never managed to make it work (thinkpad e320). Other: First of all, I love to tweak. FreeBSD is only *nix I tried that worked well no matter what I changed and worked AS I EXPECTED IT WOULD! Once you configure your system you are done. Expect it to behave properly and not require any fixes because you updated at a wrong time etc. (I hated ubuntu for it - I had to roll back packages manually THREE TIMES! - yes I am spoiled by FreeBSD :D ). You can use ZFS as your root partition. There is almost no documentation and tutorials in the web (compared to linux), the reason for that is EVERYTHING IS DOCUMENTED. Just RTFMan/Handbook. It takes a while to get used to it if you used linux before.

ams6110 13y ago

Can't comment on FreeBSD but I run OpenBSD on my laptop and for me it "just works" (wifi, trackpad, display, etc.) but I did have to swap out the stock wifi adapter for a supported one. What doesn't work is suspend/resume. I haven't tried the latest -current yet though, which I did recently install on my desktop and finally got native resolution on my dual 30" monitors. That said, things I don't do on my computer include playing games, watching videos and listening to music, so my definition of "just works" may not be the same as yours.

grigio 13y ago
which are are your hw spec?