Considering a switch from macOS, need some guidance reddit / BSD ---------------------------------------------------------------------- wolfe_br · 2020-11-03 19:02 Hello BSD people! I'm considering switching to BSD in the next months, mostly due to the ARM switch. Some background here, I currently have been using a Hackintosh for the last year, and before that spent some months on Debian Linux, which was my switch option after getting tired of trying to do development on Windows. In this time I've also played around with other distributions such as Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Arch and Manjaro, but for some reason something always seems off and the system feels a little unstable, which worries me since I mostly use the computer for work. I've started researching about BSDs around 3 months ago and even tried FreeBSD in a VM, it seemed to run really nice even when running KDE, the only thing that felt a little bad was download times, but I probably haven't set a proper mirror or something, other than that the system seemed a little more responsive and had less graphical glitches, but I will only ever know if I try it on real hardware anyways. But well, I don't want to ask another "should I switch from Linux to BSD" or "which BSD I should use" question, but mostly have some feedback on what you people are using and why... Also, which (if any) desktop environment would you suggest? I'm mostly used to KDE, since it seems to have a nice balance from macOS and Windows, but I'm open to experimenting others... Also, I haven't found much software (specially GUI software) being released for BSD, is there any place I can find them or specially, can I use some Linux apps? Thanks a lot for reading until here, btw! :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dddddavidddd · 2020-11-03 19:23 I use FreeBSD with a minimal window tiling window manager (i3). What I appreciate the most is how coherent and well-documented the system is. First-class ZFS support is a big plus. Most of my time working I spend in a text editor ([sublime](https://www.freshports.org/editors/sublime3) or vim), a web browser (Firefox), or a terminal, occasionally using Gimp, Inkscape, or LibreOffice. Most of the big Linux apps can be compiled on FreeBSD. You can find them listed over at [FreshPorts](https://www.freshports.org/search.php) and install them with `pkg` or build them yourself from source with `ports`. Download times aren't fantastic with most mirrors, but you'll only be installing lots of software when you first set up your system. However, I frequently dual-boot with Windows for [video conferencing](https://www.davidschlachter.com/misc/freebsd- videoconferencing) and editing PowerPoint presentations (don't want any layout surprises (LibreOffice) when sharing with colleagues). I also have a macOS partition for iTunes and the Finder -- I have yet to find something that's as functional for browsing lots of files (especially thanks to QuickLook, column and list views, and Spotlight) or managing my music library. I keep my user files on a ZFS partition that both FreeBSD and macOS (OpenZFS) can access. What sort of software are you looking for? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jaypatelani · 2020-11-03 19:33 I use NetBSD +pkgin (binaries )+ pkgsrc (something like homebrew) and I find it fairly easy to use for my desktop use :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- include007 · 2020-11-03 21:06 what's your laptop specs? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nodate54 · 2020-11-03 22:08 I really like FreeBSD but the only real thing stopping me from using it is the WiFi support or should I say lack of. No driver yet for my WiFi card. If there was I would seriously consider it as my daily driver ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TTalkIM · 2020-11-04 01:01 I use Thinkpad w530 laptop. And run FreeBSD with XFCE 4 for a long time. I use this laptop as my development machine. In FreeBSD, some commercial software are absent such as Skype, Zoom. And some software has small issues such as chromium. But as a development machine, it works very well. I use Emacs to write Erlang, Ocaml, Common Lisp and JavaScript. Recent I found that DrRacket can work very well on it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- wolfe_br · 2020-11-04 12:24 I mostly use my desktop for development today (Intel Core i5-7600K, 32GB DDR4, AMD RX580 8GB, Gigabyte B250M-D3H), which I'll probably going to upgrade sometime next year with a Ryzen 5000, my laptop is a GI5CN5E (Intel Core i7-8750H, 16GB DDR4, GTX 1050Ti 4GB). My plans are to use BSD on my desktop at first, since I managed to get a Linux install working pretty nicely with the laptop (for times when I need to code and stuff), along with Windows for some proprietary software and games, but well, these are the specs :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- wolfe_br · 2020-11-04 12:37 Sounds good! I guess I'll be sticking with a Windows partition anyways since I do enjoy some gaming sometimes and also for proprietary stuff like Capture One... But in terms of stuff I use on a daily basis I'd say Chromium, VS Code, Slack, Postman/Insomnia and MySQL Workbench. These are the main ones and I guess they'd all be available either via package managers or even via web (like Slack). I also use Spark as my current mail client, afaik it has no desktop client other than the macOS one, but I guess I can replace it with some other free client. As far for video conferencing and filesystems, I'm not very fond of having conferencing software installed on my computer, so I always end up using the web versions of stuff such as Google Meet or Zoom, for files I currently have a shared ExFAT partition where I put stuff that I'd like available on any of my OSes, but haven't had much experience with ZFS before, other than my try at FreeBSD I mentioned before. As for my system partitions, today they are APFS for macOS, NTFS for Windows and BTRFS for my Linux install, so not really cross-compatible lol Edit: just as a curiosity, how stable are graphics drivers over at FreeBSD? Not that I plan on using them a lot, just wondering anyways ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mayhem8 · 2020-11-04 14:14 While I love the BSDs, linux does better as a desktop and if you weren't happy there, I don't think you will be happy here. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dddddavidddd · 2020-11-04 16:24 Apparently support is okay for your GPU since late 2018: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/rx-580-supported.65905/post-396194 The graphics drivers are essentially ported from Linux and run with the compatibility layer, so they're more-or-less the same, just a bit behind for the latest hardware. (The steps in that post are overkill btw, just `pkg install drm-kmod`, disable syscons, & configure X if necessary. Be sure to check out the [handbook](https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/x-config.html) too.) Chromium, VS Code, and MySQL Workbench have FreeBSD binary packages. I use the Slack web client. I don't think Postman or Insomnia have been ported. I use Thunderbird as my mail client but often find myself just using the Gmail web interface. FreeBSD does support ExFAT through [FUSE](https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/ man.cgi?query=fusefs&sektion=5&manpath=freebsd-release-ports), but you need to install the `fusefs-exfat` package from [`ports`](https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/ports.html). I think licensing issues prevent it being available from the binary packages. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- include007 · 2020-11-04 18:46 very very good specs!!! with that I would (in my case obviously) choose NetBSD because I use a lot Docker and k8s... I could have a Linux VM running on top of it. :)