
FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro - gunnarde
https://gist.github.com/mpasternacki/974e29d1e3865e940c53
======
wwweston
> Six years later, it less and less "Just Works", started turning into spyware
> and nagware, and doesn't need much less maintenance than Linux desktop — at
> least for my work, which is system administration and software development,
> probably it is better for the mythical End User person. Work needed to get
> software I need running is not less obscure than work I'd need to do on
> Linux or othe Unix-like system.... GUI that used to be nice and unintrusive,
> got annoying. Either I came full circle in the last 15 years of my computer
> usage, or the OSX experience degraded in last 5 years.

So... it's not just me. Somewhere between Snow Leopard and Mavericks I started
finding building various things from source that never were a problem became
an exercise in figuring out what library had been removed or moved or what
Apple had done with lib/header paths or something else.

If people aren't going over to another unix, what are they doing? Homebrew?
Container-ing or virtualizing another unix? Or just suffering?

~~~
meekins
Homebrew and a Vagrant managed Linux VM depending on the situation. I'm
seriously considering moving to Linux next time I'm switching my work laptop.

~~~
pawadu
Did this at work, haven't looked back since. Having first class package
management support is something I never want to live without again. I still
use a lot of virtual machines, but mostly to keep different projects
separated.

By the way, is it just me or have the vms better disk performance but slower
graphics in Linux?

------
boterock
Some months ago I got FreeBSD running in a Macbook Air, and surprisingly the
UEFI boot worked out of the box. I say surprisingly because when I tried, the
Linux efiboot didn't work, the only way to boot linux was through GRUB.

I had almost everything working (Audio, suspend on close, i3 or gnome) but
never got the wifi to work, I even tethered from my android phone to the
Macbook and it worked very good. But in the end it was to annoying to do
often. If only FreeBSD supported that wireless chip, I'd be writing this on
FreeBSD. When the wayland and updated intel drivers come to FreeBSD maybe i'll
try it again, but wifi is a deal breaker.

I always wondered why there isn't wifi drivers for this macbook in FreeBSD if
Fedora had them (and AFAIK Fedora only ships open drivers)

~~~
BorisMelnik
ever considered using a supported wifi usb?

~~~
boterock
I didn't like the idea of permanently losing 1 of the only 2 usb ports,
although when connecting android tethering I lost one still. I wanted a
solution that would allow me to have internet and also be able to connect a
mouse and a usb drive.

------
mpasternacki
I’m author of that gist (just noticed I have some comments there I need to
reply to), still running the setup, now with FreeBSD 12-CURRENT. Tl;dr it
generally works, still no wi-fi support. X works fine (running with drm-
next-4.7 patches to get external thunderbolt display to work; vanilla kernel
works fine with built-in and DVI display, gets confused by Thunderbolt display
only). Gave up on pkg because I want to control my build flags, I’m using
portmaster now and thinking about setting up poudriere on a bigger server.
Feel free to ask if you have any particular questions.

~~~
synthmeat
Give [https://github.com/jrmarino/synth](https://github.com/jrmarino/synth) a
whirl.

~~~
mpasternacki
Looks nice, thanks!

------
mkup
This tutorial is about FreeBSD 11-CURRENT snapshot 20150111 (pre-release
version), so it deals in act II with hybrid UFS/ZFS setup, but FreeBSD
11.0-RELEASE supports root-on-ZFS-in-UEFI-mode via standard installer. Release
version of boot1.efi loader fully supports ZFS, so small UFS boot partition is
no longer needed, and things are much simpler now.

~~~
mpasternacki
It doesn't work yet with GELI as far as I know, so for encrypted root /boot
still needs to be on a separate partition. There was some work to support
encrypted /boot, I'm not sure where it stands now, but I'd be very surprised
if it supported encrypted ZFS.

~~~
cyberpunk
Yeah, I've not tried going to 11x yet as I'm not sure I can be bothered trying
to deal with replacing the non-geli 'bootpool' I have on 10.x.. Sounds like a
tricky process.

I'll probably just rebuild it instead of trying to upgrade.

------
JeremyMorgan
I really want to try this out. I was a heavy FreeBSD user for many years in
the 2000s, and I drifted back into Linux. One thing I will say for FreeBSD,
it's harder to get dialed in but once it is, it's very solid. I think with
enough tinkering FreeBSD would run really well on a MBP, I just wonder if it
would provide a lot of advantages over OSX to make it worth the time.

~~~
noobermin
Random question for you, how does the shell experience on FreeBSD compare to
MacOS? Linux?

~~~
mveety
A shell is a shell for the most part. The details can be a bit different (like
your $PATH), but otherwise its largely the same.

~~~
noobermin
try

    
    
       rm -rf somedir/
    

vs

    
    
       rm somedir/ -rf
    

Linux (the former) allows me to be lazy while MacOS (the latter) forces me to
hit crtl-a and insert -rf.

~~~
loeg
GNU rm (coreutils) vs BSD rm.

~~~
aorth
I will never get used to the trailing slash on source arguments in BSD cp
(that copies directory contents rather than the directory itself)! The first
thing I do on an OS X machine is install GNU coreutils.

~~~
seschwar
I'm used to that from rsync. I find it quite handy.

~~~
loeg
This may be why I never found rsync comfortable.

------
lorenzfx
I'm using FreeBSD on Lenovo X220, and while it's obviously no MacBook,
everything important to me (wifi, suspend-to-ram, graphic support, long
battery usage, HDMI out) just worked out of the box (apart from the initial
install, which wasn't FreeBSD's but Lenovo's fault and is since being worked
around in recent FreeBSD installers). I can really recommend it if you want to
give FreeBSD a try on a Laptop.

~~~
lorenzfx
ps: make sure you get a wifi card that is supported by FreeBSD. While you can
put in a supported one, the X220 won't boot because Lenovo put a Wifi card
whitelist into the BIOS and you need to install a patched BIOS from a dubious
source.

~~~
kefka
Why in Richard Stallman's name would you buy a Lenovo?

------
95014_refugee
"using a custom [FreeBSD] kernel seems tricky in a VMWare/VirtualBox VM"

This flipped a set-once bit, making the rest of the article essentially
unreadable due to zero confidence in the writer's technical skill. Also, the
lack of "late 2011" in the title makes it pretty misleading.

~~~
cgvgffyv
Couldn't you just have said, "this guy doesn't know what he's talking about",
like a normal person?

That was hard to parse.

~~~
astrange
This is what I think whenever anyone says "an order of magnitude" instead of
"very".

------
enzolovesbacon
I'm periodically installing FreeBSD on my ThinkPad T400 to see how it's
performing with Chromium. It's the only application I use extensively, and the
only one that performs really bad with FreeBSD (and OpenBSD also), which
prevents me from switching from Fedora.

Is there any magic I'm missing, aside from the shared memory support?

~~~
floatboth
It performs fine on my X240 without doing anything.

------
eth0up
My experience with FreeBSD is limited to a fugacious week with apparent
quixotism and my noble Raspberry-Pi2, which ended inimically. All seemed
rigorously dandy until presumably, Chuck Norris imposed thereafter some wicked
temporal augmentation between all moments between any character typed or
program otherwise compiled, offering only a typographic respite or
scintillating scroll of never-ending techno-glossolalia in his wake whilst I
sat there hour after hour (or character after character) awaiting something
that made sense. Having no visible recourse, I capitulated and returned to
Rasbpian.

With my compulsive - but hitherto compromised - aversion to running Linux
within the virtual-machine of Systemd, I have ever-since intended to try
again, maybe with a Pi3 and/or laptop, or even Mac. I've wangled Debian on a
Macbook, but would, considering circumstances, prefer FreeBSD. I hope there is
promise here. I praise all efforts.

~~~
floatboth
That's odd. Are you using HDMI or the serial console?

My Raspberry Pi 2 runs FreeBSD very well. Currently running OpenNTPD + Monit +
Postgres + Node-RED + go-carbon + graphite-api + Grafana + Syncthing +
Transmission — all of this with only 249 MB of RAM used. FreeBSD's memory
management is excellent.

RPi 3 (native AArch64 mode) support is in progress
[https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm64/rpi3](https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm64/rpi3) for
now it runs only on one CPU core, SMP is "actively being worked on".

~~~
eth0up
>Are you using HDMI

I _was_ using HDMI. As mentioned, I've since returned to Raspbian, where I
continue to use HDMI and all works generally well. I was initially thrilled
after installing FreeBSD, but for whatever reason, things changed. I remember
compiling vim for a whole day before cancelling it. I could type an entire
sentence or paragraph before any input would show. Bad luck perhaps. My
primary use for the Pi is a surveillance camera, so I temporarily abandoned
BSD for what I know works. I intend to make my next main system a BSD system.
Presently I am running Debian Testing, which has been quite excellent, but as
also mentioned, I am bothered by Systemd and aspire to be free of it.

~~~
floatboth
HDMI works fine for me, it's really, really weird that it didn't for you.

Compiling anything on ARM is horribly slow, cross-compiling from amd64 is a
much better idea.

But you don't need to compile vim, there are binary packages for ARM!
[http://pkg.freebsd.org/FreeBSD:12:armv6/latest/](http://pkg.freebsd.org/FreeBSD:12:armv6/latest/)
pkg should just work.

~~~
eth0up
Pardon my ignorance; but what would HDMI have to do with the issues I've
noted? In Raspbian, the Pi is a champion, minus some USB issues. Why would
HDMI be any different in BSD? Why would HDMI cause lag or infinite compiling?
Also, thanks for your replies. Amidst the onslaught of downvotes, I nearly
committed YC-Seppuku in shame. Also-also, with a bit of irony, after I'd
expressed my satisfaction with Debian Testing (after two happy years), this
very night "apt-get dist-upgrade" wanted to remove everything "X", e.g. xorg
_, xserver_ , etc., and iptables too. These are the less pleasant moments of
Testing. Pretty much annihilated my laptop, removing synaptic input drivers
and every other useful thing it could sabotage. Nothing single-user mode can't
surmount, but man, what timing. Happens about once/twice per year.

------
ekianjo
> back then I grew tired of Linux desktop (which is going to be MASSIVE NEXT
> YEAR, at least since 2001)

The snark was really unnecessary.

~~~
Ar-Curunir
I agree, I've been running Arch Linux on my MBP Retina for 2+ years now almost
without problems. I bet if the OP tried Linux, they'd be absolutely fine.

~~~
plg
how is battery life?

does close-lid-to-sleep and open-lid-to-wake work?

~~~
lllr_finger
I've been running Arch on a Dell Chromebook and battery life and sleep/wake
are essentially the same as with ChromeOS from what I've seen so far. Awesome
experience.

------
bootload
plz keep posting and upvoting these kinds of stories (foss on hardware), great
read.

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dataharry
That was anticlimactic

------
unexistance
so far so good, pretty detailed too

some might care images / screenshot, not me tho :D

------
wavefunction
stunts for stunts' sake

~~~
webaholic
That's how a lot of great projects got started.

