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FreeBSD on the Framework Laptop

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Re: FreeBSD on the Framework Laptop

#121

Post by sph »

_8j50 wrote: post #117
johnklos wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BSDs are much cleaner than Linux distros. Also, because they don't change gratuitously, once you learn their quirks, you can move on to other things without needing to worry about re-learning tons about the next update. Linux is a constantly moving target with lots of churn that users of computers really don't want or need.

BSD is like a partner you settle down for because of reliability and stability, Linux is that hot person that makes you love and hate them at the same time driving you ever so mad and addicted.

Well, I guess I'm into dramatic relationships.

I will talk about Linux with my therapist when I see her next. I wonder if childhood trauma is the reason I'm a Linux sysadmin.

Re: FreeBSD on the Framework Laptop

#122

Post by phist_mcgee »

ruslan wrote: post #30
phist_mcgee wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you really write all of those pages by hand?? It appears incredibly comprehensive. Did you write it just for fun?

Yes, I wrote it just for fun. It was a kind of challenge for me, both resolving issues and describing them in detail to let new people in town learn how issues can be resolved. Last time I wrote anything that long was my diploma thesis 20+ years go. :-) This work took me nearly four months to accomplish.

It was a really interesting read, we need more long form guides like this - it takes a lot of work but this is the kind of resource I would love to read getting setup.

Re: FreeBSD on the Framework Laptop

#123

Post by _8j50 »

sph wrote: post #121
_8j50 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BSD is like a partner you settle down for because of reliability and stability, Linux is that hot person that makes you love and hate them at the same time driving you ever so mad and addicted.

Well, I guess I'm into dramatic relationships. I will talk about Linux with my therapist when I see her next. I wonder if childhood trauma is the reason I'm a Linux sysadmin.

Maybe childhood windows trauma?

Re: FreeBSD on the Framework Laptop

#125

Post by hericium »

0x457 wrote: post #55
dark-star wrote: post #7

Man, FreeBSD really needs some driver love... * No Suspend/Resume? Linux has solved this for years, I have not come across a laptop in the last 10 years that had trouble with s2r or s2d (but I guess that there might be a few that don't fully support it, I mainly tested Dell laptops) * WiFi driver and Ethernet over USB-C both highly unstable? That's an Intel chipset, those are usually the more stable ones (at least on…

> * No Suspend/Resume? Linux has solved this for years, I have not come across a laptop in the last 10 years that had trouble with s2r or s2d (but I guess that there might be a few that don't fully support it, I mainly tested Dell laptops) I wouldn't be so sure. My Dell XPS 13 and ThinkPad X1 Carbon both had issues with suspend/resume. Close the lid @ get surprised with a completely dead battery. Ironically, when I u…

> Graphics - you're limited to Nvidia and whatever Linux 5.4 supported.

There's full Xorg GPU acceleration on AMD cards with drm-kmod[1]

> Wi-Fi - 802.11g is as fast as you can go without wifibox.

Some 5GHz 80211n cards will work. There's no support for ac/ax but at least you're not limited to overcrowded 2.4GHz.

[1] https://github.com/freebsd/drm-kmod

Re: FreeBSD on the Framework Laptop

#126

Post by retro64 »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #48

Serious question: what is so compelling about the FreeBSD desktop experience compared to Linux that makes it worth jumping through all these hoops?

I use both. I've asked myself why I don't just streamline and standardize simply on Linux as overall it has more traction, but every time I have the opportunity to complete the switch I refuse to give up BSD. I think it boils down to control.

Thinking back I have had essentially the same experience/environment on BSD for years. Upgrading from one version to the next just works and is fairly painless, even across major releases (trying to think of the last time I've had issues). I keep my home directory on a separate physical disk, so upgrading the OS drive or moving to new hardware is a matter of installing the latest BSD and plugging my home drive back in and mapping it. After upgrading I can use pkg to reinstall the apps I need and the shortcuts all link back, and I'm done. Probably forgot a few steps in there but it doesn't take long. For example I upgraded from 11.x to 13.0 just a few months ago with a hard drive swap and it took me maybe 3 hours(?), including installing the physical drive.

I don't play a lot of games on it, other than complete source ports, or simple games that run on vanilla wine. Linux is for gaming and experimenting. On Linux I am far more free with what I install, and my experience has changed often over the years with different distros. Some of that was by my choice, but even at the most basic level I've found that distros tend to have a lot of flux between versions.

So, overall no real surprises with FreeBSD. Upgrade and keep chugging.

Re: FreeBSD on the Framework Laptop

#127

Post by capableweb »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #109
mkozlows wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true that some hardware is not Linux compatible, but if you get stuff that is (like the Framework 12th gen I'm typing this on), it does in fact just work out of the box. Wifi, sound, GPU, fingerprint reader, suspend, the works.

I had a laptop on the Ubuntu Certified hardware list ( https://ubuntu.com/certified ) some HP model. Suspend still didn't work. Is there a list I have not found?

Were you running Ubuntu and the specific Ubuntu Release + Device model combo they outline on the website? Anything outside of that would be outside of the scope of that list.

Much better resource is reading various wikis and user forums, I found.

Re: FreeBSD on the Framework Laptop

#128

Post by magic_quotes »

ninjin wrote: post #102
cowtools wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that linux isn't able to strong-arm nvidia into complying because nvidia can just go back to distributing their closed-source driver on permissively-licensed OSes such as BSD.

I have a hard time making the parent comment even making logical sense. So the reason we are not seeing say open CUDA drivers from NVIDIA for Linux is that they instead distribute closed ones for permissively licensed operating systems such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Illumos, MINIX, Plan9, etc.? Which (apart from all lacking CUDA drivers) all universally have less support from hardware manufacturers both when it comes to o…

> FreeBSD got closed NVIDIA graphics driver support about a decade after Linux

Ahem, https://cgit.freebsd.org/ports/commit/?id=94fc89fbfbc7cd8886...

> some game consoles used FreeBSD as a basis and had proprietary NVIDIA drivers written for them

You mean proprietary AMD drivers? (Only PlayStation 4 and 5 are based on FreeBSD.)

Re: FreeBSD on the Framework Laptop

#129

Post by hatmatrix »

Melatonic wrote: post #58
0x457 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * No Suspend/Resume? Linux has solved this for years, I have not come across a laptop in the last 10 years that had trouble with s2r or s2d (but I guess that there might be a few that don't fully support it, I mainly tested Dell laptops) I wouldn't be so sure. My Dell XPS 13 and ThinkPad X1 Carbon both had issues with suspend/resume. Close the lid @ get surprised with a completely dead battery. Ironically, when I u…

On Windows the first thing I always do is turn off hibernation. It made a bigger difference back in the day since the swap was on a spinning disk but it still has a little performance improvement and nets you a bit more ram. With machines booting up so fast these days I personally avoid anything related to hibernate / sleep.

Hibernate is the alternative to sleep if you don't want to overheat your laptop and kill your battery when you transport it in your carrying case (the "sleep" of Windows 10 will do that as it's made for tablets).

Re: FreeBSD on the Framework Laptop

#130

Post by prmoustache »

heywoodlh wrote: post #103
_ofdw wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The BSDs are much cleaner than Linux distros. I see this opinion a lot, but what tangible benefits does that result in?

As far as I understand it, anything a user installs with pkg that isn't included with the base system is installed into /usr/local. For me, this is a nice benefit because I can know that anything installed into /usr/local can be removed and won't break the basic system's functionality. This organizational structure I think is also just very sensible imo. Note: I'm mostly a Linux user but I play around with FreeBSD a…

>As far as I understand it, anything a user installs with pkg that isn't included with the base system is installed into /usr/local. > >For me, this is a nice benefit because I can know that anything installed into /usr/local can be removed and won't break the basic system's functionality. This organizational structure I think is also just very sensible imo.

I don't really see how it is relevant. First I don't see why would anyone want to randomly remove things. On my linux system everything that I compile or install by myself goes to /usr/local. Everything managed by packages goes to /usr, any thing that comes from a precompiled tarball is better installed in /opt. How is that different?

What I liked about freebsd when I was using it was the handbook that was fairly complete.

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