[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Does anyone use FreeBSD or OpenBSD as a dail...
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Ask HN: Does anyone use FreeBSD or OpenBSD as a daily environment?
Over the years, I've used MacOS and Linux, sometimes switching
between the two. I'm curious to know if any readers use one of
these BSD distros as a daily driver/dev environment, especially on
laptops. NOTE: Not seeking to start an OS flame war or info dump
of what BSD is.
Author : stakkur
Score : 10 points
Date : 2022-08-08 20:06 UTC (2 hours ago)
| vermaden wrote:
| I do since around 2007.
|
| Here a screenshot from 2010 of that FreeBSD laptop/desktop:
|
| - https://www.deviantart.com/vermaden/art/CorporateBSD-FreeBSD...
|
| After years of using it I slightly modified it to better suite my
| needs:
|
| - https://vermaden.wordpress.com/freebsd-desktop/
|
| I have used that FreeBSD on these laptops for all those years:
|
| - Dell E6400 - ThinkPad W530 - ThinkPad T420s - ThinkPad X220 -
| ThinkPad T520 - ThinkPad W520 <= currently used one
|
| This is my current setup:
|
| - https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2022/04/14/freebsd-13-1-on-th...
|
| Hope that helps.
|
| Regards.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| I've been reading through your Desktop Series of posts;
| excellent work and thank you for it!
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I heard security people sometimes use it as host, can someone in
| the industry confirm?
| badrabbit wrote:
| macos is most popular with security folks. Programmers into
| security and *nix exploit devs might be into it from the small
| sample I observed. Even among very technical infosec people
| windows is still their daily driver but macs are in close
| competition. The more software security focused people are the
| more unixy they get I guess?
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Thanks, I'm thinking more about malware reverse engineering,
| so I guess Windows is the primary playground, but I assume
| it's mostly running in a VM.
| t-3 wrote:
| I use OpenBSD on my daily driver laptop and a few other
| appliances. It's great, but depending on the features and
| software you need, might not fit your usecase. No bluetooth, no
| Linux compatibility layer, no WINE, smaller selection of ports,
| no PCI passthru... A lot of the Linux-targeted embedded and FPGA
| toolchain software is either unavailable or not straightforward
| to build on OpenBSD too.
| stakkur wrote:
| Thanks. Do you find these limitations are device-specific, or
| just general OpenBSD gotchas that apply broadly?
| lambdaba wrote:
| Piggybacking on this thread because I'm also interested,
| specifically in using FreeBSD on a 2019 MacBook and using docker
| on Linux trough bhyve. How well does FreeBSD run on a MacBook?
| Any compatibility issues?
| frank_bb wrote:
| soupbowl wrote:
| Never had problems with FreeBSD on a desktop using nvidia
| graphics and Ethernet. I used it on a laptop a few times but WiFi
| was always an issue, I assume Bluetooth would be too but I never
| use it.
|
| I suggest staying on the "stable" pkg mirrors and stay away from
| "latest" as you end up updating your desktop packages often and
| there is a greater chance of problems.
|
| I usually use xfce as the desktop and it works well.
| atemerev wrote:
| I used to (a year ago): the only problem I had is debugging
| Python with PyCharm, everything else worked flawlessly. It even
| has working proprietary Nvidia drivers.
| runjake wrote:
| Applicable comments threads from a couple days ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32369189
| effdee wrote:
| I've been using FreeBSD as a desktop for almost 20 years.
| Currently running, uhm, CURRENT on an older Thinkpad.
|
| Using FreeBSD as a desktop won't be fun unless one enjoys a raw
| and rather spartanic UNIX experience, I guess.
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