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FreeBSD 13.1 Beta 1

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Re: FreeBSD 13.1 Beta 1

#41

Post by NexRebular »

mrlemke wrote: post #34
ladyanita22 wrote: post #25

I'd LOVE for BSD to be a good alternative for daily use to Linux. But it's simply not. There's more and more stuff that is Linux only nowadays (wayland, gnome, several drivers, power management, wifi, Steam and proton... to name a few, very important ones)

Why do you want to run a BSD? I am not particularly interested in the above, except power management and wifi. I am trying GhostBSD as an alternative specifically because I am not interested in Gnome, Wayland, or Steam. I don't hate them, just don't care. I may go simpler and just use CTWM and cobble together a desktop environment. I am genuinely curious what running these things on a BSD gets you that you can't get…

Why BSD? Because I trust the competence of BSD developers a lot more than linux developers. Furthermore, I don't want to contribute to monoculturization of IT by stuffing the penguin into every single thing in sight.

The question rather is... why would anyone want to run linux when *BSD (and illumos) are available?

Re: FreeBSD 13.1 Beta 1

#42

Post by mrlemke »

NexRebular wrote: post #41
mrlemke wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you want to run a BSD? I am not particularly interested in the above, except power management and wifi. I am trying GhostBSD as an alternative specifically because I am not interested in Gnome, Wayland, or Steam. I don't hate them, just don't care. I may go simpler and just use CTWM and cobble together a desktop environment. I am genuinely curious what running these things on a BSD gets you that you can't get…

Why BSD? Because I trust the competence of BSD developers a lot more than linux developers. Furthermore, I don't want to contribute to monoculturization of IT by stuffing the penguin into every single thing in sight. The question rather is... why would anyone want to run linux when *BSD (and illumos) are available?

"Why BSD?" wasn't the question. I have already read a lot of the arguments about that particular question. If I were to generalize my question to ladyanita22, it would be, "Why would you want to run a BSD for Gnome, Wayland, Steam/Proton, and other generally Linux software, instead of running it directly on Linux where it is supported best?"

What does the user get out of running a BSD for Linux software that they can't get out of Linux? If you prefer BSD, then why not use software that is better tailored for BSD rather than software that requires porting and changing or removing all of the Linux specific bits?

Re: FreeBSD 13.1 Beta 1

#43

Post by NexRebular »

mrlemke wrote: post #42
NexRebular wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why BSD? Because I trust the competence of BSD developers a lot more than linux developers. Furthermore, I don't want to contribute to monoculturization of IT by stuffing the penguin into every single thing in sight. The question rather is... why would anyone want to run linux when *BSD (and illumos) are available?

"Why BSD?" wasn't the question. I have already read a lot of the arguments about that particular question. If I were to generalize my question to ladyanita22, it would be, "Why would you want to run a BSD for Gnome, Wayland, Steam/Proton, and other generally Linux software, instead of running it directly on Linux where it is supported best?" What does the user get out of running a BSD for Linux software that they can…

The problem is that software used to be portable and worked well on !linux systems. Little by little majority of important FOSS development is heading towards linux-specific EEE, I feel, and that is setting a dangerous precedent...

Re: FreeBSD 13.1 Beta 1

#44

Post by bandq »

FreeBSD's quality implementation, quality documentation and overall sane configuration / management should be apluaded. There are so many little things that make using it joyful, like the ncurses TUI for configuration options when building packages from source.

I have used it for servers and NAS/ZFS/Samba applications for over 10 years and it's been exceptionally solid. But these days I've moved over completely to Debian systems now that OpenZFS 2.x branch is pretty mature and probably won't go back and it's due to the package management aspects.

Sometime around FBSD 10.x the package system moved to a rolling release which means if you don't keep your machine up to date you eventually can't get binary packages for whatever FBSD version you're on which seems like a sadistic thing to do. A server that works fine but one where you might need to install some random utility suddenly breaks in 20 different ways if you enter the depths of trying to install said utility on modern FBSD.

I thought my understanding of this was broken and reached out to FBSD devs on IRC and they confirmed that it's basically a rolling release model these days.

With Linux distros like Debian after development on a version ceases (i.e 10.x) apt-get still works but you may not get the latest or greatest, bug fixes or security fixes. But if you need something and it's in the repository you can at least limp along until you bite the bullet and do a major release upgrade, assuming you need the latest/greatest.

I know everyone's experiences here will vary but I've had very little breakage going between major version of Debian, but with FBSD too many things would break when doing a major release upgrade.

Re: FreeBSD 13.1 Beta 1

#45

Post by merlyn »

bandq wrote: post #44

FreeBSD's quality implementation, quality documentation and overall sane configuration / management should be apluaded. There are so many little things that make using it joyful, like the ncurses TUI for configuration options when building packages from source. I have used it for servers and NAS/ZFS/Samba applications for over 10 years and it's been exceptionally solid. But these days I've moved over completely to De…

>> I know everyone's experiences here will vary but I've had very little breakage going between major version of Debian, but with FBSD too many things would break when doing a major release upgrade.

I encounter much the same in Debian/Ubuntu systems on major upgrades too. It all depends on what you are doing, and what the port maintainer has coded to deal with upgrades. If the port maintainer has written scripts to deal with moving old schemas to new ones, great. But that is far from universal. Sometimes FreeBSD does it better, sometimes Debian does it better.

Much more often than not, on FreeBSD or Linux, it usually is simpler to roll out a new machine and roll your data onto it to test. Otherwise I get headaches of incompatibility for either system for what I tend to do.

Re: FreeBSD 13.1 Beta 1

#46

Post by ilikecode »

bandq wrote: post #44

FreeBSD's quality implementation, quality documentation and overall sane configuration / management should be apluaded. There are so many little things that make using it joyful, like the ncurses TUI for configuration options when building packages from source. I have used it for servers and NAS/ZFS/Samba applications for over 10 years and it's been exceptionally solid. But these days I've moved over completely to De…

Say you install FreeBSD 12.1, you can keep your package system using the 12.1 package set forever. No updates will be available. But they'll always work.

In /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf you will find something like this: > url: "pkg+http://pkg.FreeBSD.org/${ABI}/quarterly", Assuming using amd64 that maps to: https://pkg.freebsd.org/FreeBSD:12:amd64/ There you can see there are "release_X" sets that map to 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3. Again, no updates will ever be published on those but they will be guaranteed to continue working so long as they don't get deleted.

The FreeBSD community just doesn't have the manpower (of volunteers) or willpower to maintain what you're asking for.

Re: FreeBSD 13.1 Beta 1

#47

Post by bandq »

ilikecode wrote: post #46
bandq wrote: post #44

FreeBSD's quality implementation, quality documentation and overall sane configuration / management should be apluaded. There are so many little things that make using it joyful, like the ncurses TUI for configuration options when building packages from source. I have used it for servers and NAS/ZFS/Samba applications for over 10 years and it's been exceptionally solid. But these days I've moved over completely to De…

Say you install FreeBSD 12.1, you can keep your package system using the 12.1 package set forever. No updates will be available. But they'll always work. In /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf you will find something like this: > url: "pkg+ http://pkg.FreeBSD.org/${ABI}/quarterly ", Assuming using amd64 that maps to: https://pkg.freebsd.org/FreeBSD:12:amd64/ There you can see there are "release_X" sets that map to 12.0 12.1 12.2 1…

My understanding is those files for previous versions go away so you can't reliably get packages for older versions even if you "pin it". If I'm wrong, please let me know, I would like to be wrong.

I don't know what volunteer / manpower is needed to just keep files around but storage and bandwidth is definitely an issue.

Re: FreeBSD 13.1 Beta 1

#48

Post by ilikecode »

bandq wrote: post #47
ilikecode wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say you install FreeBSD 12.1, you can keep your package system using the 12.1 package set forever. No updates will be available. But they'll always work. In /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf you will find something like this: > url: "pkg+ http://pkg.FreeBSD.org/${ABI}/quarterly ", Assuming using amd64 that maps to: https://pkg.freebsd.org/FreeBSD:12:amd64/ There you can see there are "release_X" sets that map to 12.0 12.1 12.2 1…

My understanding is those files for previous versions go away so you can't reliably get packages for older versions even if you "pin it". If I'm wrong, please let me know, I would like to be wrong. I don't know what volunteer / manpower is needed to just keep files around but storage and bandwidth is definitely an issue.

Well, FreeBSD 11 https://pkg.freebsd.org/FreeBSD:11:amd64/ packages are still available. The ports tree itself cannot build packages for 11 anymore though.

I do agree that FreeBSD tends to delete stuff the second that it goes EOL. The ports project is the worst violator of this. The ports tree takes manpower to maintain and keep building. The mirrors for packages use very large donated systems and bandwidth (AFAIK) and don't have as much pressure to delete old packages.

Re: FreeBSD 13.1 Beta 1

#49

Post by grahamjperrin »

enriquto wrote: post #7
Dracophoenix wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.freebsd.org/releases/13.1R/relnotes/ "Binary upgrades between RELEASE versions (and snapshots of the various security branches) are supported using the freebsd-update(8) utility. The binary upgrade procedure will update unmodified userland utilities, as well as unmodified GENERIC kernels distributed as a part of an official FreeBSD release. The freebsd-update(8) utility requires that the host being upgrad…

So you have to read the manpage of freebsd-update, understand it, and then find the version name in another document... After a while I think that this is it : sudo freebsd-update upgrade -r 13.1-RELEASE sudo freebsd-update install It would be nice if these two lines appeared in the release notes.

> … release notes.

The notes exist, but only in draft form; a skeleton.

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=262300

I drafted the corresponding pull request around the time of the PRERELEASE, which preceded the first beta.

I should not treat notes as final until RELEASE occurs.

Re: FreeBSD 13.1 Beta 1

#50

Post by grahamjperrin »

mnd999 wrote: post #28
ladyanita22 wrote: post #25

I'd LOVE for BSD to be a good alternative for daily use to Linux. But it's simply not. There's more and more stuff that is Linux only nowadays (wayland, gnome, several drivers, power management, wifi, Steam and proton... to name a few, very important ones)

Wayland was working fine on FreeBSD last time I tried it. Gnome also had a port last time I looked. Even steam has worked in the past under linuxulator, not sure if it does currently. Edit: wayland not waylaid. That was genuinely autocorrect but it made me smile.

> Wayland was working fine on FreeBSD last time I tried it. …

From the quote at https://forums.freebsd.org/posts/548305>:

>> … KDE Plasma Wayland, which was working in September, is now broken. It’s not just my laptop, it’s on my workstation (AMDGPU), on the spare machine (Intel iGPU) and the laptop (Intel iGPU). I have chatted a bit with Plasma developers, but the debugging is on me, unfortunately.

If you _do_ find Wayland working for KDE Plasma e.g. the option in SDDM, please join the discussion at https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/kde-wayland.80167/> – thanks.

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