Right until there is an update or anything and a bootloader or one of its required files gets written past the 8GB barrier, rendering your system unbootable.
I had to install a new Debian last night. Manual partitioning and I'm quite happy with the results. I couldn't do that without all my past mistakes.
I now make the partitions beforehand in fdisk then choose them in the installer. Which for some bizarre reason is not included in the install image; you have to boot into rescue for that.
I do not fully understand this. Can you add specifics ? To me the article indicates he used a small root partition. Or did I miss something ?
A little hint for people (like me) who have a separate partition for /usr, /var, /tmp and /home due to cgd encryption or other reasons. If using wireless, you may need this in /etc/rc.conf to force a mount before daemons kick off. In my case, without this wireless breaks.
critical_filesystems_local="/var /usr /tmp"
The article explicitly says a single full disk partition was used -- it's right on the quote I used.
In any case, this is a BIOS limitation affecting all bootloaders from all operating systems. It has nothing to do with any particular BSD or OS, and you do not need to care if your computer is less than 20 years old.
To be honest, I wouldn't notice this issue at all, if it wasn't for FreeBSD which refused to boot right off the bat. It has a more advanced bootloader though, so perhaps it does some extra sanity checks.