How can I check package availability before switching to FreeBSD? reddit / freebsd ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LambLeeg · 2021-05-30 19:04 So, I have been using Linux distros about 8 years, and recently I caught myself on the idea to use FreeBSD, but I want to make sure that all apps/packages are available on FreeBSD. I need GIMP, kdenlive, Cinnamon/Xfce, simplescreenrecorder, gparted, LibreOffice and would be nice to have Telegram, Brave browser and Vocal (podcast app). PS. Distros like Debian, Arch, Fedora and OpenSUSE have a section on their sites to check packages, and maybe I just didn't find where it is here. Also, just a fluff question. I remember how FreeBSD community were friendly to Linux users but last time I see so much mutual hate, what caused it? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ashfixit · 2021-05-30 19:11 [https://www.freshports.org/](https://www.freshports.org/) \- indexes the ports available for FreeBSD. Also Dan Langile is an awesome community leader. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- idjoe · 2021-05-30 19:11 https://www.freebsd.org/ports/searching/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- antiduh · 2021-05-30 19:11 You can browse everything that's available here: https://www.freshports.org/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LambLeeg · 2021-05-30 19:20 Thank you! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LambLeeg · 2021-05-30 19:20 Thanks for linking ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Max-Normal-88 · 2021-05-30 19:21 May I advice you to not use brave browser? >Also, just a fluff question. I remember how FreeBSD community were friendly to Linux users but last time I see so much mutual hate, what caused it? Most of the times people ask the same questions over and over again without first doing any research. Same thing happens within the Linux community when windows users ask things if you notice. Less commonly, GNU/GPL fanatics ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LambLeeg · 2021-05-30 19:21 Thanks, it's literally what I need ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FUZxxl · 2021-05-30 19:28 I really like this site, except for the damn fly in the header. Makes me wanna close it real quick every time I use it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- celestrion · 2021-05-30 19:29 > I remember how FreeBSD community were friendly to Linux users but last time I see so much mutual hate, what caused it? I don't see much hate from this direction, but it's occasionally annoying how folks wander over from the Linux camp and treat FreeBSD like it's another Linux distribution and see everything we do differently as a bug or misfeature. It's easy to get defensive in light of that because sometimes we don't to things the Linux way out of an active dislike for the Linux way of doing that thing. The hate in the other direction seems to stem from that same place. FreeBSD is seen as doing things some "old-fashioned" way, and its users are seen as skeptical curmudgeons. The FreeBSD project and its community are also often blamed for not porting over Linux software. This is the dual-edged nature of a ports tree: the third party software gives people a reason to shift their workflows to FreeBSD, but it also builds the assumption that we're to blame if some project uses Linux-specific APIs and won't run here. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LambLeeg · 2021-05-30 19:32 Yeah, of course, I also use Firefox so it's not a problem for me. About community, you know, sometimes I see literally toxic arguing like Linux is zoo or Freebsd is a trash for servers. I really dunno why some people are so toxic, especially it's weird when a newbie person ask something that he can't understand after reading handbook. Ps. I thought that FreeBSD has no packages for desktop usage, fortunately, it has and even almost like Linux distros like OpenSuse, although, it's not as good as Arch or Gentoo (by amount of packages) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LambLeeg · 2021-05-30 19:39 Interesting, I think this misconception and misunderstanding about what BSD is comes from newbies to Unix like systems and the only thing they do know that there's a penguin. Linux specific APIs, hmm, I suppose it's a big pain for FreeBSD community but you know, me as an old (relatively) Linux user can say that only last ~3 years I see that people start to remember that there are not only Mac and Windows and it's awesome but the time of FreeBSD in minds of people isn't here, this is sad. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Cashmonkey420 · 2021-05-30 20:30 I’ve been running FreeBSD as a daily driver for years. FYI Linux binaries can be run natively on FreeBSD with the Linux emulation layer. zfs boot environments are the next best thing since breakfast as well. I have xfce set up on one user and dwm on another. I hear gnome support is pretty good as well. Once I configured my first fbsd system that ram windows and Linux binaries, that was it for distribution hopping. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- masterblaster0 · 2021-05-30 20:31 If you want Brave you can always install it using the Linux compatability method. It's a bit of work but does allow for netflix etc https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/linuxulator-how-to-install-brave- linux-app-on-freebsd-13-0.78879/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nodate54 · 2021-05-30 20:44 What's wrong with Brave? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LambLeeg · 2021-05-30 20:55 Interesting, thanks for link. I'm going to read it and try ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Max-Normal-88 · 2021-05-30 21:31 https://practicaltypography.com/the-cowardice-of-brave.html https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2020/06/06/the-brave-web-browser- is-hijacking-links-and-inserting-affiliate-codes/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- edthesmokebeard · 2021-05-30 21:57 This is the correct answer. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- youRFate · 2021-05-30 23:06 I blocked that with my adblocker ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dlangille · 2021-05-30 23:55 I’ve considered making a paid subscription to remove the fly. At one time, I think it was only shown via IPv6. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- theSarif · 2021-05-31 00:11 pkg has its own commands to find packages and get info about them......... but personally I always just go straight to freshports. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- reddit_original · 2021-05-31 00:14 You're right. I've been using FreeBSD for 17 years and, the first five to 10 years, we always considered Linux to be cousins. All of a sudden, we started getting nasty comments from the other side and Linux started venturing into wanting to be another Windows and drifted away from the Unix philosophy and technical excellence to a "do whatever it takes" to compete and surpass Windows in a popularity contest. Linux went from being cousins to the black sheep in the family pretty fast. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- grahamperrin · 2021-05-31 02:45 > fly in the header It does sometimes make me laugh. There's a vicious rumour that it makes itself appear larger to people who misidentify it as a fly. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- grahamperrin · 2021-05-31 02:53 > the fly B … b … but … it has [no wings](https://www.freshports.org/images/notbug.gif). And there's no "Help me!" sound when I click on it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- grahamperrin · 2021-05-31 03:01 > gparted Not ported, and I'm surprised that it's not listed as wanted: * https://wiki.freebsd.org/WantedPorts A useful alternative, although it's no substitute for a good GUI: * GPT fdisk – [sysutils/gdisk](https://www.freshports.org/sysutils/gdisk/) For some tasks, obscurely, gpart(8) is essential: * https://man.freebsd.org/gpart(8) For reference, although I dislike referring to an entire chapter of a book when a user (understandably) wants a simple GUI: * https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/disks/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- grahamperrin · 2021-05-31 03:22 > … Linux specific APIs, hmm, I suppose it's a big pain … Not directly related, but FYI: [Update on FreeBSD Foundation Investment in Linuxulator | FreeBSD Foundation](https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/update-on-freebsd- foundation-investment-in-linuxulator/) (2021-04-09; not dated) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- grahamperrin · 2021-05-31 03:26 > … Linux went from being cousins to the black sheep … I guess, that part of history was before my time. >>> … I don't see much hate from this direction, but it's occasionally annoying how folks wander over from the Linux camp and treat FreeBSD like it's another Linux distribution and see everything we do differently as a bug or misfeature. … Honestly, I don't see that type of thing. Or if I do, it's rare enough to be entirely forgettable. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- grahamperrin · 2021-05-31 03:44 Browser pros and cons, discussion in Matrix: https://matrix.to/#/!PzeQPkHSanfUoJzwAA:matrix.org Also /r/browsers ---------------------------------------------------------------------- grahamperrin · 2021-05-31 03:54 -1 https://old.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/ea6yle/the_cowardice_of_brave /fapk02r/ *I want facts, not ridiculous exaggeration.* ▶ https://old.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/noi088/-/h01oi5q/ ▶ suitable areas for discussion ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LambLeeg · 2021-05-31 04:45 Thanks for info ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Tj_h__ · 2021-05-31 04:49 What fly in the header? ... Wtf, how is this the first I'm noticing this? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- terono · 2021-05-31 14:49 I don't know if it's hate, I think it's selfishness by a group of users who profit at will for their own interests in servers, and have not wanted in over 25 years to extend FreeBSD by default for graphical desktop environment, they oppose it, despite their petty politics, they don't care that FreeBSD is about to disappear with their obsolete software. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- celestrion · 2021-05-31 15:10 > extend FreeBSD by default for graphical desktop environment, they oppose it That's one of the things I was talking about. Most of what's hosted on Freedesktop.org (the "Linux way" of doing a GUI) is cancerous software. It has poorly-considered abstractions, nearly circuitous dependencies, and doesn't decompose well into separate concerns. They're often developed primarily by companies with a vested interest in Linux, aren't shy about tying their *to* Linux, and then push for those solutions to be the standard. FreeBSD gets stuck playing either catch-up or not at all. Yet, this is what "doing a GUI" on POSIX-like systems means anymore. So, fine, it can live in ports, and the people who want to run it can. But if you're *not* running a GUI, dbus (for example) is a pretty awful way to do IPC, so maybe it shouldn't be a default assumption. If we had the resources, we could try to do something different, but we don't. The core team generally don't want to complect base with these sorts of concerns (especially when they rely on a different design methodology), so they don't. It's an awful position. > they don't care that FreeBSD is about to disappear with their obsolete software I'd argue that there's also an existential threat of FreeBSD disappearing if it boots up looking just like CentOS or Ubuntu with the same sluggish GUI bloat. The platform may live on, but those of us who love it for its relative simplicity would need to go elsewhere. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 2016tyler · 2021-05-31 15:39 I use both Linux and FreeBSD. I admin hosts and write code for them. They both have their merits. I wrote an article https://tylersguides.com/opinion/freebsd-review/ on my site outlining why I tend to prefer FreeBSD. It is super nice using something like synth or poudriere to build packages with the compile time options you want. Setting up a build host for a network of FreeBSD is fairly straightforward. Another biggie for me is how well in-place major upgrades work (E.g. upgrading FreeBSD 12 to 13). On Linux, this can be a chore. Jails are great! The API differences can be a pain at times. Kqueue vs inotify is a big one. From my experience, the higher level libraries tend to only have a subset of the capabilities of each. The main advantage for Linux in my opinion is commercial software support. You can't always control what business users, other parts of the department, security people, etc want or need. Take backup or security software for example. Support for RHEL, Debian based distros is a lot more common than *BSD support. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- terono · 2021-05-31 17:07 >I'd argue that there's also an existential threat of FreeBSD disappearing if it boots up looking just like CentOS or Ubuntu with the same sluggish GUI bloat. The platform may live on, but those of us who love it for its relative simplicity would need to go elsewhere. Haven't you seen the Debian installer at the prompt itself gives options to install the system in CLI or GUI ? It is simply pure selfishness of a group of users who profit from FreeBSD only for servers, and in more than 25 years have opposed FreeBSD to be extended by default for graphical desktop environment. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- celestrion · 2021-05-31 17:26 > It is simply pure selfishness of a group of users who profit from FreeBSD only for servers, and in more than 25 years have opposed FreeBSD to be extended by default for graphical desktop environment. No, it means pulling all of those concerns into the base distribution. Tracking Xorg (or Wayland) and the gigantic stack of stuff that the desktop environments depend on is a huge burden even within the context of ports. Tracking it in such a way that preserves APi and ABI compatibility over the lifetime of a release is larger still. Commercial Linux vendors like Red Hat and SuSE have teams of full-time employees who track the current development within those stacks and back-port critical fixes. So long as FreeBSD operates under the assumption that the base OS is stable for the lifetime of a release, there simply isn't the available talented time. FreeBSD cannot simultaneously be a wholly-curated operating environment maintained as a unit *and* an OS that installs a bunch of other people's code "by default" without either: * Letting those components rot for a year at least, * Taking on the additional work of cursory maintenance of code that, in aggregate is likely *larger than the rest of the distribution*, or * Treating all the stuff the GUI audience directly interacts with as a second-class citizen. The last option is what we have today, by way of ports. [There are](https://www.ghostbsd.org/) already [projects](https://www.midnightbsd.org/) which [try to](https://www.nomadbsd.org/) take the other paths, and the rate of churn within that ecosystem is a big hint as to the tremendous amount of work involved in trying to do more. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- terono · 2021-06-01 06:59 With what you expose, linux would not have extended beyond its mother or father distribution as you want to call it, however very small projects are born by default with graphical desktop maintained even by a person who has come to know or a small group of developers. Now that small group of egoists who benefit from their servers for their interests in FreeBSD, put any pretext and send to derivatives that are born with FreeBSD face and in the end they die or are migrated to take another base as in the case of ghostbsd an embedded based on TrueOS server and OpenRC. Please investigate in the ghostbsd forum the same ghostbsd developer who announced years ago that ghostbsd will be embedded from the next version onwards based on TrueOS server and OpenRC. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DigitalBoffin · 2021-06-02 01:49 > … Linux went from being cousins to the black sheep … That happened right after what I believe was the 15th (or was it the 16th?) consecutive year of *20xx is the Year of Linux on the Desktop.* I had a brief go at things in Penguin Land but I couldn't put down roots due to the constant (what seemed like) in fighting amongst users of different distros. Combine that with the inherent hatred of anything Microsoft (another platform I used and enjoyed) it was just too toxic a place to put up with the countless idiosyncrasies and "personalities" of each differing distro. I was holding on for dear life to Solaris (OpenIndiana) while using my Mac and my Windows box. To me, FreeBSD isn't just a solid operating system, it's a solid community working toward a clearly defined goal. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- crust_cheese · 2021-06-16 15:30 my god dude you really have 0 clue how any of this works ---------------------------------------------------------------------- grahamperrin · 2021-06-16 17:01 There's a need to read current information. TrueOS as a basis for GhostBSD ceased in 2019, and so on.