[jmort253]

I tried FreeBSD on ARM64. I couldn't get the browsers, like Firefox or Epiphany, to load without crashing. I'm not sure if it was something I was doing wrong or if the ARM ecosystem just isn't well supported yet. I was also running in a VM with QEMU.

On the surface, FreeBSD sounds cool. I liked that I could boot directly to a console and then run the GUI only if I wanted to. Everything felt more modular. It reminded me of the days before Windows 95 when I could just use DOS to save precious memory and CPU bandwidth.

Only I'm not sure I'd be able to use it as a daily driver. I felt like I'd be spending my time administering the machine and nothing else. Maybe it was just because it was running in a VM. Maybe it was because it's ARM. Not sure. I'd love to hear others experiences with FreeBSD on ARM.

[okasaki]

> I liked that I could boot directly to a console and then run the GUI only if I wanted to.

You can do that in Linux...

> Only I'm not sure I'd be able to use it as a daily driver. I felt like I'd be spending my time administering the machine and nothing else.

Not really? I think the BSDs are simpler, change less and are better documented.

Source: I ran OpenBSD on desktops in early 2000s.

[jmort253]

> You can do that in Linux...

I think I _may_ have done that before. What I thought was interesting is FreeBSD just did that without any extra steps. When I "apt-get install" a desktop environment in Ubuntu or Debian and reboot, the desktop environment loads by default. In FreeBSD, I guess there's some startup scripts I would need to edit to start X and the desktop manager...

[okasaki]

Yeah, Debian will auto-configure that for you. Distros like Arch do not.

Well, it depends on what you install. If you install just xorg and a window manager, it usually won't boot into it.

If you install GNOME or KDE that ship with a display manager, it will be configured to boot into it. That is what you would usually want though.

[RealStickman_]

You can just disable the login manager on Debian and you'll start at the TTY every time.

[hulitu]

> I think the BSDs are simpler, change less and are better documented

> Source: I ran OpenBSD on desktops in early 2000s.

From my experience witb BSDs on a SUN pizza box (also around 2000) : FreeBSD had the docs on the internet, not very helpful when you want to configure the network. OpenBSD was ok. Linux (my first choice) was slow as hell.

[pnpnp]

As a current OpenBSD user, the man pages absolutely blow Linux out of the water.

RTFM will go a very, very long way on this OS.

[jmort253]

On that note, maybe I should try the other BSD flavors then.

[crest]

Do you still have the core dumps and messages to stdout/stderr/dmesg?

[pdntspa]

If you're going to run it in a VM, why ARM?

[jmort253]

Exactly. I was on an M1 Mac, so trying to emulate x86/64 would have been painfully, unusably slow.

For simple console stuff on the terminal, it's ok. But when the GUI is involved, or anything with a lot of computation, having to translate all of the instructions from native ARM64 back to x86/64 and back takes a ton of resources and time.

[lockhouse]

Not OP by my machine is an M1 Mac, so ARM64 VMs are much more performant than emulated x86/x64 ones.

[matrix12]

Same experience with Browsers. Only Surf never dies.

[MuffinFlavored]

https://surf.suckless.org/

ah, the memories

this + dwn https://dwm.suckless.org/

then I said to myself "why am I wasting so much time tinkering with stuff that gains me nothing" and moved on in my life

[Zababa]

I had the opposite experience with dwm. I don't like cycling through overlapping windows on the same "desktop", and I don't like taking the time to place windows correctly. With 2 screens, I have 18 "desktops", which is more than enough, and the automatic tiling is exactly what I want. On the other hand when I use GNOME/KDE/Windows I'm always losing lots of time navigating. Also I must have some kind of curse because even with high-end computers I've never had one of those run really smoothly. My current work laptop is on KDE, and when I use a shortcut to open a terminal it takes 200/300ms.

I think it also helps that I've never really tinkered with it. I took someone's build that had a few things I wanted, and I think that's it. In contrast, I spend more time on a regular desktop environment setting up shortcuts.

[anthk]

This, but cwm for floating instead of tiling, almost the same philosophy. Set keybindings, fire, forget. I use Wmaker because that was my first WM and I like it, but CWM it's my "failsafe" wm when things break.

[anthk]

Eh, I disagree. WMaker+Luakit makes my netbook work. Anything else under i686 it's a no-no.

[mnd999]

Firefox on Sway with wayland enabled seems to lose the compositor connection almost instantly.