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FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

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Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#51

Post by lmm »

noobermin wrote: post #18
JeremyMorgan wrote: post #9

I really want to try this out. I was a heavy FreeBSD user for many years in the 2000s, and I drifted back into Linux. One thing I will say for FreeBSD, it's harder to get dialed in but once it is, it's very solid. I think with enough tinkering FreeBSD would run really well on a MBP, I just wonder if it would provide a lot of advantages over OSX to make it worth the time.

Random question for you, how does the shell experience on FreeBSD compare to MacOS? Linux?

I usually install a GNU shell and use that - I don't use FreeBSD out of idealism but because it works better. Things like ctrl-T make it a little nicer than Linux, but on the whole it's pretty similar.

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#52

Post by cgvgffyv »

95014_refugee wrote: post #10

"using a custom [FreeBSD] kernel seems tricky in a VMWare/VirtualBox VM" This flipped a set-once bit, making the rest of the article essentially unreadable due to zero confidence in the writer's technical skill. Also, the lack of "late 2011" in the title makes it pretty misleading.

Couldn't you just have said, "this guy doesn't know what he's talking about", like a normal person?

That was hard to parse.

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#53

Post by enzolovesbacon »

I'm periodically installing FreeBSD on my ThinkPad T400 to see how it's performing with Chromium. It's the only application I use extensively, and the only one that performs really bad with FreeBSD (and OpenBSD also), which prevents me from switching from Fedora.

Is there any magic I'm missing, aside from the shared memory support?

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#55

Post by floatboth »

verandaguy wrote: post #25
jsjohnst wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the exact same thing. It's trivially simple to run custom kernels. Further, with currentish versions of OSX, you don't even need VMware/VB. The built-in hypervisor works good enough without crash prone kexts like in the alternative in my experience. Not sure if you read the rest of the article, but it didn't do much to instill technical competence after that point either.

Not claiming to be knowledgeable about OS X internals, but... it ships with a hypervisor now? Is it at all similar to BSD jails?

Jails aren't a hypervisor. A jail is just a number in the process table. That's what the hipsters call "containers" these days :-)

FreeBSD's hypervisor is called bhyve (and it uses vmm.ko), and xhyve is a port of bhyve to macOS (uses Apple's Hypervisor.framework). There are other things that use Hypervisor.framework too.

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#56

Post by floatboth »

eth0up wrote: post #14

My experience with FreeBSD is limited to a fugacious week with apparent quixotism and my noble Raspberry-Pi2, which ended inimically. All seemed rigorously dandy until presumably, Chuck Norris imposed thereafter some wicked temporal augmentation between all moments between any character typed or program otherwise compiled, offering only a typographic respite or scintillating scroll of never-ending techno-glossolalia…

That's odd. Are you using HDMI or the serial console?

My Raspberry Pi 2 runs FreeBSD very well. Currently running OpenNTPD + Monit + Postgres + Node-RED + go-carbon + graphite-api + Grafana + Syncthing + Transmission — all of this with only 249 MB of RAM used. FreeBSD's memory management is excellent.

RPi 3 (native AArch64 mode) support is in progress https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm64/rpi3 for now it runs only on one CPU core, SMP is "actively being worked on".

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#57

Post by floatboth »

enzolovesbacon wrote: post #53

I'm periodically installing FreeBSD on my ThinkPad T400 to see how it's performing with Chromium. It's the only application I use extensively, and the only one that performs really bad with FreeBSD (and OpenBSD also), which prevents me from switching from Fedora. Is there any magic I'm missing, aside from the shared memory support?

It performs fine on my X240 without doing anything.

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#58

Post by eth0up »

floatboth wrote: post #56
eth0up wrote: post #14

My experience with FreeBSD is limited to a fugacious week with apparent quixotism and my noble Raspberry-Pi2, which ended inimically. All seemed rigorously dandy until presumably, Chuck Norris imposed thereafter some wicked temporal augmentation between all moments between any character typed or program otherwise compiled, offering only a typographic respite or scintillating scroll of never-ending techno-glossolalia…

That's odd. Are you using HDMI or the serial console? My Raspberry Pi 2 runs FreeBSD very well. Currently running OpenNTPD + Monit + Postgres + Node-RED + go-carbon + graphite-api + Grafana + Syncthing + Transmission — all of this with only 249 MB of RAM used. FreeBSD's memory management is excellent. RPi 3 (native AArch64 mode) support is in progress https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm64/rpi3 for now it runs only on one CP…

>Are you using HDMI

I was using HDMI. As mentioned, I've since returned to Raspbian, where I continue to use HDMI and all works generally well. I was initially thrilled after installing FreeBSD, but for whatever reason, things changed. I remember compiling vim for a whole day before cancelling it. I could type an entire sentence or paragraph before any input would show. Bad luck perhaps. My primary use for the Pi is a surveillance camera, so I temporarily abandoned BSD for what I know works. I intend to make my next main system a BSD system. Presently I am running Debian Testing, which has been quite excellent, but as also mentioned, I am bothered by Systemd and aspire to be free of it.

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#59

Post by boterock »

BorisMelnik wrote: post #16
boterock wrote: post #5

Some months ago I got FreeBSD running in a Macbook Air, and surprisingly the UEFI boot worked out of the box. I say surprisingly because when I tried, the Linux efiboot didn't work, the only way to boot linux was through GRUB. I had almost everything working (Audio, suspend on close, i3 or gnome) but never got the wifi to work, I even tethered from my android phone to the Macbook and it worked very good. But in the e…

ever considered using a supported wifi usb?

I didn't like the idea of permanently losing 1 of the only 2 usb ports, although when connecting android tethering I lost one still. I wanted a solution that would allow me to have internet and also be able to connect a mouse and a usb drive.

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#60

Post by boterock »

nimrody wrote: post #32
rangibaby wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at least for Ubuntu on a 2013 MBP I had to install non-free wifi, everything else Just Worked (tm)

How much battery life do you get from this configuration? macOS is optimized for power. FreeBSD not so much, I believe.

Never got to try how much this Macbook did in macOS (I bought it used just to tinker with Linux/FreeBSD, but the time I used it, battery on FreeBSD was on par with Linux, if not slightly better.
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