Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FreeBSD 13.2

freebsd.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 108 posts

Re: FreeBSD 13.2

#31

Post by krylon »

gautamcgoel wrote: post #2

Does anyone here run FreeBSD on the desktop? If so, can you explain why you prefer it to Linux?

The last time I did was around the time PC-BSD became TrueOS, forcing me to reinstall. Running X11 gave me some kind of trouble afterwards, so installed vanilla FreeBSD, which gave me trouble, too. So I installed Debian and haven't looked back.

That was on a ThinkPad x220, which supposedly is supported well by the BSD systems, and it did run well with PC-BSD. But I figured I was getting too old for fiddling around all weekend to get it to work, and Debian just worked(tm).

Before that, I used FreeBSD on my desktop roughly from 2003 to 2005, mostly because I liked its simplicity and it did feel snappier than GNU/Linux at the time.

Re: FreeBSD 13.2

#32

Post by jmort253 »

I tried FreeBSD on ARM64. I couldn't get the browsers, like Firefox or Epiphany, to load without crashing. I'm not sure if it was something I was doing wrong or if the ARM ecosystem just isn't well supported yet. I was also running in a VM with QEMU.

On the surface, FreeBSD sounds cool. I liked that I could boot directly to a console and then run the GUI only if I wanted to. Everything felt more modular. It reminded me of the days before Windows 95 when I could just use DOS to save precious memory and CPU bandwidth.

Only I'm not sure I'd be able to use it as a daily driver. I felt like I'd be spending my time administering the machine and nothing else. Maybe it was just because it was running in a VM. Maybe it was because it's ARM. Not sure. I'd love to hear others experiences with FreeBSD on ARM.

Re: FreeBSD 13.2

#33

Post by throw0101c »

cyberpunk wrote: post #10

> The mergemaster(8) utility has been deprecated and will be removed in FreeBSD 14.0 This is a bit of a bummer, though. I did just try to use etcupdate for the 13.2-RELEASE upgrade and it hung forever trying to grep for something in /etc/default/devfs.rules, so I had to fall back on mergemaster again... Oh well, maybe a clean install when 14 is out and it'll behave better. Congrats on the release!

14.0 is pencilled in for July:

* https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.0R/schedule/

One can continue using 13.x until 2026:

* https://www.freebsd.org/security/#sup

Re: FreeBSD 13.2

#34

Post by [deleted] »

2b3a51 wrote: post #21
doublerabbit wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not Linux: Linux feels clunky like a bunch of third party cogs all mashed together. Some with teeth missing some with too many. If it's not SystemMd taking over the whole startup of system services and needing its own DHCP server, it's then down to package manager's. Apt being replaced with snap, snap replaced by flat images. Its divided and with no formality. Someone will create some new thing, I'll get popular, get…

I'm glad you like your FreeBSD installation. Just a reminder that a range of Linux distributions available. There is choice.

[deleted]

Re: FreeBSD 13.2

#35

Post by throw0101c »

quectophoton wrote: post #23
1letterunixname wrote: post #18

OpenSSL 1.1.1 is deprecated and loses security patches in under 6 months.

I'm curious how this will be handled. There's already a `vendor/openssl-3.0` branch in their git repo, but those changes look like way too big to release in just a security patch for 13.2. FreeBSD 14.0 is scheduled for July (2 months before OpenSSL 1.1.1 EOL), so maybe we'll get OpenSSL 3.0 in that release, and then a backport with the OpenSSL upgrade. But the timelines seem too tight, so I'm not too optimistic.

> I'm curious how this will be handled.

The same way as Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, which is supported by the vendor for five years (2025):

* https://packages.ubuntu.com/focal/openssl

Or Debian 11 (bullseye), which has LTS support until 2026:

* https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/openssl

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_version_history

Re: FreeBSD 13.2

#36

Post by doublerabbit »

2b3a51 wrote: post #21
doublerabbit wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not Linux: Linux feels clunky like a bunch of third party cogs all mashed together. Some with teeth missing some with too many. If it's not SystemMd taking over the whole startup of system services and needing its own DHCP server, it's then down to package manager's. Apt being replaced with snap, snap replaced by flat images. Its divided and with no formality. Someone will create some new thing, I'll get popular, get…

I'm glad you like your FreeBSD installation. Just a reminder that a range of Linux distributions available. There is choice.

I'm aware.

If I had to choose one it would be Slackware.

Re: FreeBSD 13.2

#37

Post by ofalkaed »

simion314 wrote: post #29
ofalkaed wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is like linux if Canonical never happened, so like linux 20 years ago. The ports system is nice. FreeBSD is my fallback in case Patrick gives in to the changing linux world and I have to abandon Slackware or start learning OS stuff again. Biggest thing to know about it as a desktop, drivers get into the kernel much slower than with linux and some never get in, so like linux was 20 years ago.

>It is like linux if Canonical never happened, Really? from what I read BSD complaints they hate RedHat related stuff like systemd and GNOME code was Linux only for w hile, not sure if this was fixed in GJPME or downstream.

Canonical adopting systemd is what made it a standard, community went from being very divided on systemd to resigned and accepting it almost overnight after Canonical announced they were going systemd. This is a fairly common trend, they have a fair amount of influence although that seems to be waning after their push for snap.

Re: FreeBSD 13.2

#38

Post by doubled112 »

chongli wrote: post #13
SSLy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, just, arch.

I used Arch for a number of years before switching to a Mac when I went back to school. At some point I may go back to Linux or FreeBSD (I've used both!) but I'll never go back to rolling releases. The whole reason I switched to Mac was that I got tired of things breaking constantly due to the never-ending updates. And if you put things off then you end up getting a whole lot of breakage all at once. No, I would pref…

This is why I run Debian everywhere. Even my desktops.

My hardware is usually a little older anyway, so the latest stable release is good enough.

Flatpaks are finally to a point where if I need up to date apps I can just install it from Flathub.

Re: FreeBSD 13.2

#39

Post by sph »

chongli wrote: post #13
SSLy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, just, arch.

I used Arch for a number of years before switching to a Mac when I went back to school. At some point I may go back to Linux or FreeBSD (I've used both!) but I'll never go back to rolling releases. The whole reason I switched to Mac was that I got tired of things breaking constantly due to the never-ending updates. And if you put things off then you end up getting a whole lot of breakage all at once. No, I would pref…

The only sane Linux setup for a workstation is an immutable distro like Silverblue/Kinoite, and an Arch Linux toolbox (or any distro you prefer).

I will die on this hill, and whoever disagrees has never tried what honestly feels like the future. My Linux PC is as stable and reproducible as my iPhone.

One day I will finish my Fedora Silverblue master guide that has been a draft for months...

(No, sorry, NixOS ain't better.)

Re: FreeBSD 13.2

#40

Post by alpaca128 »

chongli wrote: post #13
SSLy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, just, arch.

I used Arch for a number of years before switching to a Mac when I went back to school. At some point I may go back to Linux or FreeBSD (I've used both!) but I'll never go back to rolling releases. The whole reason I switched to Mac was that I got tired of things breaking constantly due to the never-ending updates. And if you put things off then you end up getting a whole lot of breakage all at once. No, I would pref…

In my experience doing the frequent small upgrade steps is better. It's valuable to know what the update actually does because the list of changes is so small. At the same time it's possible that small updates degrade the system stability so slowly that it's difficult to notice at first.

Right now I'm running Fedora on my old laptop and I was positively surprised in how many details it got better in terms of user-friendliness and predictable behaviour in general, I hope it'll break the curse of "stable" distros constantly falling apart on my PCs.

Post reply on HN