Is FreeBSD for me? reddit / freebsd ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Agreeable-Solid7212 · 2021-08-14 00:12 I don't know if this post is appropriate for this sub, but I'll try anyway: I've been a Linux user for a while now (Artix/Gentoo mainly). I have a few questions about FreeBSD and some potential reasons to switch to it * Security: What is security like? I hear from FreeBSD website that it is very secure when being written, but what security benefits would I as the end user gain by using FreeBSD? * Package Management Is FreeBSD source based or binary? How often do you find that a package is not available in the FreeBSD repos? I know that there is some Linux compatibility, but how good is that? Do all (major) Linux binaries run? * Compatibility The software I use on a daily basis is: Brave Browser, MPV, nvim, kitty terminal, Rust, Python, Clang, various electron applications, nnn file manager, fish shell, coreutils. Will all of these work on FreeBSD * Lastly and most importantly: Learning What learning benefits does FreeBSD offer over Linux for someone who really wants to know how their operating system works and learn more about Linux? Do you find yourself having a deeper understanding of your system after switching to FreeBSD? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- aue_sum · 2021-08-14 00:21 Security: FreeBSD is not *the* most secure BSD (that would be OpenBSD), but since it's an incredibly small target for attackers you have nothing to worry about malware Package Management: FreeBSD has a binary package manager along with a user maintained source based way to install programs similar to Arch Linux's AUR called "Ports". Compatibility: All the programs you listed except coreutils work great on FreeBSD. Changing the coreutils would be ruining the whole point of FreeBSD (it would add incompatibility and made operating system documentation useless). Learning: FreeBSD is much much much better documented than Linux. It comes with an official guidebook that teaches you everything from the shell, kernel, init system, installing software, and more. Since every part of the system is maintained by the same group of people the documentation is much clearer and the system components feel very well integrated with eachother. It's also a much simpler system that most Linux distributions so it's easier to understand as a whole. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Familiar_Ad3884 · 2021-08-14 00:22 Why not you try ghostbsd. If it work for you then freebsd will be easier to use later on. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Agreeable-Solid7212 · 2021-08-14 00:23 Thanks for this comprehensive response. One more question: How long does the install take compared to... Gentoo? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Agreeable-Solid7212 · 2021-08-14 00:25 Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't like Desktop Environments. I prefer something like X/DWM ---------------------------------------------------------------------- aue_sum · 2021-08-14 00:26 Not long at all. It comes with a guided installer that guides you though the entire process and can get you a usable OS in < 20 minutes (although it doesn't set up Xorg for you). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- aue_sum · 2021-08-14 00:29 I'd suggest you start out by reading the handbook, also don't be afraid to ask here on reddit or on the FreeBSD forum if you have any questions. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Agreeable-Solid7212 · 2021-08-14 00:31 How easy is it to swap one component of the OS out for another? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2021-08-14 00:42 Security: Security is pretty good. I've never had any issues with it. Of course, OpenBSD is more secure, but FreeBSD is more focused on performance and general use than OpenBSD. ​ Package Management: We have the pkg package manager for binary packages and ports for source based packages. ​ Compatibility: These all work well on FreeBSD, but Brave isn't officially supported. You would have to install it another way by using something like [this](https://github.com/mrclksr/linux-browser- installer). ​ Learning: I think you will learn a good amount from FreeBSD. FreeBSD has excellent learning resources like the handbook or their really good man pages. You will also learn to use a more traditional Unix operating system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2021-08-14 00:49 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rdcldrmr · 2021-08-14 00:52 > What is security like? I hear from FreeBSD website that it is very secure when being written This is [provably false](https://vez.mrsk.me/freebsd-defaults.html). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- fifthecho · 2021-08-14 01:40 Not easy at all. The BSDs ship releases as a cohesive whole. Swapping out one core part for another really isn’t a thing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2021-08-14 01:42 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- scratchifoo · 2021-08-14 01:56 If you took the time to learn and use Gentoo; use it as a desktop/workstation and keep it properly updated and running with no issues...then you'll feel right at home with FreeBSD :) It has its differences of course, but from a learning curve perspective, it shouldn't take you long to get comfortable with it. At least thats been my experience as a Gentoo user for about 15 years and having started using freebsd on some servers and two laptops the last 5 years or so. As others mentioned, FreeBSD has great documentation, and i've found many helpful articles on the web when searching for solutions to issues I ran into; the community is great and people in #freebsd on liberachat irc are very helpful. Enjoy! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- samplerate · 2021-08-14 02:09 Believe me, this is overkill for most of the people. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Gornergy · 2021-08-14 02:15 * Security No real comments. There are hardening options in the installer. AFAIK, it's generally safe to just turn them all on. The manual explains them. Security is still up to you, but it doesn't run any server software or have open ports unless you tell it to. So, there's that. * Package Managment Either. You're not supposed to mix them. * Compatibility neovim, python, clang, nnn, and fish all exist. No real experience with the others on FreeBSD. There are differences between the default BSD userland and GNUtools....some of the command line switches are different. That is actually kind of annoying. My servers are mostly FreeBSD, and work's are mostly RHEL. It catches me out sometimes. * Learning It's different. There are a good number of thing that FreeBSD still does "the old way" because there wasn't really a reason to change. Compared to a stage 2 Gentoo install, FreeBSD is pretty easy. If you're comfortable with the systemd way of doing things, the init system is going to be quite different. IMHO, at least for my purposes, I prefer it because I find it simpler. That being said, there are a lot of things on modern Linux that kind of just work that I haven't done on FreeBSD. Like WiFi. I have no idea how to do it on FreeBSD...I assume it's ifconfig and wpa_supplicant called from /etc/rc.conf, but I don't know that. All my FreeBSD machines are wired or virtual (and wired). If you're interested, you can learn a lot about storage in a more natural way with FreeBSD. ZFS is just easier than mdraid + lvm + whatever else it takes. Administration is also faster, and IME it's easier to fix. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- meatmechdriver · 2021-08-14 02:21 I would say comprehensive manpages, especially for the kernel facilities. There are also a number of books and papers included in /usr/share that are good reading material. You also have Kirk McKusick’s design and architecture book available to purchase, which is an invaluable resource if you are wanting to understand the system more or study operating systems. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- meatmechdriver · 2021-08-14 02:23 Warrants being said - pf and ipfw firewalls are light years ahead of iptables and ipchains. Not least of all because they have a grammar instead of incoherent flags. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- celestrion · 2021-08-14 02:41 Sure. 1. The [FreeBSD Handbook](https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/) is akin to what the [Linux Documentation Project](https://tldp.org/) tried to do, except that it's still updated. It's also maintained as part of the OS, rather than under the nebulous banner of being a "community effort." 2. The difference quality of the manual pages is striking. Take a look at [dd as part of coreutils](https://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man1/dd.1.html) versus [dd on FreeBSD](https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?dd); or, look at [shutdown on Linux](https://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man8/shutdown.8.html) versus [shutdown on FreeBSD](https://www.f reebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=shutdown&apropos=0&sektion=8). 3. Manual pages for device drivers exist. While Linux has some manual pages for generic drivers, like the [SCSI disk interface](https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man4/sd.4.html), they tend to be horrendously out-of-date and contain little in the way of useful information (why should the disk driver manual be describing the platform-specific "BIOS" assumptions and talk about the partitioning scheme from a 40-year 16-bit OS?); you're expected to read the kernel source. Compare that to the [da manual page on FreeBSD](https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?da). On FreeBSD, if you have, for instance, an LSI second-generation SAS card, there's [a manual page for that](https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?mps), describing configuration options and supported cards. 4. The kernel itself has usable documentation. The [entirety of manual section 9](https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=intro&apro pos=0&sektion=9) describes the kernel APIs in great detail. On Linux, this is a collection of header-file comments and text files in the kernel source. This is all available from the terminal. It doesn't have to be hunted down in web fora, on IRC, or via a URL given in the man page. It's all in man format, which can be dumped and grepped--as opposed to the default GNU Texinfo interface. If the machine that's down is your router (or doesn't have a web browser), this matters a lot. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2021-08-14 03:14 Hey there, u/Agreeable-Solid7212, brand new FreeBSD user here. Got my desktop environment running last night after fiddling with it for a couple days. I'll probably never go back to Windows or Linux. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2021-08-14 03:29 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- aue_sum · 2021-08-14 03:50 Not easy at all. BSDs often don't even include their system programs as packages because they are not meant to be changed. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- beowuff · 2021-08-14 04:26 Just FYI for wireless, I have a t430 that was hardwired for networking. I installed the networkmgr, originally from Ghost BSD, clicked on “enable wireless” and it showed me a list of ssids to connect to. Very simple and easy to use if your in a GUI. https://www.freshports.org/net-mgmt/networkmgr/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- celestrion · 2021-08-14 04:30 > Kernal and driver documentation is something I haven't considered before since I'm not a developer and nor would I know the first thing about it. You don't need to be a developer to benefit from it. Configuration options are documented there in case your hardware doesn't behave as expected with the default settings. > Coreutils man pages being more sparse doesn't seem like an automatic negative to me as long as I can get the useful info I need out of it at glance. It's easy to overlook the "examples" section at the bottom of the `dd` manual page on FreeBSD. That's a common thing on FreeBSD and almost unheard-of on Linux. The "sparseness" on Linux trades away the fastest way to get started, especially in the case of commands like `tee` or `script` that have "gotchas" in their invocations. > I quite like "community effort" documentation with the Arch Linux Wiki being the most prominent that comes to mind. You're welcome to it. How much fun is it to browse if you've broken your network connection, or stuck at in "emergency mode" because `systemd` thought some vital service didn't come ready? Having the necessary docs on the box is a tremendous boon, and hasn't prevented wiki, forum, and mailing list activity from addressing other concerns. > so many commonalities between them, guides and solutions posted by users None of which is authoritative. If there's a mistake in a FreeBSD manual page, it's bug-worthy. If some forum poster gets it wrong, it's just wasted time. > RedHat System Administrator’s Guide is another source of documentation Yeah, it's great for people who run RHEL. > some parts are a bit outdated like ezjail which as been abandonware since 2015 It's only outdated in that most of us use different iocage or cbsd now. AFAIK, ezjail still works; the port is still maintained, and there are packages for -CURRENT. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- wheezybackports · 2021-08-14 04:45 I don't know who or why downvoted you, but this is some really good information. If you have anymore info like this contact me. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2021-08-14 05:02 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FriendNo8374 · 2021-08-14 05:53 But macos is FreeBSD 5 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -kilix- · 2021-08-14 06:35 Don't forget to add, that most of this is probably an overkill for a home desktop pc/home laptop. Not to mention that if you enable all of those security options, a lot of desktop functionality would be hampered, trust me, I tried it. For example, enabling W^X would render all programs written in Go inoperable. ASLR stops wine from working. Restricting interprocess communication (shared memory access) will make classic desktop environments not work properly. So yeah, there are some good points, but let's be honest, if you are a server admin, you wouldn't setup your production server according to some website and if you are a desktop user, those suggestions are mostly overkill. It's a good resource though and researching what all those options mean can lead down a pretty deep rabbit hole and if you read about all the options, you'll eventually learn a lot. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -kilix- · 2021-08-14 06:38 Hey, what are your impressions so far? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2021-08-14 06:44 It is a very versatile operating system. I'm sure you've already heard about its extensive list of security features but it's also extremely customizable. You get to pick the desktop environment and if you want to switch you can always replace it with one that meets your needs. It's capable. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- achauv1 · 2021-08-14 07:08 Network IO was slower with FreeBSD than Linux last time I tried on a Raspi 4B. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DiedX · 2021-08-14 07:12 True, but still there are some choices made that can be done better. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vermaden · 2021-08-14 08:09 Check this: https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2020/09/07/quare-freebsd/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- realheffalump · 2021-08-14 08:15 Plus Mach ---------------------------------------------------------------------- xooken · 2021-08-14 08:27 Ehhh not really I think the common point of "macOS is FreeBSD" is something us FreeBSDers tell ourselves to ease the pain of the desktop experience lol. I love FreeBSD, but my God is it rough to set up to be a daily driver. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FriendNo8374 · 2021-08-14 10:03 Of course. FreeBSD is there for POSIX, Mach is the real base. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FriendNo8374 · 2021-08-14 10:04 Couldn't agree more as someone who spent a lot of time to set it up as a daily laptop driver. The sweet spot is just Manjaro for most people. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2021-08-14 11:21 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- antidragon · 2021-08-14 12:12 iptables was deprecated a while back. These days we have nftables and eBPF is up and coming these days: https://www.zdnet.com/article/the- multifaceted-ebpf-linux-program-gets-its-own-foundation/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- cszintiyl · 2021-08-14 12:33 Darwin (macOS) is based on NextStep, which is based on BSD 4. FreeBSD is also based on BSD 4. So they are *related* but neither really derives from the other. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- frenchiephish · 2021-08-14 13:03 I mean if you really need them sysutils/coreutils is in the ports tree. The BSD userland tools are better in just about every way though. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FriendNo8374 · 2021-08-14 13:19 I see, I was misinformed. Why do you suppose there are downvotes ? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- shawn_webb · 2021-08-14 14:32 > enabling WX would render all programs written in Go inoperable golang works fine with `W^X`. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rdcldrmr · 2021-08-14 14:42 >Don't forget to add, that most of this is probably an overkill for a home desktop pc/home laptop. That might be true. Security is always a balance between locking things down and convenience of the end user. It's better (imo) to document as much as possible and let each user decide how far he wants to take it. > For example, enabling WX would render all programs written in Go inoperable. ASLR stops wine from working. Really? Having W^X enabled doesn't break any go programs I've tried on Linux or OpenBSD. Wine also still works on Linux with ASLR (even improved ASLR) as far as I can tell. What makes FreeBSD's specific implementations break so many things? > Restricting interprocess communication (shared memory access) will make classic desktop environments not work properly. Which setting is this? I'd like to test it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2021-08-14 14:46 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 2016tyler · 2021-08-14 15:07 I use gsed and gdate fairly frequently. They have options the BSD versions don't. For instance the -i option to gsed will modify a file in place instead of having to write to a temp file and then replacing the original. That is what the -i does actually, it just does it for you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2021-08-14 15:39 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2021-08-14 16:24 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- celestrion · 2021-08-14 16:24 > If my internet connection breaks then it will almost certainly be a problem with my router or another peice of networking equipment so I don't think the on disk man pages is going to help much. Your router isn't a BSD or Linux box? Weird. > I've never heard of or experienced systemd arbitrary getting stuck in "emergency mode" so I'm not sure what you're referring to there. It seemed to happen with almost every point release during the earlier days of CentOS 7 and ZoL. The ZFS end of things is more stable, but I've still seen machines get into that state because Inifiniband or NVMeOF hiccuped at the wrong time during boot. Last week I saw a machine in that state because of some dependency loop through `libvirtd`, one of the ZFS services, and NFS that someone had introduced. The point being that the default configuration of a RHEL/CentOS box is to hide all the useful error messages while the box comes up, stall at the welcome screen for a minute, and then dump the sysadmin to a prompt where the only accessible documentation is the incomplete manual pages. Cases like this are when it's *really* helpful for that documentation to be decent, local, and not require a web browser. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Xerxero · 2021-08-14 17:55 ARM is not really optimized yet. So Linux on a rpb is usually faster. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2021-08-14 19:15 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2021-08-14 20:37 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2021-08-14 20:41 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- celestrion · 2021-08-14 21:33 > web GUI Okay, so you use a NAT appliance rather than a Linux or BSD system. That's fine. If usable man pages aren't meaningful to you, it's perfectly understandable why the claim of "better documentation" rings hollow. I can't prove to you that something is better if "better" implies "will specifically benefit my use case," rather than "facilitates other use cases and is possibly more robust." If you were to run either Linux or BSD as a router, you might appreciate the difference between the `pf.conf` manual page and the (far sparser) `iptables` one. > I don't see how the local on disk base system man pages is going to help there. Your upstream router doesn't have to be broken for you to not have Internet access (or access to a graphical web browser) on the downed system. A RHEL system in "emergency mode" isn't going to bring up X so you can run a web browser to check forums. And, yes, you could use a web browser on another system. If an operating system seems "complete" to you when you need another computer to figure out how to rescue a downed one, no amount of discussion is going to make the BSD way seem meaningful. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- moon-chilled · 2021-08-14 23:11 'Sponge' is a better (more orthogonal) solution to the same problem. `sed whatever < file | sponge file` ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mirror176 · 2021-08-14 23:43 Can you clarify? -i and -I are present in sed(1) on my FreeBSD 13.0-STABLE with option of whether or not to use a temporary file (-I covers the part about documenting no extension=in place edit and -i refers the user to it). If it is not doing that, I'd say its either a program or documentation bug. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 2016tyler · 2021-08-14 23:56 I just booted 11, 12, and 13. That is right. Maybe I am thinking something else? I'm not logging into my work machines to look. Good catch. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- antidragon · 2021-08-15 00:02 In which ways is nftables worse than iptables? I can only speak from my experience and once I'd ported my firewalls across - everything was much better and simpler for me. eBPF seems to do a lot more than pfil, hence why some people seem to be looking to add bits of it to FreeBSD: https://wiki.freebsd.org/SummerOfCode2020Projects/eBPFXDPHooks There's a bunch of documentation and links at: - https://ebpf.io/what-is-ebpf/ - https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/bpf/index.html - https://docs.cilium.io/en/latest/bpf/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mirror176 · 2021-08-15 01:07 Security: 'Maybe' benefits of smaller attack vector? All systems have vulnerabilities whether part of the OS or 3rd party programs that are installed. It is a question of if an issue is found and would said issue impact your system as you configure it. Some OS security features on different systems are able to stop an attack, unless it is changed; if the attack vector isn't closed off then you have to decide if making it harder for someone determined is what you want to stop or just the random 'quick try'. It sounds like 'security through obscurity' as that happens which I consider a way to slow attackers but not stop them. Best a user would gain in my opinion is if they learn what an OS offers for security vs any other choice and research how said security is implemented and try to as a programmer either break the security or run legit code that breaks as a result of the security; either case can then help decide if it is of benefit to do so. Package management: Few things are officially released for FreeBSD, let alone with packages from said source; FreeBSD project releases packages of many programs. Defaults to quarterly produced packages + more frequent if addressing security issues. A more frequently produced branch is also available to help keep you with more recent creations as the ports tree changes. You can also compile the OS and any additional programs from source; the ports tree contains the instructions to make many third party programs build properly with all of their dependencies and is what the official packages are built from. The "don't mix packages and ports" discussion comes from concerns of changing how you build packages vs how others have done it; some programs have compile time options that change what the program is and that can change what can be built off of it and how it will interconnect. Easy answer is to not mix them, but if you pay attention to what you built, and if you can rebuild what you built as changes happen you would be fine. If you change how something is built then things that depend on it may need to be built too or you may need to switch your custom build out for the official build for official builds of dependent packages to work out. Compatibility: Linux binaries do not natively work if not on Linux; FreeBSD has an application binary interface to work through that. In my experience, not every Linux binary immediately and easily works on FreeBSD though I haven't needed/used that intentionally in a while. Many things available in source code form will work on FreeBSD as native FreeBSD native binaries. To see what is available in either form, either browse the ports tree or look around on [freshports.org](https://freshports.org) . If I recall, Brave isn't ported to FreeBSD yet though people have used the Linux copy successfully even including playing DRM protected content such as Netflix. I never migrated from Firefox to Chrome when my friends did as their reasons for suggesting I should switch I was able to show as anything from irrelevant to untrue. I would still use ublock-origin with Brave after I did some quick tests when my old boss introduced me to it (and my Firefox + ublock-origin easily calmed down his hype of Brave + built in blocking when we sat together and did some basic A-B comparisons together). The next apps you list up to clang you should likely be fine with and I have no experience to relate on your remaining programs. Learning: I put Linux on my desktop in 2002 and replaced it with FreeBSD in 2004. When people want to learn Linux or have issues where it is relevant, I and my Linux friends point them to the FreeBSD handbook. No the FreeBSD documentation is not perfect due to parts being out of date or having to leave it to go to other documentation for more thorough details, but its meant to be a book sized book and not the encyclopedia sized book I hope for. I found various things worked better and easier to deal with as I transitioned while at the same time some things could have been a no-go due to some nonported programs and such. I have been able to make progress learning how to port software to it due to both documentation (porters handbook) and the ports tree is a whole load of examples and previously implemented fixes which I felt I was winging it on Linux to even get started with. Still feel like just a user but putting in more time now to get back into programming like I was years ago. "Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System" is a good book to get an understanding of how the operating system itself works and why without requiring reading the lines of code throughout to do so. Otherwise becomes a question of what you would like to learn for what resources are available to get started in doing so. You can always use a VM to try FreeBSD or other systems to find what suits your desires best. As it is most important to you, what are you trying to learn so we can help fill in relevant details that may set your path. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mirror176 · 2021-08-15 01:29 And I'm not saying the features work or not; a truss run actually looks to me like it goes to a temp file and the temp file replaces the original and if a extension is given the original is renamed to it before the write. Not sure if my truss reading of temp file is an actual filesystem file vs how its data is tracked in RAM pre- diskwrite. These OS differences feel silly at times though in any case like where if I recall killall will respond completely differently on FreeBSD where I would kill all of a process of a given name vs Solaris where I think the same command would kill everything from what I heard. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2021-08-15 07:49 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -kilix- · 2021-08-15 14:18 These go programs do not work properly for me with W\^X: fzf, gofmt, rclone (at least they didn't when I tried last time, I have them all uninstalled right now, I may try them again if you insist, it's not like it takes 45mins to install and try them) I don't know what makes them break it, but yeah. Even setting elfctl WXNEEDED does not work (or didn't 3 months ago). as for interprocess communication restrictions, try these and see how it works for you: * security.bsd.unprivileged\_read\_msgbuf=0 * security.bsd.see\_other\_gids=0 * security.bsd.see\_other\_uids=0 * security.bsd.hardlink\_check\_uid=1 * security.bsd.stack\_guard\_page=1 As for wine, now you got me, I tried it and it works, I launched Deus Ex with no problems with every security-related sysctl (except for W\^X, that does not work) turned on. I even have a small text file with all the sysctl stuff I had to turn off to make it run before, now apparently, it works with no sysctl tweaks. Something might have changed in FreeBSD, which is good and we have more functionality with more security, which is good. I don't play games (it's like I run wine once in two months for a few hours), so I might have been a bit behind.