Running The macOS-Inspired, FreeBSD-Powered helloSystem v0.8 On AMD Zen 4

[aht0]

On a lark I tried installing FreeBSD 13.1 today too... no further success, got it to boot (only in BIOS mode also, even though they claim EFI support) but could not get the su/sudo commands to work on any level. After 5 minutes it reminded me very much of Linux circa early 2000's... and I am very happy to not go back to the dark ages.

Pure massive skill issue. It's an OS in it's own right, more so than any Linux distro. You would not try using Windows like Linux, why tf are you trying it with BSD?

Do ncurses-install (easiest there is), switch EFI all sorts of CSM layers off & Custom keys on.

Then login and read up on offline manuals. Like somebody already mentioned, su can be done only when user is a member of "wheel" group.

If you think manuals are too big, grab a phone, open FreeBSD forums and search. It has even got "How to" section - which, generally would speed up solving your problems.

But coming from Linux and expecting things work same is just ignorant. Linux devs are suffering under extreme Not-Invented-Here syndrome and have re-made/designed stuff all too many times.. without it ever reaching out of Linux's sandbox.

Wanna use different OS, you first have to treat it as different and then learn the differences.

[zexelon]

Pure massive skill issue. It's an OS in it's own right, more so than any Linux distro. You would not try using Windows like Linux, why tf are you trying it with BSD?

Do ncurses-install (easiest there is), switch EFI all sorts of CSM layers off & Custom keys on.

Then login and read up on offline manuals. Like somebody already mentioned, su can be done only when user is a member of "wheel" group.

If you think manuals are too big, grab a phone, open FreeBSD forums and search. It has even got "How to" section - which, generally would speed up solving your problems.

But coming from Linux and expecting things work same is just ignorant. Linux devs are suffering under extreme Not-Invented-Here syndrome and have re-made/designed stuff all too many times.. without it ever reaching out of Linux's sandbox.

Wanna use different OS, you first have to treat it as different and then learn the differences.

First up, it was not ignorant at all. If you will note, the section you quoted was written in first person pros, it was an opinion. It is my opinion that I do not wish to return to the "dark ages." This in no way should imply that others who wish to challenge themselves should not have the choice to do so. I spent many nights working with the early versions of Gentoo. I would not trade the knowledge gained there for anything, but I have no desire or time to do it again.

On a different note, have you tried running Haiku? It is probably "half the OS" that FreeBSD is, but you can get it up and running and usable with far less effort. This is in no way a comparison of Haiku vs FreeBSD on a technical level, but rather on what it takes to get to a usable system and how quickly that can be achieved (for loose definitions of "usable system").

[aht0]

Again, it's not a Linux, nor Haiku.

It's a general-purpose OS you are supposed to set up as you'd happen to prefer. You'll get base-OS to begin with and build on that foundation.
It's in fact reverse compared to most Linux desktop distros where distributor would throw kitchen sink at you and you'd have remove/re-arrange stuff according to your preferences. Closest Linux analogues would be Slackware, Gentoo or Arch

Yeah, downside is, in BSD you need to know what you are doing to get anywhere fast but end result is cleaner OS with less extraneous bloat you'd never use. Btw, you can get desktop going in 15-30min, depending on the speed of your net.

[zexelon]

Again, it's not a Linux, nor Haiku.

It's a general-purpose OS you are supposed to set up as you'd happen to prefer. You'll get base-OS to begin with and build on that foundation.
It's in fact reverse compared to most Linux desktop distros where distributor would throw kitchen sink at you and you'd have remove/re-arrange stuff according to your preferences. Closest Linux analogues would be Slackware, Gentoo or Arch

Yeah, downside is, in BSD you need to know what you are doing to get anywhere fast but end result is cleaner OS with less extraneous bloat you'd never use. Btw, you can get desktop going in 15-30min, depending on the speed of your net.

While technically I could agree that FreeBSD is a "general purpose" OS, I think that is a huge stretch... Yes it can do a lot of "general" things... but it does none of them well except for a small subset of extremely specific server oriented features (ex. data storage). This is why its typically not used outside of a select couple of niches.

The whole point of my original post was to point out that its a massive time suck to try to set up and use any of the BSD's, especially if you want to use them in a general purpose way. Sure, it can be done with a ton of limitations... to the point that I would actually argue that FreeBSD (and BSD's in general) while it may be said to be "general purpose" cannot actually be used for most purposes. Its good at specific things, and may be designed to be general purpose but if you try to use it generally it will fall done fairly immediately.

Any way the initial post has nothing to do with the design or purpose of FreeBSD... it was purely around usability. As you said above "Btw, you can get desktop going in 15-30min..." that is a colossal waste of time... I can get a fully usable desktop system installed with either Linux (Pop_OS, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc.) or Windows up and running in 10-15 minutes, and that includes browser stack and office productivity groupware online. Heck within the 30 minutes I can have steam and entertainment online too! Something you simply cant do with FreeBSD.

[aht0]

Why such categorical statements lmao, when you are literally so fresh a noob in BSD as can be found?

FreeBSD ports have Steam. You could also run Ubuntu or Centos whole distro in a chroot if you want (I have done that for Netflix DRM most often). Cant see why I would not be able to run Steam from those either.

Btw, last I tried OpenSuse entire install took also roughly 30-40min from inital boot to final restart (done). Distros differ.

Windows install you are underestimating. Basically install may be fast 15min, fiddling later with settings and drivers will take from hours to a day. Finding best drivers, getting rid of telemetry, modifying some W7 drives and forcefeeding them without signature check (got older hw sound Card), install programs like office, games, fixing their settings,
list of things to do post-install in win is insane. And Im used most of them, except early NT (saw NT4 tho)

One thing text/ncursed installs are great for, is filtering people. They do well at keepin "me wants shiny installer" kinda folks away and later user lists clean of kids nattering at devs with their "cool ideas"

[zexelon]

Why such categorical statements lmao, when you are literally so fresh a noob in BSD as can be found?

FreeBSD ports have Steam. You could also run Ubuntu or Centos whole distro in a chroot if you want (I have done that for Netflix DRM most often). Cant see why I would not be able to run Steam from those either.

Btw, last I tried OpenSuse entire install took also roughly 30-40min from inital boot to final restart (done). Distros differ.

Windows install you are underestimating. Basically install may be fast 15min, fiddling later with settings and drivers will take from hours to a day. Finding best drivers, getting rid of telemetry, modifying some W7 drives and forcefeeding them without signature check (got older hw sound Card), install programs like office, games, fixing their settings,
list of things to do post-install in win is insane. And Im used most of them, except early NT (saw NT4 tho)

One thing text/ncursed installs are great for, is filtering people. They do well at keepin "me wants shiny installer" kinda folks away and later user lists clean of kids nattering at devs with their "cool ideas"

Your repeated attempts to make attack statements in your opening lines are bemusing.

I will 100% agree with you that text/ncursed installs are a good "people filter". Your argument wrt Windows is malformed though, you dont have to spend all that time "hacking the junk" out of windows to use it. It works generally fine with all that. Whether that junk should be there is a totally different discussion.

The point of the matter is that any "general purpose" OS should be trivial to install and come with a base standard of sane defaults. It should also work for "general purposes" something that FreeBSD cannot currently do. It can be cut and glued together with the Linux compatibility layers and if you have the exactly correct hardware setup along with the blessing of the computing deities you may be able to get it to boot and run for a while before some update wrecks havoc and you have to start all over.

If you enjoy this, thrive on this, or contribute to this, keep it up!

[aht0]

[QUOTE=zexelon]
Your repeated attempts to make attack statements in your opening lines are bemusing.
[/QOUTE]
Folksaying here: How the village treats the dog, so will dog treat the village.

Recall: you began with basically sneering attack statement, which you masqueraded as "your opinion"

After 5 minutes it reminded me very much of Linux circa early 2000's... and I am very happy to not go back to the dark ages.

Dont want to get hit be feces, dont start the fan nor throw shit into it. Do stupid things, win stupid prizes.
Forming "a definite opinion based on 5min of trying and then ranting about it" qualified you. You were even 'mild' version compared to characters like Volta or Pawlerson.

I will 100% agree with you that text/ncursed installs are a good "people filter".
Your argument wrt Windows is malformed though, you dont have to spend all that time "hacking the junk" out of windows to use it. It works generally fine with all that. Whether that junk should be there is a totally different discussion.

Different needs, higher standards and particular hardware.
For example I sorely hate telemetry, auto-added crap like Candy Crush Saga, various apps etc. I prefere to disable/remove that crap through various means. From Dism, registry to physically editing files/permissions. Thats religious practice after fucking crap games I had uninstalled kept coming back after updates.
I've got some older but good hw that does not get drivers for 10. Need to modify 7 and fucking Win2016 Server drivers, disable driver signature verification and force load them. One is Creative's sound card, other Intel multi-port server NIC that doesnt get W10 driver because its 'enterprise hw'.
Then I hate Win10 UI. Always gonna replace it with Classic Shell themed like W2000.
Then Software:Chromium, National ID Card software, AutoCad (I study CNC), LibreOffice, OBS Studio, MSI Afterburner, Radeon "pure" driver without AMD's bloat and telemetry, ReShade after GPU drivers, Steam and about 4 games (setting up of which can take hours), my kid's MineCraft (plus his account and dozen other small games he likes), VLC, Winamp (yeah it's still around).. you get my drift. Takes hours and hours.

The point of the matter is that any "general purpose" OS should be trivial to install and come with a base standard of sane defaults.

It does? Working-OTB-desktop is mandatory requirement for general purpose OS since when? Desktop is just one use-case of many, it's not requirement for most. File-, web- etc servers work just fine without desktop, firewall, router, WiFI AP work fine without desktop. So, when your use-case happens to require working desktop - then add it. Rest of the use cases can be done easily from console - config file and text editors (ee & vi) are in base OS. As to the "difficulty" of install, whats there to it? Boot from memstick or DVD, select about ten different options from ncurses dialog (unless you want to set up some weird non-standard hdd layout through console and vi), reboot, remove install media and boot fresh system. Old user might even have separate memstick with backed up conf files ready to be copied over into fresh system.

I think you are simply used with Linux's UI-driven config wizards which "manage" config files, sometimes, through multiple layers of frameworks and directly editing config files (if you can even find them because each distro would stuff them whereever) would be counter-productive with "configurators" writing your manual edits simply over had that happen with OpenSuse years a go).

In BSD, config files are relatively few, human readable and you can look at .example files or man for guidance. Take a look at PF config file, compare it against equivalent Linux firewall (raw) config - you'll see you can actually figure our whats firewall is supposed to do when it comes to PF.
Same shit from system services to whatever. You dont really need desktop for anything else than actual desktop use. Really! All OS's own config files are in /etc, user installed configs go to /usr/local/etc

It should also work for "general purposes" something that FreeBSD cannot currently do. It can be cut and glued together with the Linux compatibility layers and if you have the exactly correct hardware setup along with the blessing of the computing deities you may be able to get it to boot and run for a while before some update wrecks havoc and you have to start all over.

Look above, previous quote.

Linux compatibility layer is really Linux syscall translator and sad necessity due industry-bias when releasing drivers. It's either "use it" or be without "hardware support" (mostly aimed at AMD, most FreeBSD drivers are native. Tho I think WiFi drivers are going to be used over Linux ABI in the future as well)

What I think happened was combination of your inexperience and perhaps unlycky hw you had (forgot to set EFI to Custom or smth, dunno)

If you enjoy this, thrive on this, or contribute to this, keep it up!

In my eyes FreeBSD is roughly where Linux was, before it's was basically taken over by corporate. Hundreds of different fascinating distros became bare handful of originals and shitton of variously themed clones. Bless systemd.
And as Linux becomes worse in that regard I am happy to stay on my simpler OS I have more control over but which can do same given some forethought in setup and hw. You are not quite as free with hardware on Linux either, compared to Windows. So I have to use 2gen. old AMD GPU, big deal.
90% of community hw works on BSD just fine.

[zexelon]

aht0 That is an impressively long rebuttal! Full disclosure I only read the first paragraph and the last as everything in the middle looked like `feces`, if that is the technical term used from the opening paragraph.

... So I have to use 2gen. old AMD GPU, big deal.
90% of community hw works on BSD just fine.

The last line here says it all... having to use an old AMD GPU... or any other archaic hardware IS the problem. If this works for a user I say go for it... sadly it fundamentally undermines the very idea that FreeBSD is "general purpose".

In any event, this whole thread has now degenerated into a `feces` fest to borrow your technical term... is that from the BSD manual somewhere? Feel free to continue if you want.

[aht0]

aht0 That is an impressively long rebuttal! Full disclosure I only read the first paragraph and the last as everything in the middle looked like `feces`, if that is the technical term used from the opening paragraph.



The last line here says it all... having to use an old AMD GPU... or any other archaic hardware IS the problem. If this works for a user I say go for it... sadly it fundamentally undermines the very idea that FreeBSD is "general purpose".

In any event, this whole thread has now degenerated into a `feces` fest to borrow your technical term... is that from the BSD manual somewhere? Feel free to continue if you want.

And you expected what in exchange for you passive-aggressive bs? Truth is, you ran out of arguments.
Your "use-case" appears to be average pre-built PC your parents bought you and you use for putting OS'es on and off for fun. Go ahead, had that too odd 20+y a go. Yeah, 15min and on works then. But its just you use case.

And please, try not to display ignorance that much. In these days, anything above Vega 64 (and thats like 5y old) is anything but "archaic". Even fuckin Vegas can drive games at 4K and acceptable Hz, not to mention 6800XT's and such "archaic" cards. For Christ sake, most users are still sitting behind 1080p screens or 1440p if they are gamers. Dont throw around such stupid statements, pretty please. Only very small % are using multiple high res. screens justifying need for truly last gen cards.

When something like dedic. sound card works and has better quality than "newer" iterations, its sensible to keep using it for as long as possible. I can upgrade RAM, CPU or nvme's instead. Why produce more waste without fuckin reason.