

FreeBSD gets ported to the Raspberry Pi - synchronise
http://kernelnomicon.org/?p=164

======
wcchandler
Did you actually read the blog post? I've been following it for some time now
and stating it has been "ported" implies a complete system that is _nearly_
fully operational, which it is not. You still have to serial in to get any
sort of output. No keyboard. No HDMI. The title is very misleading and
slightly belittling of his progress. Instead you could point out he's gotten
UBOOT ported which is fantastic news all around. As well as the NetBSD folks
have gotten into multi-user mode(!)

~~~
synchronise
I did read the blog post, and I realise I should have chosen a better title
but I can't edit it now. Besides, the more people who find out about this
project the better it will be for the community.

------
rohshall
Fantastic! FreeBSD (along with NetBSD and OpenBSD) may be one of the most
under-appreciated OSes out there. I hope one day it becomes the desktop OS of
choice for developers.

~~~
temp007
Coming from Ubuntu, I tried to see how I could use FreeBSD as my main desktop
OS but I was rather disappointed. I was not able to set up X and I decided to
try PCBSD which in my opinion proved to be not as usable as Ubuntu. What are
the under-appreciated features of FreeBSD in your opinion?

~~~
romaniv
The first Unix server I've set up was FreeBSD. I was able to go from zero to
multiple services working in a sensible manner with next to no Unix
experience, using only the Handbook and Running Linux as my guides. Mind you,
that was done via command line, not by clicking buttons, so I gained a lot of
understanding of how things work in those 3 days.

The core system installs in couple of minutes and runs well on even the
crappiest hardware.

There is not WTF stuff associated with runlevels (there are no runlevels).

You can find and install software by navigating a certain directory in the
system and typing in one standard command. Great for feature discovery.

FreeBSD has the best documentation among all the software I have ever used:
the Handbook, the help screens in the installer, the security emails, the
upgrade notes.

~~~
temp007
The keyword for me is "desktop". I know FreeBSD might be a good server OS. My
question is what features does FreeBSD bring forward for the desktop user in
order to be a serious concurrent for Ubuntu, Fedora and the other desktop OS
distros.(Does it have a better sound devices support ? better window/desktop
manager ? Printer support ? Is it better suited for beginers/average
experienced users ?)

~~~
krenoten
For a desktop OS, I'd only recommend it for experienced users and those who
are willing to hit lots of walls and keep going. You will have a harder time
getting almost everything running. For sound, you may have a lot of headaches
if you don't like parsing logs for errors, scouring man pages and tweaking
config files many times before finding a mix of settings that works. At least
that was my experience the second time I tried to use it as a desktop OS (the
first time, I gave up before I got to sound). Maybe try PC-BSD, which is aimed
at providing a user-friendly FreeBSD desktop experience. FreeBSD does not
implement lots of features or aim to be the first to support new hardware.

I have used it as a desktop OS for a few years, and it was definitely a
learning experience for me. It was a great one though, because the experience
helped me land my first job right out of college in a shop that extensively
uses FreeBSD.

But TBH, you should probably just use it for servers ;)

------
dysoco
So this means that we can run Pfsense in the Raspberry Pi ?

~~~
evandena
Wouldn't you want at least two NICs for that?

~~~
mikeevans
Could always use one of those USB Ethernet adapters.

