[HN Gopher] FreeBSD Handbook / Introduction
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FreeBSD Handbook / Introduction
Author : Ducki
Score : 154 points
Date : 2021-12-15 15:00 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (docs.freebsd.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (docs.freebsd.org)
| adamddev1 wrote:
| I remember growing up in grade school my friend's older brother
| was a very active contributer to FreeBSD. I remember being
| fascinated by the FreeBSD desktop they had running in the living
| room and this alternate universe of free software he was helping
| to create. I don't remember much other than his rants against
| windows (he thought it was terrible that people let their
| computers would do stuff like run CD-ROMs automatically on
| insert) and staring awestruck at some of his big-kid C/C++ files
| before me and and my friend went to tinker with our kiddie
| QBasic. But something about that ingrained in me a fascination
| with FreeBSD at an early age. I just thought it was so incredibly
| cool. It ran so lean and cleanly. It was made by passionate nerds
| like my friend's big brother, volunteers driven by a desire to do
| things correctly, clearly, and simply. Something about it just
| seemed so awesome and right. But I didn't have a computer of my
| own to run it on. Years later I went on to be a Linux user but
| have often wondered about diving into FreeBSD due to some strange
| form of nostalgia and sentimentalism.
| grumpyprole wrote:
| I remember being a new Linux user in the mid-90s at university.
| I was told by more than one computer science nerd that FreeBSD
| was more mature and reliable, which was probably true back
| then. But Linux just seemed to be where the excitement was (it
| even had coloured ls output!).
| nix23 wrote:
| >was more mature and reliable, which was probably true back
| then.
|
| Those two points are still true compared to linux.
| [deleted]
| istjohn wrote:
| I've yet to try a BSD, but FreeBSD's wholehearted embrace of the
| ZFS filesystem makes it very attractive to me. Now I have another
| reason to look at it.
| erk__ wrote:
| It should be noted that this is a redesign of the old docs site
| that recently went live.
| packetlost wrote:
| Oh wow, yeah. Finally looks like FreeBSD grew out of the 2005
| era. I say that only half jokingly, the previous design was
| very dated, but still every bit as functional for it's purpose.
| nmz wrote:
| I tend to use w3m with the documentation or a reference
| manual on a tiling wm. so as long as it works on w3m. So I do
| hope manuals should work in that way.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yeah the old manual worked great in text browsers. But I
| imagine they still provide it as such as a package like
| they always have
| jrumbut wrote:
| I saw horizontal scrolling and got nervous, but then I
| realized they were just hiding a "scroll to top" button over
| there.
|
| Delightful!
| whalesalad wrote:
| Love the new UI!
| rackjack wrote:
| The daemon is flat now. I liked the glossy look it had ;-;
| kingofclams wrote:
| Seeing better mobile support is fantastic.
| wyuenho wrote:
| Whoa, there's a *nix distro that actually has documentation that
| can explain things to me like I'm 5 and show case all things
| special about the OS? This is exceptional good.
| INTPenis wrote:
| I haven't used FreeBSD for almost 10 years now but it was my
| first non-Linux OS back in early 2000s and the primary OS we
| used at my first IT job.
|
| The FreeBSD handbook is something you actually had bookmarked,
| I checked the handbook before I searched the web.
|
| There is no Linux distro today with a handbook like the FreeBSD
| handbook, in terms of how I used it at least.
|
| Same goes for OpenBSD.
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| It has been this way for a long time it's just that people
| thought reading manuals was tedious and ugly.
| VTimofeenko wrote:
| There's Gentoo handbook[1] that walks through every step of
| building a system and explaining the choices and the
| consequences of those choices.
|
| [1]: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:Main_Page
| wyuenho wrote:
| That's not the same at all. This FreeBSD is a user's manual,
| Gentoo's is a developer's wiki. It doesn't tell me most of
| the things I need to know to do actual work.
| VTimofeenko wrote:
| Hm. Gentoo does have a developer's manual[1] which
| describes in detail how one would be able to package new
| applications or patch things in the main repository.
|
| Working with Gentoo as a user does require having an
| understanding of the knobs that portage (the package
| manager) presents, and this has a certain learning curve.
| But that learning curve is IMHO worth it for the
| flexibility that portage brings to the table. Without that
| flexibility it would be very hard to manage replacing at
| user's will something as major in the system as the init
| system, or the whole audio stack or libssl provider.
|
| [1]: https://devmanual.gentoo.org/
| marttt wrote:
| I'm undecided between Tiny Core Linux and NetBSD for an old
| Thinkpad T42, and I had similar emotions reading NetBSDs Guide
| a few days ago. Tiny Core is really great (I've been using it
| for 5-6 years) but:
|
| - The T42 needs underclocking. Tiny Core solution: Google and
| find out that cpufrequtils helps (it did). How about NetBSD?
| First time reading of the manual, 5-10 minutes, and there it
| is, a built-in feature: http://netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-
| power.html#chap-power-a...
|
| - Similar thing with a non-standard keyboard layout: on Tiny
| Core, it had some symbols missing. To reconfigure the keymap on
| Tiny Core, I had to Google and find out about Linux's kbd
| project. Download kbd sources, compile it, read its
| (comprehensive, but really well written!) manual to get a hang
| of Linux's keyboard layout files (interesting stuff). Then
| modify the layout to my needs by trial and error, and then use
| two of kbd's tools + a minor hack to make it usable under Tiny
| Core.
|
| On NetBSD: 5 minutes to read a few paragraphs in the Guide:
| http://netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-cons.html#chap-cons-
| wsc.... Works.
|
| What I particularly liked is that the same chapter of the
| NetBSD Guide also provides a brief and clear how-to for
| changing keyboard layout at the kernel level. In other words,
| everything relevant in one place, easy to find, really well
| structured and written. For a hobbyist like me, reading the
| Guide is a true learning experience as to how an operating
| system actually works.
|
| Once again, I absolutely love Tiny Core Linux, its wiki, FAQ,
| forum, package manager and the provides.sh tool are really
| great. Excellent distro for less capable or ancient machines.
| But in terms of documentation, the BSD world does seem to be in
| a class of its own.
|
| I suppose all three BSDs -- Net, Open and Free -- have more or
| less equally good documentation, no?
| aparks517 wrote:
| What a coincidence! I just finished reading this. It's the work
| of many authors, so you may find it a little uneven. But overall
| I found it to be an outstanding document. It helped me get the
| lay of the land quickly and easily, coming from OpenBSD. OpenBSD
| has very good documentation too, but I don't think they have
| anything quite like this.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Interesting, however if a third edition of "Design and
| Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System" ever comes up, I
| would gladly buy it.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I love FreeBSD, but the way it behaves with Home and End keys
| drives me nuts. Is there a way to set it to behave as Linux
| consistently, across all users, session, and jails?
| citrin_ru wrote:
| What is the problem exactly? I use FreeBSD (and Linux) for
| years and not aware that Home/End behave differently in
| FreeBSD. Default FreeBSD shell was until recently tcsh and it
| is a bit quirky but in tcsh Home/End work by default. sh is
| another shell from FreeBSD base system - it is small and simple
| but even there Home/End work with `set -o emacs` in .shrc (it
| is in default .shrc, from /usr/share/skel/).
| tomc1985 wrote:
| So Home and End don't go to the start and end of line,
| respectively, when I hit those connected via a remote
| terminal (using PuTTY).
|
| Seems to be universal to the entire OS, as I get this
| behavior in bash, vim, and pretty much everything else. I
| applied some kind of hack to make it work correctly in bash
| on the host OS, but it doesn't work correctly in vim or other
| programs, or anything in any jailed OS.
|
| They do seem to work fine at a local console though, so I'm
| wondering if its my term emulation settings in PuTTY.
| citrin_ru wrote:
| Yes, it likely related to how PuTTY emulates terminal or
| which TERM var it sends.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| The FreeBSD handbook, and FreeBSD's bit-rot resistant
| documentation, are the primary reasons I use it as a daily
| driver. I migrated from Linux on the Laptop ~1.5 years ago and my
| day-to-day has been more calm ever since.
| Ducki wrote:
| The system is just so nice. Memory footprint is very low, there
| are like a hand full of processes running, almost no magical
| stuff happening. Additionally to the handbook, the man pages
| are also way more informative than the Linux pendants.
| barkingcat wrote:
| I've used it as my primary server platform for 10+ years now
| and the handbook is still great - very resistant to any kind of
| bitrot at all.
| benwills wrote:
| It seems that finding a FreeBSD-compatible laptop can be a bit
| of a process. I've been considering the same for the last
| couple years, but always end up hesitating once I get into
| researching it.
|
| Are you up for sharing which laptop you got? And do you have
| any advice on the process of choosing one? My needs are pretty
| basic (no gaming, etc): web browser, sublimetext, command line.
| comprev wrote:
| Judging by this list [0] Thinkpads seem to have a good
| reputation, like they do for Linux too.
|
| [0] https://wiki.freebsd.org/Laptops
| benwills wrote:
| Yeah, I've reviewed that and other forums as well and
| previously narrowed it down to 3-4 options (It was a while
| back and I don't remember which).
|
| I'm expecting I just have to make the decision at some
| point, and work through whatever comes up.
| hericium wrote:
| ThinkPads usually work well.
|
| My T14s AMD Gen1 lacks fingerprint scanner support and as of
| now, AC/AX WiFi drivers are in very alpha stage, so I had to
| downgrade to 80211n.
|
| Everything else, including AMD GPU acceleration in X.org,
| works perfectly. I am glad to be able to do some tinkering to
| have a system working just as I want it to, not like some
| corporation's investors prefer.
| benwills wrote:
| Cool. Thanks for that. I think I'd be fine on 80211n.
| nauticacom wrote:
| I've been thinking of throwing FreeBSD on an old Thinkpad and
| trying to use it normally. Right now I run Debian, with most of
| my work happening in Firefox or the shell.
|
| Is there anything you didn't even think about that ended up
| being a problem, or noticeably worse? Or the opposite,
| something you thought would be an issue but wasn't?
| dddddaviddddd wrote:
| WiFi is currently limited to 802.11n on all chipsets. Work to
| support 802.11ac (and more wireless cards) is ongoing and
| looks to me like it could be ready in 2022. Also, options for
| videoconferencing programs (Zoom, Skype) are poor, you're
| effectively limited to browser-based versions, which don't
| perform well with an iGPU at least.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Jitsi works fine though at least in Firefox!
|
| I don't want zoom anywhere near my FreeBSD box after what
| they did with that backdoor on macOS. And refused to remove
| it until apple blacklisted them.
| andrewzah wrote:
| FreeBSD runs pretty nice on thinkpads. I've thrown it (and
| OpenBSD) on my x201s and x220s. There are a few pain points:
|
| * getting used to the BSD version of utilities. make
| frequently breaks for me, and last time I used gmake there
| were still issues.
|
| * random software isn't packaged or just doesn't run/build on
| *BSDs well.
|
| * lack of support for games. these days, steam games run
| rather well on linux as long as they don't require
| anticheats.
|
| * no docker. this is what keeps me on linux, I use it every
| day for work and I have a server at home running software
| through docker containers.
|
| For me, OpenBSD is the goto.. for servers. I still stick with
| debian or arch for my daily drivers.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Most gmake works well but sometimes you have to change the
| include and lib paths. FreeBSD is just a bit different in
| that respect bit it's a good thing IMO. It's very
| consistent
| riffraff wrote:
| Many years ago I helped translate some of the FreeBSD and Linux
| documentation.
|
| Even then, the Handbook was a marvel compared to most of the
| cobbled together HOWTOs, I always felt it was a very underrated
| gem in the echosystem.
| rackjack wrote:
| I've always wanted to try FreeBSD but I could never get my
| drivers to work (thanks, RealTek). Maybe someday.
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(page generated 2021-12-15 23:02 UTC)