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

It was fun running with helloSystem over the weekend and aside from the networking and graphics was working fine out-of-the-box on this modern AMD Ryzen 9 7950X desktop.

Besides running as a live ISO, helloSystem can be installed to the system... This part wasn't actually too intuitive. There wasn't any desktop icon for easily launching the installer and no initial prompt at boot whether the user wants to immediately launch the installer. Initially I overlooked the installer in the Utilities sub-menu as it's labeled "Install FreeBSD". Initially looking for a "Install helloSystem", it was easy to overlook.

In any event once going to "Install FreeBSD", the helloSystem installation was off to the races.

For those wondering how helloSystem performance compares to Linux, I'll have some benchmarks on different distributions in a follow-up article on Phoronix in the coming days.

Overall it was a fun experience trying out helloSystem 0.8 as a easy-to-use FreeBSD desktop that is clearly inspired by Apple/macOS. Though whether the macOS-inspired desktop is reason enough for you to switch to a BSD (FreeBSD) operating system may be another story and also comes down to the level of hardware support for your system(s) and how comfortable you are with other aspects of running a BSD system. In any event those wanting to try out the new helloSystem v0.8 can download it from GitHub. This helloSystem v0.8 release was the most pleasant desktop BSD experience I've enjoyed since the great days of PC-BSD/TrueOS.