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Ask HN: Anyone moved to PC-BSD (TrueOS) from macOS?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone moved to PC-BSD (TrueOS) from macOS?

#3

Post by geff82 »

It is very picky on the hardware it supports out of the box. That means you'll get problems with Hardware that came out after Haswell. It works ok on my Lenovo X240 (that I bought brand new in Juli 2016 in a maxed out version at a very good price). But after a short trial I decided to go with Xubuntu as the hardware support is much better and most developer relevant software today runs on Linux without hassles. I love the FreeBSD on my company's server, totally hassle free. But on the desktop, it is for fans, not the general public. But anyway: try it out, get a feel for it.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone moved to PC-BSD (TrueOS) from macOS?

#4

Post by nec4b »

I went from windows machine to PC-BSD 10.3 about 2 years ago and then to TrueOS. At first I really liked it, specifically ZFS integration. I consider ZFS a hidden gem of data storage. After the second update troubles began. Every time there was a new system update, some software was quietly removed from the system. If I reinstalled it by hand again, usually something broke. I guess it wasn't compatible with the newer version od the OS. After a couple of updates most of the software I liked and considered important didn't work. Also in general most of the software in the appcafe is a version or two behind the current version available for other systems. On PC-BSD I used KDE which I found very useful. On TrueOS i'm using Lumina which simply isn't there yet. I'm currently looking for way to migrate back to Windows while keeping ZFS around.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone moved to PC-BSD (TrueOS) from macOS?

#5

Post by 0mp »

geff82 wrote: post #3

It is very picky on the hardware it supports out of the box. That means you'll get problems with Hardware that came out after Haswell. It works ok on my Lenovo X240 (that I bought brand new in Juli 2016 in a maxed out version at a very good price). But after a short trial I decided to go with Xubuntu as the hardware support is much better and most developer relevant software today runs on Linux without hassles. I lov…

It's worth mentioning that TrueOS is a rolling-release based on the FreeBSD bleeding-edge CURRENT branch. As a result the hardware support is still better than in the supported FreeBSD releases (10.3 and 11.0).

Re: Ask HN: Anyone moved to PC-BSD (TrueOS) from macOS?

#7

Post by baldfat »

nec4b wrote: post #4

I went from windows machine to PC-BSD 10.3 about 2 years ago and then to TrueOS. At first I really liked it, specifically ZFS integration. I consider ZFS a hidden gem of data storage. After the second update troubles began. Every time there was a new system update, some software was quietly removed from the system. If I reinstalled it by hand again, usually something broke. I guess it wasn't compatible with the newer…

Can I ask why you wouldn't see Linux as your next home? (Trying just to have a conversation and nothing negative on anything in your remarks)

1. I also LOVE KDE (But mostly use a tile window manager i3)

2. I tried liking BTRFS (Similar to ZFS for my non-server systems and just went back to my old file system) I feel my 2 copies and one off site is a better system for desktop. I use OpenSUSE and never had a problem I couldn't figure out.

3. You can use ZFS on Linux

Re: Ask HN: Anyone moved to PC-BSD (TrueOS) from macOS?

#9

Post by floatboth »

geff82 wrote: post #3

It is very picky on the hardware it supports out of the box. That means you'll get problems with Hardware that came out after Haswell. It works ok on my Lenovo X240 (that I bought brand new in Juli 2016 in a maxed out version at a very good price). But after a short trial I decided to go with Xubuntu as the hardware support is much better and most developer relevant software today runs on Linux without hassles. I lov…

IIRC TrueOS actually integrates https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/freebsd-base-graphics so integrated graphics after Haswell should work.
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