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My 10 Minute Experience With PC-BSD 10.0

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  • My 10 Minute Experience With PC-BSD 10.0

    Phoronix: My 10 Minute Experience With PC-BSD 10.0

    With FreeBSD 10.0 having been released and the final release of the PC-BSD 10.0 coming this week, I decided to try out the PC-BSD 10.0-RC5 ahead of the final release. While I intended to run some benchmarks of FreeBSD/PC-BSD 10.0 against its predecessor and compared to Linux distributions, this initial PC-BSD 10.0 encounter was cut short after about ten minutes...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Haswell isn't currently supported by the Intel KMS code - it's a work-in-progress, but they need to update their DRM code first: https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics.

    It should be fine on Ivy Bridge and earlier intel graphics.

    Is there any chance you could be persuaded to give an AMD graphics card a test on PCBSD? It looks like radeonsi isn't supported yet, but r600g benchmarks (or even simple tests) would be interesting.

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    • #3
      If I install/try this, it will be because of the various incompatible Nvidia installers on Ubuntu, just a pain in the ass.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by mike4 View Post
        If I install/try this, it will be because of the various incompatible Nvidia installers on Ubuntu, just a pain in the ass.
        It's too hard for you to use repositories? What installers are you talking about?

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        • #5
          Why is PC-BSD still so slow?

          I am still curious about BSD, or even Solaris (OpenIndiana or whatever), but the last time I tried PC-BSD (v.7 I guess) it was sluggish and really not worth the switch from Windows for instance. On the same machine 3y-old machine Ubuntu was working perfectly well, so I never looked back again.

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          • #6
            In the article Michael mentioned dd'ing the image to an usb stick and then booting off it in efi mode. Michael what was the motherboard you used in the test? I had problems with dd'ing the image, the mobo just won't find the stick in the boot menu. I had to burn it to a DVD but even then I'd get hangs. I was forced to install it through legacy bios. I have an ASRock Fatal1ty killer motherboard. Thanks for your time.

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            • #7
              PCBSD needs more then 2GB of RAM and 2GHz of CPU to run. And that's the absolute minimum. When they made ZFS the default file system, PCBSD now needs way more that and this is all just to run fluxbox.

              The reason why PCBSD is so slow is because it is literally FreeBSD running KDE and other modern desktop environments. The FreeBSD wasn't designed to take that sort of load and it never will. Also, Systemd and Upstart out performs the BSD init by light years and it's kernel can only search and initiate drivers serially (unlike Linux which initiate all in parallel).

              I recommend not switching to PCBSD because it is so buggy, bloated and it has a lot of services turned on by default which coupled with the lack of ASLR, make it a serious security liability.

              I especially don't recommend switching to PCBSD 10.0 because of the tendency for the X.0 versions to be very very buggy.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by endman View Post
                PCBSD needs more then 2GB of RAM and 2GHz of CPU to run. And that's the absolute minimum. When they made ZFS the default file system, PCBSD now needs way more that and this is all just to run fluxbox.

                The reason why PCBSD is so slow is because it is literally FreeBSD running KDE and other modern desktop environments. The FreeBSD wasn't designed to take that sort of load and it never will. Also, Systemd and Upstart out performs the BSD init by light years and it's kernel can only search and initiate drivers serially (unlike Linux which initiate all in parallel).

                I recommend not switching to PCBSD because it is so buggy, bloated and it has a lot of services turned on by default which coupled with the lack of ASLR, make it a serious security liability.

                I especially don't recommend switching to PCBSD 10.0 because of the tendency for the X.0 versions to be very very buggy.
                1. If memory is a concern you can run FreeBSD with UFS instead of ZFS. I'm running PCBSD with KDE and I have firefox open and putty. All of that consumes 1.7Gb or ram. Here's the screenshot for it
                I checked what other distributions require for their installs and for example openSUSE, which is known for its well integrated KDE environment, recommends 2Gb. Here's the link http://en.opensuse.org/Hardware_requirements

                2. Services are turned on by default so that you have as positive out-of-the-box experience as possible. Users who are not fond of that can use the thorough documentation provided by PCBSD and FreeBSD to disable the services in question. If you do not want services enabled by default you can use ArchBSD. I'm not sure what is the status of the project but tip of the hat to the devs behind the project.

                3. I do not know why FreeBSD developers haven't adopted ASLR or an ASLR-type of security I'm not one of them to explain the reasons why but I'm sure there was much talk about it. ASLR first appeared in OpenBSD so I'm sure it would not constitute as big an effort to implement it as porting from somewhere else, Linux for example.

                To each his own, I chose PCBSD because of many amazing features ZFS, jails, bhyve etc. and the simplicity it offers to quickly install it with a DE of choice. I do not use it a server operating system, I use it as my desktop OS of choice. I have yet to find uses for the multitude of tools it offers but I found myself at home here.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by endman View Post
                  I recommend not switching to PCBSD because it is so buggy, bloated and it has a lot of services turned on by default which coupled with the lack of ASLR, make it a serious security liability.
                  Please don't use Debian, it turns on services by default. Actually, if you as user/admin of the system are not capable of turning of a service you don't need please don't run any OS and stop bothering us with your trolling. Don't you have another "article" to write on your hate spewing troll blog?

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by BSDude View Post
                    In the article Michael mentioned dd'ing the image to an usb stick and then booting off it in efi mode. Michael what was the motherboard you used in the test? I had problems with dd'ing the image, the mobo just won't find the stick in the boot menu. I had to burn it to a DVD but even then I'd get hangs. I was forced to install it through legacy bios. I have an ASRock Fatal1ty killer motherboard. Thanks for your time.
                    I planned to make some tests next week with BSD, but I have the same motherboard. Now I know what to expect.

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