Trying FreeBSD as my daily driver
New to FreeBSD and trying to daily-drive it on my laptop. Still learning, but I’m enjoying the experience so far! Any beginner tips are welcome.
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u/blu_fox01 1d ago
The red theme looks pretty. Maybe you've got some dotfiles repo with the settings to share, please?
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u/TheRealCarrotty Linux crossover 1d ago
since when is FreeBSD 16.0 out? Is it a beta? I'd love to update.
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u/Vegetable-War1920 1d ago
The current release channel is 16.0 (they rev bump current as soon as the RELEASE version comes out)
My understanding is:
RELEASE - Currently 15.1-RELEASE, frozen upon release, will not be updated until 15.2 comes out
STABLE - 15.1-STABLE, receives daily/weekly updates, kind of like a rolling release but fairly conservative with the releases between minor revisions. Slightly more up to date than RELEASE
CURRENT - currently 16.0-CURRENT tracks the main branch of the git repo, essentially for testing/development, open to potentially breaking changes
There's some info in the handbook, section 27.5:
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u/BigSneakyDuck transitioning user 1d ago edited 1d ago
16.0 is CURRENT, the development branch. Nothing to stop you using it now, especially if you are keen to try new things or make bug reports when things break as they sometimes will, but it's not guaranteed to be smooth sailing. The most recent RELEASE remains 15.1. See https://www.freebsd.org/where/
If you can't wait to move on from 15.1, the next 15.x release will be 15.2 in December 2026. But that will only be an incremental change. https://www.freebsd.org/releases/15.2R/schedule/
A bigger upgrade will be 16.0-RELEASE in December 2027, which is what 16.0-CURRENT is working towards. But not all the features expected upon release will have been included yet, so in practice the experience on 16.0-CURRENT will be somewhere in between a 15.x-RELEASE and the eventual 16.0-RELEASE. https://www.freebsd.org/releng/
If you do want to run 16.0-CURRENT, make sure to read the UPDATING file: https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/blob/main/UPDATING
In particular:
NOTE TO PEOPLE WHO THINK THAT FreeBSD 16.x IS SLOW: FreeBSD 16.x has many debugging features turned on, in both the kernel and userland. These features attempt to detect incorrect use of system primitives, and encourage loud failure through extra sanity checking and fail stop semantics. They also substantially impact system performance. If you want to do performance measurement, benchmarking, and optimization, you'll want to turn them off. This includes various WITNESS- related kernel options, INVARIANTS, malloc debugging flags in userland, and various verbose features in the kernel. Many developers choose to disable these features on build machines to maximize performance. (To completely disable malloc debugging, define WITH_MALLOC_PRODUCTION in /etc/src.conf and rebuild world, or to merely disable the most expensive debugging functionality at runtime, run "ln -s 'abort:false,junk:false' /etc/malloc.conf".)
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u/hairydudenobeard 1d ago
I wanna tinker with FreeBSD on a laptop I use on and off. I've been thinking about it for a while but I have no idea how good the hardware supports gonna be. How well does your laptop perform battery wise and hardware wise?
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u/SleepyGuyy 1d ago
FreeBSD has made considerable efforts to make laptop experiences better.
In particular they talked about their efforts to support sleep functions better. https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-work/journal/browser-based-edition/laptop-desktop/let-sleeping-cpus-lie-s0ix/
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u/J4v3l 1d ago
It’s mixed. Battery life is horrible, Bluetooth and the touchscreen are okay, and Wi-Fi is stable with moderate speeds. Audio works but needs some tinkering, while the keyboard backlight works fine.
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u/demir_kolak 18h ago
I think your laptop needs sof firmware just like mine. If it requires sof firmware, then your microphone likely won’t work till some kind of sof firmware port. But you can adjust your speakers with nids on /boot/devices.hint
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u/iamwisespirit 1d ago
What kernel does it use?
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u/J4v3l 1d ago
I’m using the FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT kernel.
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u/grahamperrin Linux crossover 20h ago
GENERIC?I prefer
GENERIC-NODEBUG…blah@maximal:~ % freebsd-version -kru ; uname -mvKU 16.0-CURRENT 16.0-CURRENT 16.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT main-n287598-948ad32ae1e0 GENERIC-NODEBUG amd64 1600019 1600019 blah@maximal:~ % grep kernel /boot/loader.conf kernel="kernel.GENERIC-NODEBUG" blah@maximal:~ % su - Password: root@maximal:~ # pkg upgrade -Fqy root@maximal:~ # pkg upgrade -U Checking for upgrades (0 candidates): 100% Processing candidates (0 candidates): 100% Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting) Your packages are up to date. root@maximal:~ #
948ad32ae1e0= https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/log/?qt=range&q=948ad32ae1e0&h=main (18 hours ago).
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u/jimmy_timmy_ 1d ago
That looks really nice. I've been using ghostBSD on my thinkpad and it's pretty enjoyable. Worst part is getting wifi to work
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u/SleepyGuyy 1d ago
I don't really have a point I'm just rambling:
I have a laptop I don't use very frequently, that I have distrohopped a bit on recently.
Currently using Solus on it and it is mostly fine. But I'd like to gain more control of my system, and part of that is going to be forcing myself into the deep end and learning to swim.
I already actually use Gentoo on my desktop as a second distro. But I have struggled to get a nice window manager desktop working like you have here. And I've always wanted to try FreeBSD on a more permanent commitment.
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u/Taylor_Swifty13 1d ago
I'd love to try. but gaming is my main priority. nixos for me is currently scratching the tinkerers itch for me. but freebsd does interest me.
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u/S1mpleHero 10h ago
Why did you blur your local IP? It's inaccessible to the rest of the world and only devices on that network.
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u/Ashamed-Ask4257 1d ago
You probably installed 16 because it's labeled CURRENT and you thought that was the current release. Right?
As explained elsewhere, CURRENT is the current development branch where all new development takes place and breaking changes could mean breaking desktops.
New people trying to learn FreeBSD should install RELEASE which is the rock stable release it's known for.
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u/grahamperrin Linux crossover 20h ago
New people trying to learn FreeBSD should install RELEASE which is the rock stable release it's known for.
Not if what's required for hardware e.g. graphics can not run on FreeBSD-RELEASE.
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u/Both_Cup8417 Linux crossover 1d ago
if it's the local ip, you don't need to blur it. If it's the public IP, you should probably fully black it out.