FreeBSD Handbook / Introduction
docs.freebsd.org
docs.freebsd.org
Those two points are still true compared to linux.
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.
I'm expecting I just have to make the decision at some point, and work through whatever comes up.
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.
It’s a bit of a beast - weighs several pounds - but I can use it in the swimming pool and rain.
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?
* 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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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?
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.
Delightful!
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.
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
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.