FreeBSD Handbook / Introduction
docs.freebsd.orgI remember growing up in grade school my friend's older brother was a very active contributer to FreeBSD. I remember being fascinated by the FreeBSD desktop they had running in the living room and this alternate universe of free software he was helping to create. I don't remember much other than his rants against windows (he thought it was terrible that people let their computers would do stuff like run CD-ROMs automatically on insert) and staring awestruck at some of his big-kid C/C++ files before me and and my friend went to tinker with our kiddie QBasic. But something about that ingrained in me a fascination with FreeBSD at an early age. I just thought it was so incredibly cool. It ran so lean and cleanly. It was made by passionate nerds like my friend's big brother, volunteers driven by a desire to do things correctly, clearly, and simply. Something about it just seemed so awesome and right. But I didn't have a computer of my own to run it on. Years later I went on to be a Linux user but have often wondered about diving into FreeBSD due to some strange form of nostalgia and sentimentalism.
I remember being a new Linux user in the mid-90s at university. I was told by more than one computer science nerd that FreeBSD was more mature and reliable, which was probably true back then. But Linux just seemed to be where the excitement was (it even had coloured ls output!).
>was more mature and reliable, which was probably true back then.
Those two points are still true compared to linux.
The FreeBSD handbook, and FreeBSD’s bit-rot resistant documentation, are the primary reasons I use it as a daily driver. I migrated from Linux on the Laptop ~1.5 years ago and my day-to-day has been more calm ever since.
The system is just so nice. Memory footprint is very low, there are like a hand full of processes running, almost no magical stuff happening. Additionally to the handbook, the man pages are also way more informative than the Linux pendants.
It seems that finding a FreeBSD-compatible laptop can be a bit of a process. I've been considering the same for the last couple years, but always end up hesitating once I get into researching it.
Are you up for sharing which laptop you got? And do you have any advice on the process of choosing one? My needs are pretty basic (no gaming, etc): web browser, sublimetext, command line.
ThinkPads usually work well.
My T14s AMD Gen1 lacks fingerprint scanner support and as of now, AC/AX WiFi drivers are in very alpha stage, so I had to downgrade to 80211n.
Everything else, including AMD GPU acceleration in X.org, works perfectly. I am glad to be able to do some tinkering to have a system working just as I want it to, not like some corporation's investors prefer.
Cool. Thanks for that. I think I'd be fine on 80211n.
Judging by this list [0] Thinkpads seem to have a good reputation, like they do for Linux too.
Yeah, I've reviewed that and other forums as well and previously narrowed it down to 3-4 options (It was a while back and I don't remember which).
I'm expecting I just have to make the decision at some point, and work through whatever comes up.
I use a Panasonic Toughbook.
It’s a bit of a beast - weighs several pounds - but I can use it in the swimming pool and rain.
I've been thinking of throwing FreeBSD on an old Thinkpad and trying to use it normally. Right now I run Debian, with most of my work happening in Firefox or the shell.
Is there anything you didn't even think about that ended up being a problem, or noticeably worse? Or the opposite, something you thought would be an issue but wasn't?
FreeBSD runs pretty nice on thinkpads. I've thrown it (and OpenBSD) on my x201s and x220s. There are a few pain points:
* getting used to the BSD version of utilities. make frequently breaks for me, and last time I used gmake there were still issues.
* random software isn't packaged or just doesn't run/build on *BSDs well.
* lack of support for games. these days, steam games run rather well on linux as long as they don't require anticheats.
* no docker. this is what keeps me on linux, I use it every day for work and I have a server at home running software through docker containers.
For me, OpenBSD is the goto.. for servers. I still stick with debian or arch for my daily drivers.
Most gmake works well but sometimes you have to change the include and lib paths. FreeBSD is just a bit different in that respect bit it's a good thing IMO. It's very consistent
WiFi is currently limited to 802.11n on all chipsets. Work to support 802.11ac (and more wireless cards) is ongoing and looks to me like it could be ready in 2022. Also, options for videoconferencing programs (Zoom, Skype) are poor, you're effectively limited to browser-based versions, which don't perform well with an iGPU at least.
Jitsi works fine though at least in Firefox!
I don't want zoom anywhere near my FreeBSD box after what they did with that backdoor on macOS. And refused to remove it until apple blacklisted them.
Honestly - I expected it to be harder than it was. I read the entire handbook cover to cover before doing an install. I think that was the trick. It’s just been smooth sailing.
I keep an R620 running Linux that I can ssh into if I need Docker - but I use it a lot less than I expected.
I've used it as my primary server platform for 10+ years now and the handbook is still great - very resistant to any kind of bitrot at all.
Whoa, there's a *nix distro that actually has documentation that can explain things to me like I'm 5 and show case all things special about the OS? This is exceptional good.
I'm undecided between Tiny Core Linux and NetBSD for an old Thinkpad T42, and I had similar emotions reading NetBSDs Guide a few days ago. Tiny Core is really great (I've been using it for 5-6 years) but:
- The T42 needs underclocking. Tiny Core solution: Google and find out that cpufrequtils helps (it did). How about NetBSD? First time reading of the manual, 5-10 minutes, and there it is, a built-in feature: http://netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-power.html#chap-power-a...
- Similar thing with a non-standard keyboard layout: on Tiny Core, it had some symbols missing. To reconfigure the keymap on Tiny Core, I had to Google and find out about Linux's kbd project. Download kbd sources, compile it, read its (comprehensive, but really well written!) manual to get a hang of Linux's keyboard layout files (interesting stuff). Then modify the layout to my needs by trial and error, and then use two of kbd's tools + a minor hack to make it usable under Tiny Core.
On NetBSD: 5 minutes to read a few paragraphs in the Guide: http://netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-cons.html#chap-cons-wsc.... Works.
What I particularly liked is that the same chapter of the NetBSD Guide also provides a brief and clear how-to for changing keyboard layout at the kernel level. In other words, everything relevant in one place, easy to find, really well structured and written. For a hobbyist like me, reading the Guide is a true learning experience as to how an operating system actually works.
Once again, I absolutely love Tiny Core Linux, its wiki, FAQ, forum, package manager and the provides.sh tool are really great. Excellent distro for less capable or ancient machines. But in terms of documentation, the BSD world does seem to be in a class of its own.
I suppose all three BSDs -- Net, Open and Free -- have more or less equally good documentation, no?
I haven't used FreeBSD for almost 10 years now but it was my first non-Linux OS back in early 2000s and the primary OS we used at my first IT job.
The FreeBSD handbook is something you actually had bookmarked, I checked the handbook before I searched the web.
There is no Linux distro today with a handbook like the FreeBSD handbook, in terms of how I used it at least.
Same goes for OpenBSD.
There's Gentoo handbook[1] that walks through every step of building a system and explaining the choices and the consequences of those choices.
That's not the same at all. This FreeBSD is a user's manual, Gentoo's is a developer's wiki. It doesn't tell me most of the things I need to know to do actual work.
Hm. Gentoo does have a developer's manual[1] which describes in detail how one would be able to package new applications or patch things in the main repository.
Working with Gentoo as a user does require having an understanding of the knobs that portage (the package manager) presents, and this has a certain learning curve. But that learning curve is IMHO worth it for the flexibility that portage brings to the table. Without that flexibility it would be very hard to manage replacing at user's will something as major in the system as the init system, or the whole audio stack or libssl provider.
It has been this way for a long time it’s just that people thought reading manuals was tedious and ugly.
It should be noted that this is a redesign of the old docs site that recently went live.
Oh wow, yeah. Finally looks like FreeBSD grew out of the 2005 era. I say that only half jokingly, the previous design was very dated, but still every bit as functional for it's purpose.
I tend to use w3m with the documentation or a reference manual on a tiling wm. so as long as it works on w3m. So I do hope manuals should work in that way.
Yeah the old manual worked great in text browsers. But I imagine they still provide it as such as a package like they always have
I saw horizontal scrolling and got nervous, but then I realized they were just hiding a "scroll to top" button over there.
Delightful!
Love the new UI!
The daemon is flat now. I liked the glossy look it had ;-;
Many years ago I helped translate some of the FreeBSD and Linux documentation.
Even then, the Handbook was a marvel compared to most of the cobbled together HOWTOs, I always felt it was a very underrated gem in the echosystem.
Interesting, however if a third edition of "Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System" ever comes up, I would gladly buy it.
I installed FreeBSD on a box a few days ago. It was very frustrating. I didn’t know what I was doing and found myself with a lot of questions. It took a while for me to get comfortable. Now that I’ve been using it a few day, wow, let me say that it’s AMAZING. So, so fast and beautiful. I’m so glad I stuck with it.
Everything works so smoothly today. Of course, I had to do little things to get things to work well. For example, backspace wouldn’t work in Emacs out of the box. My keyboard didn’t work out of the box on X11. I had to add this to my .emacs file:
(normal-erase-is-backspace-mode 1)
kern.evdev.rcpt_mask=6
I've yet to try a BSD, but FreeBSD's wholehearted embrace of the ZFS filesystem makes it very attractive to me. Now I have another reason to look at it.
ZFS just works so well. Especially on FreeBSD where the documentation is great. About 12 or more years ago, MacOS was rumored to change to ZFS as default filesystem. I was using FreeBSD too at the time, so I pre-emptively started using ZFS on my Mac. It worked well for a few years but for licensing reasons ZFS by default on MacOS was canned and I haven’t used it since I replaced that laptop.
ZFS just works so well. Especially on FreeBSD where the documentation is great. About 12 or more years ago, MacOS was rumored to change to ZFS as default filesystem. I was using FreeBSD too at the time, so I pre-emptively started using ZFS on my Mac. It worked well for a few years but for licensing reasons ZFS by default was canned and I haven’t used it since I replaced that laptop.
What a coincidence! I just finished reading this. It's the work of many authors, so you may find it a little uneven. But overall I found it to be an outstanding document. It helped me get the lay of the land quickly and easily, coming from OpenBSD. OpenBSD has very good documentation too, but I don't think they have anything quite like this.
Seeing better mobile support is fantastic.
I love FreeBSD, but the way it behaves with Home and End keys drives me nuts. Is there a way to set it to behave as Linux consistently, across all users, session, and jails?
What is the problem exactly? I use FreeBSD (and Linux) for years and not aware that Home/End behave differently in FreeBSD. Default FreeBSD shell was until recently tcsh and it is a bit quirky but in tcsh Home/End work by default. sh is another shell from FreeBSD base system - it is small and simple but even there Home/End work with `set -o emacs` in .shrc (it is in default .shrc, from /usr/share/skel/).
So Home and End don't go to the start and end of line, respectively, when I hit those connected via a remote terminal (using PuTTY).
Seems to be universal to the entire OS, as I get this behavior in bash, vim, and pretty much everything else. I applied some kind of hack to make it work correctly in bash on the host OS, but it doesn't work correctly in vim or other programs, or anything in any jailed OS.
They do seem to work fine at a local console though, so I'm wondering if its my term emulation settings in PuTTY.
Yes, it likely related to how PuTTY emulates terminal or which TERM var it sends.
I've always wanted to try FreeBSD but I could never get my drivers to work (thanks, RealTek). Maybe someday.
Truly the power to serve.