Introduce yourself, tell us who you are and why you chose FreeBSD

Good day! I have just joined, so a brief introduction is in order. I have been a Linux user since 1995 (Gentoo since 2004), and have always been interested to try *BSD. A "spare" laptop became available, so I have dropped FreeBSD onto it. I promise to do the following: (1) read the documentation extensively before asking a question, and (2) to not compare FreeBSD with Linux (different <> better). On the latter point - I am quite happy with my Linux setup, but want to learn *BSD because I hear it is better in some areas than Linux. I self host various applications at home, and could consider migrating these to BSD if I learn enough.
 
paul_j said:
Good day! I have just joined, so a brief introduction is in order. I have been a Linux user since 1995 (Gentoo since 2004), and have always been interested to try *BSD. A "spare" laptop became available, so I have dropped FreeBSD onto it. I promise to do the following: (1) read the documentation extensively before asking a question, and (2) to not compare FreeBSD with Linux (different <> better). On the latter point - I am quite happy with my Linux setup, but want to learn *BSD because I hear it is better in some areas than Linux. I self host various applications at home, and could consider migrating these to BSD if I learn enough.
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FreeBSD can self-host anything that Linux can. Hardware support is a different story, though - wifi and very recent GPUs. But if you're willing to do a bit of shopping, the available drivers do get good support - it's a set-and forget, just not for everything.
 
astyle said:
FreeBSD can self-host anything that Linux can. Hardware support is a different story, though - wifi and very recent GPUs. But if you're willing to do a bit of shopping, the available drivers do get good support - it's a set-and forget, just not for everything.
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Well if you are adventurous and want to spend $2k+ Nvidia is always here with very good GPU driver support, except CUDA though. 😅
 
LillieNB said:
Well if you are adventurous and want to spend $2k+ Nvidia is always here with very good GPU driver support, except CUDA though. 😅
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I have a $500 USD all-AMD rig, and it runs FreeBSD fine. I might buy NVidia GPU in the future - just to pay homage to Jen-Sen Huang, who happens to be an alumnus of my college, and no, it's not Stanford.
 
astyle said:
I have a $500 USD all-AMD rig, and it runs FreeBSD fine. I might buy NVidia GPU in the future - just to pay homage to Jen-Sen Huang, who happens to be an alumnus of my college, and no, it's not Stanford.
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All my current hardware is AMD based - I moved away from NVidia a couple of generations back. The laptop on which I installed FreeBSD is a Lenovo X270 with intel graphics, and so far it looks like the hardware is supported out of the box. From what I found on the internet, I think there may be issues with bluetooth, but I haven't got as far as exploring that yet. Currently it boots to a terminal, so the first step will be to get a desktop up and running.
 
cracauer@ said:
Well, yeah. Linux' tendency to invalidate pieces of documentation out on the web has accelerated. FreeBSD brings its documentation with it. Ubuntu in particular does everything new. Didn't they close their forum, too?
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I am not sure about Ubuntu. The Gentoo documentation is reasonably good, and if necessary the Arch wiki is well known for being pretty complete. However, if you just go around looking at webpages claiming to explain how to do something, they are often wrong, and sometimes in subtle ways. I found this particularly with Debian information. There are many websites with "How to do ... in Debian" which are out dated and often don't explain which version of Debian they are targeting. Keeping documentation accurate and fresh is a challenge I guess!
 
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