Those of you who have used GhostBSD please share your experience

[wb7odyfred]

How do you use FreeBSD on your mini ARM64 computer?

Look you can download this FreeBSD image, burn to a USB flash drive and put into your Raspberry Pi 4B,3B,or 400 Keyboard and boot that image. Search for FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE RPI 3/4 image here:
https://download.freebsd.org/releases/arm64/aarch64/ISO-IMAGES/14.0/

I use GhostBSD-Arm64 Very Well, on my Raspberry Pi 4B. I built this using FreeBSD for Raspberry Pi 4B and compiled GhostBSD-Arm64 kernel image for Raspberry Pi 4B. With a small amount of work, you can have the same Full Desktop Workstation with HDMI audio that I have running today. Do you have another computer to download an image and then use Balena Etcher etcher.io or 'dd' to write the same image to a USB flash drive? You just need this one image written into a USB flash drive for the Raspi4B to boot. All the rest of the work can be performed by the Raspberry Pi 4B SBC hardware.

Thank you, for asking about my Experience with running a BSD on the Raspi4B. You can enable HDMI audio on FreeBSD for playing YouTube videos on your HDMI TV speakers.
Patch the kernel source code /usr/src and build your own kernel image to enable HDMI Audio to play out HDMI TV speakers. This is the xplicit instructions for using patches D36431, D37878, D37879 in that order to patch FreeBSD kernel source code (or GhostBSD-Arm64 source code '/usr/ghost14/ghostbsd-src' )
https://reviews.freebsd.org/F75131370 3 post down here:
https://reviews.freebsd.org/F75131370#30 explicit instructions for add 3 patches. download 3 patch files to directory mkdir /usr/src/Patches; cd /usr/src/Patches ; wget -c url_link/D36431.diff
cd /usr/src ; patch ../Patches/D36431.diff
https://ghostbsd-arm64.blogspot.com/2024/01/hdmi-audio-sound-patches-into-ghostbsd.html
Much more stuff at https://ghostbsd-arm64.blogspot.com
Here is an image to download and write into a USB Flash drive stick.
http://ghostbsdarm64.hopto.org/packages/Ghost14_5G_selfbuilt_raspi4b_Feb27_2.img.xz
Here is a FreeBSD shell script to download an image file (freebsd 14.0-RELEASE image or GhostBSD-Arm64 image file) ,decompress the image, and write it to a USB flash drive of your choice.
http://ghostbsdarm64.hopto.org/packages/write_freebsd_img_dd_to_da1.sh
https://ghostbsd-arm64.blogspot.com/2024/01/january-19-2024-howto-download.html Instructions to use shell script write_freebsd_img_dd_to_da1.sh

Wish to install your FreeBSD or GhostBSD-Arm64 into an USB SSD drive? Instructions are at the following post. Note this: ( 'gpart destroy /dev/da0' will destory drives previous contents, then write over with the existing running partition contents from "/" mounted file system (ie contents of the USB Flash drive "/" root file system image) into your new ZFS file system on that USB SSD drive (NVMe stick or 2.5" SATA drive)
https://ghostbsd-arm64.blogspot.com/2023/12/how-to-install-ghostbsd-arm64-into-usb.html

With GhostBSD-Arm64 or FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE you can have a full development workstation with MATE or XFCE4 windows running on your Raspberry Pi 4B, 3B, or 400 Keyboard
pkg install xorg xfce4 xfce4-goodies slim

I welcome further questions, comments, suggestions, feedback. Good question you posed!
ps. Read the FreeBSD Arm mailing list
https://lists.freebsd.org/subscription/freebsd-arm
https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-arm/ Since 2021; present April 2024

Telegram channels
Arm Open-Source (I created this) Welcome all open source BSD , Linux, SBC information
https://t.me/+ST6N61pnu3Di8zgk
GhostBSD Arm64 Development related to GhostBSD.org
https://t.me/ghostbsd_dev/24054

 

[NicoW]

1. After install, clicking on a folder gives: "already mounted". So I cannot enter the folder.
But VLC is able to play a DVD! What have I to do to look inside a folder?? With MX-Linux this is no problem.

2. When moving a text on screen, the text seems to ripple across a horizontal line.

 

[mikethe1wheelnut]

1. After install, clicking on a folder gives: "already mounted". So I cannot enter the folder.
But VLC is able to play a DVD! What have I to do to look inside a folder?? With MX-Linux this is no problem.

2. When moving a text on screen, the text seems to ripple across a horizontal line.

I was (I'm now Installing FreeBSD) able to get in via the command-line. Just cd your way down in, find it under /media . It's automatically mounted, so piece of cake, almost like ubuntu. That said, the system -should- behave the way the documentation says it should. It is weird since it is supposed to be a bsd, and yet apparently, in this case, behaves like ubuntu, automatically mounting. As for clicking on folders, it is a 'nix. It isn't really supposed to be gui based. Going gui has, so far, mostly lead to pain and suffering for me, FreeBSD included. I'm still exploring them. I've been told that "the base system" and "userland programs" are not the same, and not polished to the same degree. Have you checked the documentation? I did, and got told that the "documentation" I checked was obsolete. I never got round to checking this in the "real, permanent" documentation. (..I link there, seeing as it looks pretty official to me.. I don't recall if they confirmed it or not)