FreeBSD 14 Beta Released - Initial WiFi 6 Support, Updated LLVM Toolchain, Fwget Utility

[phoronix]

Phoronix: FreeBSD 14 Beta Released - Initial WiFi 6 Support, Updated LLVM Toolchain, Fwget Utility

FreeBSD 14 Beta 1 is available this weekend for helping to test out this major BSD operating system update that should debut as stable before the end of October...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/FreeBSD-14-Beta-1

[creative]

Interestingly enough this is one of the few BSD's out there that has a much better ray towards desktop usage.

Anyone turning something like OpenBSD into a desktop system is pretty much considered a hacker by some folks,
cause that one is targeted as headless server only.

[dylanmtaylor]

It really is a shame the BSDs don't get much attention on the desktop. Desktop BSD is barely a thing. I'd love to see BSD distributions that are as user-friendly and feature-complete as desktop Linux distributions.

[creative]

dylanmtaylor From what I understand FreeBSD is actually pretty good for what it is, its Ports system is supposedly pretty extensive. I would jump right in if I were not so happily entrenched with Slackware at the moment, the difference between what I use and FreeBSD however is a Grand Canyons divide of space and difference.

Call me shallow but I never have been a fan of the little devil logo, it always sort of weirded me out. That being said, some people would consider what I use as a dated dinosaur, I consider it as aspects of its propriety and agency, all things considered.

Sometimes old tech bests high tech.

[szymon_g]

does it have any sort of liveusb so one can try and check how well (or bad) is the hardware supported?

[dylanmtaylor]

does it have any sort of liveusb so one can try and check how well (or bad) is the hardware supported?

There's NomadBSD if you want a live system. https://nomadbsd.org/

[kylew77]

Interestingly enough this is one of the few BSD's out there that has a much better ray towards desktop usage.

Anyone turning something like OpenBSD into a desktop system is pretty much considered a hacker by some folks,
cause that one is targeted as headless server only.

Actually, OpenBSD is one of the few main BSDs with a gui included by default, sure it is an ugly FVWM window manager but it gets the job done. FreeBSD is the one that seems more server oriented than the others. On reddit I recommend OpenBSD over FreeBSD for a desktop.

[kylew77]

FreeBSD 14.0 is shaping up to be a GREAT OS! Rather or not it can pull me away from OpenBSD remains to be seen though. FreeBSD continues to have weird bugs. For example they recently had a bug in their wifi stack that allowed interceptors to read encrypted packets!

[creative]

kylew77 I did not know that, just checking out the OpenBSD's site I found nothing about desktop usage. I don't have much experience with any of the BSD's. What mainly has kept me from it is that it's much less known to be used for DAW tasks. I may have to give NomadBSD a spin to see if my Scarlette 2i2 is supported.

When I first started out in GNU Linux one of the things that pulled me in was the documentation on how to build a DAW with it, I ended up spending hours of studying circa 2004 custom configuring kernels for real time scheduling. Basically I had to hand compile every bit of software for the desktop, in the end I had a full blown DAW, complete with jack, a drum machine/sampler, sound file editor, and multitrack recorder with ladspa and LV2 plugin support, was very usable and fun. No all that stuff comes from Alien Bob's repos and even more with sbopkg which pulls in sources from slackbuilds.org, much tidier than hand building stuff.

I have come across this though. https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/sche..._audio_studio/

FVWM isn't that bad, it looks like it has more going on within it than WindowMaker which I used a ton twenty years ago. If OpenBSD comes with FVWM2 or FVWM3 that's a quite notable improvement. I briefly checked it out on Slackware which now comes with it by default as well as number of others like WindowMaker, Blackbox, Fluxbox, Twm, Mwm, Kde, and Xfce.

[ehansin]

I have been using FreeBSD at work by way of a TrueNAS Mini and their TrueNAS Core version of FreeBSD. Using it for ZFS file storage. On a side note, the browser-based UI of the TrueNAS software is pretty slick. But underneath is FreeBSD. It does the trick for what is needed. Although in Linux-land you need to deal with ZFS differently in that it is not "included by default", I am very happy that these days the versions of ZFS in FreeBSD and Linux use the same OpenZFS codebase. I was actually in communication some with an engineer at iXsystems (who do all the TrueNAS stuff) before the official merge and cutover. The official switch in FreeBSD proper happened sooner than I and I think he thought would happen. Anyway, it is all a good thing for those having an interest in ZFS.