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FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

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Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#91

Post by cyberpunk »

duaneb wrote: post #61
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…

I believe audio over hdmi is also unfinished for recent MacBook pros, which is a deal breaker for me.

I use an oldish (maybe last years or the one before?) retina mbp to drive the two screens in my home office which I run FreeBSD on (still 10.x, not had time to upgrade it) -- and I run the audio via one of the monitors no prob:

$ cat /dev/sndstat | grep default pcm2: (play) default

I almost never turn it off as I have to do some weird kind of dance to close the lid and type startx blind so that I don't end up with three screens in X, but I don't really care enough to fix it when I only have to do it every few weeks/months...

I use a thunderbolt Ethernet dongle thingy which does 1gbit since it doesn't ever leave the desk I've not really tried the wifi..

I use a USB DAC when I've got the cans on though because they sound much better (also works, an audioquest thing)...

I won't buy another macbook tho, XPS+Linux is going to replace my luggable very soon.

Mac/OSX stayed out of my way for a few years and was my justification for using it; who's got time to have to deal with the usual linux desktop problems when you just need a machine to do email ssh and a browser, right? I'm not sure really when, but Mac+OSX stopped being the best solution some while ago (for me at least). It's just a constant source of annoyance now (honestly, let an email password expire and see how many times it grabs focus from your editor, I get at least two full on kernel panics a week, distnoted randomly eats a core all day, I have an alias called something like "fsckoff" which does a kill on coreaudiod for when airplay stops working, I'm increasingly nervous about running prop stuff, yadda yadda). The macbook is a pretty cute little machine though, super skinny.

As for BSD? I don't think I'd bother using a BSD on a lappy that you are actually planning on lugging around, makes a nice workhorse in the home office though if you don't want to have to mess with it too much!

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#92

Post by cyberpunk »

mpasternacki wrote: post #82
gkop wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So to be clear, no Thunderbolt display working yet?

Not in HEAD, but https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/freebsd-base-graphics/tree... is stable in my experience

I'm running two external screens (one thunderbolt, one via the hdmi port) on unpatched 10.3 without any issue on my mbp... I can use the laptop display at the same time also (usually don't -- but I have to close the lid before I start X otherwise it'll stay on) ....?

Is it just your model? It;s behind my desk but it's some cheapo thunderbolt->hdmi dongle made by "neeto" apparently, works well enough..

[ 131.865] (--) NVIDIA(0): BenQ GL2450H (DFP-2): connected

[ 131.865] (--) NVIDIA(0): BenQ GL2450H (DFP-2): Internal TMDS

[ 131.865] (--) NVIDIA(0): BenQ GL2450H (DFP-2): 340.0 MHz maximum pixel clock

[ 131.802] (--) NVIDIA(0): BenQ GL2450H (DFP-0): connected

[ 131.802] (--) NVIDIA(0): BenQ GL2450H (DFP-0): Internal TMDS

[ 131.802] (--) NVIDIA(0): BenQ GL2450H (DFP-0): 165.0 MHz maximum pixel clock

[ 131.865] (--) NVIDIA(0): Apple Color LCD (DFP-3): connected

[ 131.865] (--) NVIDIA(0): Apple Color LCD (DFP-3): Internal DisplayPort

[ 131.865] (--) NVIDIA(0): Apple Color LCD (DFP-3): 480.0 MHz maximum pixel clock

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#93

Post by cyberpunk »

mpasternacki wrote: post #68
mkup wrote: post #40

This tutorial is about FreeBSD 11-CURRENT snapshot 20150111 (pre-release version), so it deals in act II with hybrid UFS/ZFS setup, but FreeBSD 11.0-RELEASE supports root-on-ZFS-in-UEFI-mode via standard installer. Release version of boot1.efi loader fully supports ZFS, so small UFS boot partition is no longer needed, and things are much simpler now.

It doesn't work yet with GELI as far as I know, so for encrypted root /boot still needs to be on a separate partition. There was some work to support encrypted /boot, I'm not sure where it stands now, but I'd be very surprised if it supported encrypted ZFS.

Yeah, I've not tried going to 11x yet as I'm not sure I can be bothered trying to deal with replacing the non-geli 'bootpool' I have on 10.x.. Sounds like a tricky process.

I'll probably just rebuild it instead of trying to upgrade.

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#94

Post by cyberpunk »

halcyonblue wrote: post #31
Ar-Curunir wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I've been running Arch Linux on my MBP Retina for 2+ years now almost without problems. I bet if the OP tried Linux, they'd be absolutely fine.

I've been running Arch linux on my MacBook Air for the past week. Motivated by a strong desire to run StumpWM, I couldn't be happier with the results.

Unfortunately linux doesn't seem to play well with the 'macbook' models keyboard(s) -- I guess that probably applies to the new pros too.

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99891

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#95

Post by eth0up »

floatboth wrote: post #74
eth0up wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

HDMI works fine for me, it's really, really weird that it didn't for you. Compiling anything on ARM is horribly slow, cross-compiling from amd64 is a much better idea. But you don't need to compile vim, there are binary packages for ARM! http://pkg.freebsd.org/FreeBSD:12:armv6/latest/ pkg should just work.

Pardon my ignorance; but what would HDMI have to do with the issues I've noted? In Raspbian, the Pi is a champion, minus some USB issues. Why would HDMI be any different in BSD? Why would HDMI cause lag or infinite compiling? Also, thanks for your replies. Amidst the onslaught of downvotes, I nearly committed YC-Seppuku in shame. Also-also, with a bit of irony, after I'd expressed my satisfaction with Debian Testing (after two happy years), this very night "apt-get dist-upgrade" wanted to remove everything "X", e.g. xorg, xserver, etc., and iptables too. These are the less pleasant moments of Testing. Pretty much annihilated my laptop, removing synaptic input drivers and every other useful thing it could sabotage. Nothing single-user mode can't surmount, but man, what timing. Happens about once/twice per year.

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#96

Post by contras1970 »

eth0up wrote: post #58
floatboth wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

i can imagine building everything from sources must be painful on such a puny machine. why didn't you use binary packages? pkg install vim ?

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#97

Post by mpasternacki »

cyberpunk wrote: post #92
mpasternacki wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in HEAD, but https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/freebsd-base-graphics/tree... is stable in my experience

I'm running two external screens (one thunderbolt, one via the hdmi port) on unpatched 10.3 without any issue on my mbp... I can use the laptop display at the same time also (usually don't -- but I have to close the lid before I start X otherwise it'll stay on) ....? Is it just your model? It;s behind my desk but it's some cheapo thunderbolt->hdmi dongle made by "neeto" apparently, works well enough.. [ 131.865] (--)…

I think 10.3 has an older version of i915, this has worked on vanilla, but 11 has already Linux 3.7 or 3.8 DRM imported which breaks with thunderbolt display, and it was fixed in drm-next-4.7 patch (which is going to land on HEAD someday, but it might not be backported to 11).

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#98

Post by verandaguy »

floatboth wrote: post #55
verandaguy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, my bad, I was just short on sleep when I wrote that :P

Still nice to know about Hypervisor.framework. If I ever get back to OS X I'll have to check it out!

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#99

Post by PaulRobinson »

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?

OS X userland was forked from FreeBSD 15 years back.

It's not that far removed even now, although config is standard /etc

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#100

Post by eth0up »

contras1970 wrote: post #96
eth0up wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

i can imagine building everything from sources must be painful on such a puny machine. why didn't you use binary packages? pkg install vim ?

All I knew of were ports. However, as noted above, there was the issue of input delay, which was very discouraging. Maybe I will try pkg next time.
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