@cmccullough

Good luck! A lot has changed, but at the same time, most is still the same.

#BSD #FreeBSD

I've been spending most of this morning working on my new FreeBSD server. I think the last time I worked with a BSD was 10 years ago? So much has changed. I have a lot to learn.

#BSD #FreeBSD

@_tinfoil_hat

Well, it's running #FreeBSD now, #Debian before. Mostly just tooting with @tut, shell scripting, reading ePUBs and PDFs, and light web browsing.

Exactly one year ago, on 30th December 2024, I laid the foundation of FediMeteo.

I took a VM, installed FreeBSD, and set up the first jail to support Italy. The goal was to create a tool for my own use, support a few countries, and announce it.

Unexpectedly, the enthusiasm was incredible. That pushed me to keep going, support more countries and cities, and turn it into what it is today.

FediMeteo now supports 38 countries and 2,937 cities, with more than 7,700 followers in the Fediverse alone, not counting the many people who follow via RSS feeds or visit the web pages.

If you are curious to read the story and some technical details, you can find it here:
https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/02/26/fedimeteo-how-a-tiny-freebsd-vps-became-a-global-weather-service-for-thousands/

Today is also Tuesday, a #ThankYouTuesday, so I want to say thanks to:

* OpenMeteo - @openmeteo - for providing accurate, high quality data, without which FediMeteo would be far less useful

* @grunfink - creator of snac, who made all of this possible using very few resources, on a 4 euro per month VM

* FreeBSD, which thanks to the efficiency of the OS and its jail implementation made it possible to run this service in a stable and efficient way with minimal effort

* FediFollows - @FediFollows - that periodically spreads the word about cities, countries, and the enthusiasm around the project

*All of you*, who suggested, encouraged, corrected, and celebrated this project

And forward toward supporting more countries and other interesting features already in the works.

Happy birthday, FediMeteo! 🎉

#FediMeteo #HappyBirthday #Meteo #Weather #FreeBSD #snac #snac2 #OpenMeteo #Fediverse

@rl_dane I empathize completely. #Documentation is one area where #Linux falls behind #FreeBSD by several orders of magnitude.

I love #Debian. It's my favorite OS but oh my gods the documentation is, at best, an afterthought. And yes, other distros are not that much better.

It's actually *the* reason why I've been using FreeBSD more and taking the time to learn it.

Troubleshooting on #Linux:

You try something new, and it probably works without having to do anything.
If it doesn't work, you enter into an eldritch horror of complexity and incomplete/conflicting documentation. You give up and just hope that the next version of Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora handles "X" automatically, because you just can't be arsed anymore.

Troubleshooting on #FreeBSD:

You try something new, and it probably doesn't work out of the box.
You fire up the handbook PDF, read through the two pages of pertinent documentation, install a pkg or two, tweak a config file, and bob's your uncle.

Linux bretheren, it need not be like this. It didn't use to be like this. We used to have documentation. HOWTOs. Now they're all obsolete because of needless drastic changes, politics, and empire-building.

*sigh*

"Too many #ThinkPads???"

I don't even know what that means!

#Linux #FreeBSD #OpenBSD

Alt...

Foreground; Thinkpad X260 (FreeBSD) with a couple Analog Nowhere stickers. Background: X390 Yoga (Fedora KDE for now, no stickers) on top of an X200t (OpenBSD) with only a UT Dallas sticker visible.

@justine

Heya! I've been daily-driving it for nearly a month on my main at-home laptop (Thinkpad X260).

It's pretty great! ZFS is darn near bulletproof, and after some initial challenges of getting wifi and GUI configured, it was pretty "boring"... until I tried upgrading to 15.0, lol

Figured out how to roll back to 14.3, and I'm now waiting for 15.1 before I try again (although I believe the issues I had have now been resolved, but I'm still going to wait ;)

Package availability is amazing (better than Debian in some cases!), and most things compile without any issues, although some things that don't have very well-written Makefiles are iffy and I got stuck.

Been having fun with Dosbox-X, playing games I loved 20-30 years ago. I couldn't get the Linux version of Kerbal Space Program to run under compat_linux, but I didn't really expect it to.

#OpenBSD definitely gets my vote for noob-friendly #BSD, since it has X11 in the base install, and it configures itself, but I now have sway (Wayland) running under #FreeBSD just as if I were still on Linux, so as long as someone is willing to skim through the pertinent parts of the handbook, it's a great OS.

The only downsides to #FreeBSD vs. Linux is that S3 resume takes a little longer (8 seconds instead of 1-3 seconds), and I have occasional hiccups, which I'm sometimes not able to recover from. Loading some websites in Firefox will make everything hang for several seconds at times (even though I'm launching Firefox via nice (1)), and there are some times that sway never quite recovers from S3 suspend, although that's rare. The good thing is that sometimes it will catch the power button and shut down cleanly, and even when it doesn't, #ZFS is so bulletproof that it just takes it all in stride.

There are occasional Linuxisms that feel a bit odd, like some of my packages (the swaync notification system and the duckstation console emulator are notable examples) require #pulseaudio of all things, which sometimes eats up my CPU. That's... really weird to me. I liked how minimal sndio on OpenBSD is.

Both major BSDs have very sane syntax for the config file that governs Wifi access points, and that's very refreshing to me after using a TUI to join networks on #Debian (although it's definitely possible to uninstall #NetworkManager on Debian and use the native interface config files, but they're not as nice/simple as the BSDs').

One really fun (if a bit cartoonish) way of comparing the BSD philosophy to the Linux philosophy is to look at doas vs sudo, specifically man doas.conf, then man sudoers.

The manpage for the sudoers file is pretty long and convoluted, as is the syntax for the file itself. doas.conf is super brief and to-the-point, and its manpage is pretty concise.

I think once they add the setup tool for GUIs to the FreeBSD setup wizard, that will be a real game-changer.

P.S., I haven't really daily-driven OpenBSD in a while, but I'm planning on getting an adapter so I can power my OpenBSD Thinkpad X200t off of a power bank, instead of the very dodgy third-party battery, so I can experiment with OpenBSD some more. I know the latest version has fixed the problems I was having with Emoji support, so I think that OS deserves another look. With the little bit of experimentation I've done in the last week, I've been pleasantly surprised with even Firefox' performance on that little Core 2 Duo. The only bummer about OpenBSD to me is the lack of ZFS or any other modern filesystem, so the occasional power losses or hang-ups become much more dangerous.

Edit: minor clarifications

If BASIC were to reinvent itself for the modern era, not as a nostalgia exercise, what would it look like? What niche would it fill? Could it ever be a proper sysadmin tool like it was in the 8 and 16 bit eras? #programming #linux #windows #freebsd #openbsd #sysadmin #basic

Playing the game I enjoyed playing 30 years ago...

https://archive.org/details/msdos_Begin_-_A_Tactical_Starship_Simulation_1989

#DOS #DOSGaming #FreeBSD #FreeBSDGaming #BSD #BSDGaming #RunBSD #RetroGaming #swaywm #LossyPNG #DOSBox #DosBoxX

Alt...

The conclusion screen of Begin 1.65 by Clockwork Software (1989) Running under DOSBox X on FreeBSD on my Thinkpad x265 Text: From: Starfleet Command Subject: Tactical Starship Simulation. After careful consideration of the results of this simulation, we believe you possess an aptitude for tactics. Survivors Reported: Franklen: 500 Ketoi: 200 Dragon: (destroyed)

Here is a small tip: to easily configure your installed FreeBSD, use the `bsdconfig` command as the root user. A lot of FreeBSD users or developers (including some IT/sysadmin folks) don't know this, but you can use `bsdconfig` to set up many system configuration settings, both for new systems and for changing settings on existing systems.

#unix #tips #freebsd #sysadmin

Alt...

A screenshot of bsdconfig(8) command running on my FreeBSD machine.

#^https://reviews.freebsd.org/D54176

This leaves only the LTS versions for now, but I think it's worth also keeping any other still maintained version available. For the moment the latest available version (25) just happens to be an LTS version as well :)

Please let me know what you think!

If there's any objections from the community I'd love to hear about it.

The work I do on OpenJDK for FreeBSD is sponsored by the @FreeBSD Foundation.

#FreeBSD #OpenJDK #java #programming #ports

@SrRochardBunson @ajroach42 @stefano

The BSDs are *awesome* operating systems. #FreeBSD is a high performance general purpose OS. It is modern #Unix. #NetBSD is for portability, it supports nearly every CPU architecture under the sun. #OpenBSD is security-focused. #GhostBSD is a FreeBSD fork focused on the desktop.

Most of my experience is with FreeBSD, which I will enthusiastically share. It is unquestionably a solid server OS. As a desktop OS, it works quite well. It definitely does not feel like "Linux from 2004." The major desktop environments like #KDE #GNOME #XFCE are all supported and #nvidia releases drivers for the OS too. Modern hardware is supported. For *cutting edge hardware*, #Linux may be the better bet here. It's a little slower to adopt cutting edge gear because it is focused on stability and elegant solutions, not trend-chasing.

FreeBSD is an excellent OS to learn. It runs beautifully and it's more coherent and better designed. Documentation is *solid*.

Edit: Corrected errors. GhostBSD, not DragonflyBSD. Thanks @aru

I had a summer romance with #NixOS but it's back to good ol' #Debian for this boy.

If I was a little bit more programmer than I am, or if I was better at taking and keeping notes, I might have pushed through, because there's definitely a fairly doable way of making whatever you need to happen, happen, and I do have enough of a programmer mindset that it was mostly fun.

But, I already know how to do all that stuff on just about any normal Linux system, and I got a bit tired of needing to figure out the Nix way when I just wanna install this thing with a quirk or two and use it.

Respectfully, also, the community seems to still have a fairly debilitating Nazi problem. The old wiki with its entries on "the woke invasion" and such turns up far too often in search engines and I didn't get that straight for quite a bit longer than it should've taken for me to get the message.

The package search, likewise, is an absolute mess, frequently having many different packages with competing names, and no sense of which one is the one that you, an ignorant punter, should install, if you just want the basic thing so you can write or spreadsheet or whatever

In a sense, when #FreeBSD folks talk about loving the opinionated nature of it, and likewise disliking the anarchic nature of Linux, NixOS is more or less the perfect illustration of what they're talking about.

I know nothing about the actual dev team, and I know a fairly bad thing about their governing board, so I'm not sure if there's a way to get NixOS into more mainstream use.

I'm setting my music studio up again after a very long time not using it right now cause I've got some tunes to record over winter, and I will probably keep using NixOS, or possibly just Nix on Debian, for the studio's computer. This kind of thing is where Nix probably has a bright future, because of how you can muck around with the system as much as you want, and if you hose it you can just boot to the previous generation. That's exactly what you need on a multimedia application.

The issue below was caused because this idiot aka me forgot to rebuild snac under FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE so the compatibility package is not required.

WOW ! The only jail I had a problem with was my #snac jail. It refused to run up quoting this error ld-elf.so.1: Shared object "libcrypto.so.30" not found, required by "snac"
I found a fix which is you have to install compat14x-amd compatibility files so stuff that relies on older libs can still run.
#FreeBSD

After the upgrade:

rld@Intrepid:~$ doas ifconfig wlan0 up
ifconfig: interface wlan0 does not exist
rld@Intrepid:~$ sysctl net.wlan.devices
net.wlan.devices:

Well, poop. #FreeBSD #14 #upgrade
Now what? XD

LOOK EVERYBODY,

It's a #sassy #hellthread that I took NO PART IN!

IT HAPPENS!!! SOMETIMES!?!?

https://mastodon.social/@murena/115656237852149287

P.S., slightly tempted to jump in, but now I can't because I wrote this. lol

#deltachat #xmpp #murena #debian #freebsd #SassyGrumpyPeople #NotMyFault

When you don't have a whole morning to allocate to installing #FreeBSD just to test the #BSD build of #Emulsion, you just use #NomadBSD in #QEMU 😎

Alt...

NomadBSD

The FreeBSD 15.0-R magnet torrents are now available:
https://wiki.freebsd.org/Torrents

Remember to that when they're first available, DHT takes a while to populate.

#FreeBSD #FreeBSD15

#Emulsion now builds for #freeBSD

Alt...

#Emulsion now builds for #freeBSD

@kabel42

Yeah, #FreeBSD is VERY #Linux-from-25-years-ago feeling. ;)

In some bad ways, but in many, many good ways.

I keep having to remind myself that this #FreeBSD laptop isn't running Linux.

Other than a few very minor issues, it JUST WORKS. After all of the work (it wasn't even hard, really) of setting it up and customizing a couple of my scripts to run on FreeBSD, the OS does its most important job: disappearing.

This is pretty cool. Give yourselves a pat on the back, #FreeBSD devs. Things are really getting better.

Disclaimer: Just because I haven't encountered any deal-breakers doesn't mean that you won't. Always do your due diligence and try it out on a non-critical machine, first. Also, using an old #Thinkpad (instead of a brand new whatever) is usually the best advice for stuff like this ;)

@cienmilojos

I'm not saying I'd stick with it, because I like i3wm/sway too much, but I gotta say that the stock #NetBSD GUI/X11 setup is the coolest/cleanest/slickest of the #BSD OSes I've tried so far. :D

#OpenBSD's is fine, but a little too colorful. #FreeBSD of course, doesn't have a stock/default GUI... yet!

Haven't tried #DragonflyBSD yet.

#POLL Results:

44 people are in deep denial about their existential dread, and should consult a counselor and read #Kierkegaard immediately 😁
139 people like teh pretty tings, and can't be bothered
188 people have started down the path towards enlightment
354 people are cool_kids
92 people are very_cool_kids
55 people laugh at your inadequate security model
27 people can run a server on a bit of bailing wire and a microcontroller from 1987 — fear them.
26 people are keeping Gassée's dream alive, and are plenny cool in my book
4 people are totally cool, and totally in a class by themselves
and 21 people kinda scare me, but I'd like to know more. 🤣

#humor #humour #houmor #houmour

#Windows #MacOS #Linux #CommandLine #BSD #RunBSD #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #Haiku #HaikuOS #BeOS #Amiga #Workbench #AROS #AmigaOS #Plan9 #9Front #TempleOS

P.S., wherever you find yourself, you're awesome. This is all for fun.

@pythno also, because the argument has not yet arisen:

― don't call FreeBSD a bistro.

@rl_dane

#FreeBSD #bistro

WHAT! #FreeBSD is catching up to #OpenBSD!!!
#Poll #LiveTooting

Edit: It overtook it!!! 🤯

#hashtags for exposure:

#windows #MacOS #Linux #BSD #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #Haiku #HaikuOS #BeOS #Amiga #Workbench #AROS #TempleOS #Boost #BoostsAppreciated #BoostPlease #PleaseBoost

Ok, sorry for all that. 😂

Created a script to insert #wifi signal quality (RSSI) information to i3status output for #i3wm or #swaywm on #FreeBSD:

https://codeberg.org/rldane/scripts/src/branch/main/fbsdstatus

Just change "i3status" in your #i3 or #sway config to point to this script instead. Presto! ;)

I'd rather present a percentage figure, as it's more visually concise, but I can't seem to find a clear answer on what an acceptable RSSI range the 0 and 100% figures should be.

A most handy binding for #swaywm on #FreeBSD :

bindsym $mod+shift+h exec zathura --fork /usr/local/share/doc/freebsd/en/books/handbook/handbook_en.pdf &

@golemwire

#SuperEasyBarelyAnInconvenience

I mean, it's not any harder than getting X11 going. Everything seems to work fine. :D
The handbook lays it out very easily. Just had to install the drm drivers, enable the kernel module, maybe one or two more steps I can't remember, and bob's your uncle! ;)

#FreeBSD #FastFetch #SwayWM #rice??? #LossyPNG

Alt...

A screenshot of a sway session on freebsd with three windows open and tiled top-left is the window composing this toot, top right is grimshot making this screenshot, and on the right side is the output of fastfetch Background is a photo of the earth from space, and the swaybar shows a question mark for the wireless strength indicator because that seems to not be implemented for this OS. XD Colors are reduced to 16 total to save space with a negligible loss in fidelity (#LossyPNG)

@golemwire

> Nice. (Two batteries? What kind of computer is it?)

It's a #thinkpad X260. They went from external-only batteries, to hybrid internal/external, to now internal-only batteries. I have one of each: x200, x260, x390, respecively. XD

> Cool to hear. I always heard that #Wayland was architected in a Linux-specific way (though I don't know how that could be, for a window protocol).

It was, sadly. #FreeBSD is the most linux-ish of the three major BSDs, so it got wayland support first. I think it's experimental on #OpenBSD, and not yet working on #NetBSD, last I heard.

Folks who say stuff like, "Hey, why doesn't NetBSD have Wayland working yet???" really frustrate the crap out of me. It's a teensy project with an annual budget of like $50k. It's not your mega kernel that's funded by the pocket money of trillion dollar gigacorps, shut up.

> I'd imagine most graphical BSD software is designed for X11. Did you have to compile e.g. foot from source? ;)

No, foot's a package. Just install and go. ;)
(At least on FreeBSD. I haven't tried Wayland on OpenBSD yet)

@alatartheblue @alecsargent

Fortunately, Signal's back in the #FreeBSD repos (I guess they got Electron to build again), so I rushed to install it, and it's working perfectly... wellll... perfectly for Signal/Electron. XD

Thinking of going back to #swaywm on all of my personal machines. After setting up my #FreeBSD laptop, whenever I open up Plasma on my other laptop and see all the RAM usage, I just think, "What in the world is all this for?"

Same goes for #Signal. The idea that a chat app needs a gig of RAM to run (even though I can definitely spare it) is just kind of offensive and stupid to me.

@jbz

I relate to the gripes about command line flags, but not at all about the community.
At least on the #Fediverse, the #FreeBSD community has been wonderful. The #BSD community overall has been absolutely great.

I mean, just look at the number of people who only run BSD on servers, and run either windows or more likely macOS on their personal machines. I've never seen any of them derided or gatekept, even when I myself felt like slipping in a little "why ain't'cha dogfooding it, brah?" comment here or there. 😅

A brief look at FreeBSD // Yorick Peterse

https://yorickpeterse.com/articles/a-brief-look-at-freebsd/

#freebsd #bsd #opensource

Been up the past three hours hacking around on #FreeBSD.

Loving this OS! XD

https://codeberg.org/rldane?tab=activity

(Hope you're back up and running soon, dear @Codeberg!)

So far, I'm really enjoying my #FreeBSD experience on this #Thinkpad.

I had to do a teensy bit of manual config to get a GUI working, but the handbook made it stupid-simple.

I also had to install a package to get full unicode support, but even that was #SuperEasyBarelyAnInconvenience.

The only niggling issues I can think of off the top of my head are how to get an accurate measurement of RAM usage*, getting Signal Desktop working again at some point, and how to delete and ol empty home directory that exists as a magic zfs mountpoint XD

* Ok, here's the thing with RAM usage:
vmstat says I have 5.1G free out of 8, so 2.9 GB used??
top says I have 305MiB active
Summing up all of the usage stats that ps provides says 834 MiB used (ps wwaux |awk 't+=$6 END {print t/1024}')
(Oh wait, top's active+inactive is really close to the ps number)
systat -vmstat says 605MiB used
freecolor says I have 5,799MiB used

soo... WHAT IS IT?!?

I think systat -vmstat is probably providing the most reliable data, but I don't know how to produce that info in a format that can be read in a script, unlike top, using top -bn 1

P.S. Ok, wifi speed is TERRIBLE, but it's good enough for now, and I know it's supposed to be getting better in the near future. Also, I haven't yet figured out how to get wifi link quality as a percentage yet.

@bradr

@mwl

Sadly, doesn't go into details on the parts I mentioned/require. It's a very high level overview and does mention the buffer cache, but that is all.

#FreeBSD

More precise measurements of #FreeBSD #S3 #Suspend times on my #Thinkpad X260:

wake to suspend:
Screen off by 5.4 seconds
Status LED starts slow-blinking by 6.6 seconds
(triggered by doas zzz, password not needed)

suspend to wake:
Screen on by 3.5 seconds
Screen responding to keystrokes by 10.2 seconds
(triggered by power button)

Will compare with #Linux on same hardware...

==============================

Ok, now using #Solus Linux KDE live USB:

wake to suspend (systemctl suspend):
Screen off and status LED change by just a touch over 1 second

suspend to wake (power button):
Screen on by 1.5 seconds
Screen responding to keystrokes by 2.2 seconds.

Ok, so still slower than Linux, but totally usable. 😂