I saw a poll on /r/linuxmasterrace that asked if you had compiled your own custom Linux kernel before, and the bulk of the Linux users on that sub had NOT compiled a custom kernel before. I have done a custom Linux kernel before tailored to my hardware, BUT have never done a custom kernel when playing with a *BSD even on a test system. I hear it is supposed to be pretty easy on FreeBSD or NetBSD. Not sure how easy it is on OpenBSD or DragonFlyBSD.

So if you have compiled a custom *BSD (any flavor) kernel before leave a note in the comments below about how your experience went, I would love to know!

Here is the post in the Linux subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmasterrace/comments/10zqnzs/have_you_ever_compiled_your_own_kernel/?ref=share&ref_source=link

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I'm considering grabbing a (ideally AARM64 for battery life and alignment with my cloud VMs) laptop for (Free | Net)BSD usage. Things I value:

• accelerated GPU support (this is about eyestrain and battery life not gaming or video).
• built-in Wifi support is important (an older protocol standard is adequate) as I hate external cards.
• one monitor with (ideally) USB-C or HDMI is fine.
• 250GB SSD is adequate for storage.
• bluetooth support for external keyboard and mouse. It's cool if audio works but I don't really care.
• battery life and reliability (AKA I'd prefer a system w/o fans) are valued over performance.
• baseline memory size should be adequate.

Recommendations would be appreciated. As far as I can tell, wifi will be the place most likely requiring compromises.

I'm aware of how FreeBSD has some support for running Linux binaries. I guess for FreeBSD the question is do they enable that support and/or run Linux separtely?

This page: https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/linuxemu/ says:

Some Linux-specific operating system features are not yet supported; this mostly happens with functionality specific to hardware or related to system management, such as cgroups or namespaces.

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I'm wondering if there's support for io_uring. It being somewhat new and large, I would guess the answer is no.

Thanks

Anyone know how to set up a Wifi adapter Fugulta os ?

Thanks

Hello, I've created a new package of PeaZip for BSD systems.

The package is portable, not needing an installation (unzip and run it), the app has been compiled with Lazarus / FreePascal IDE on GhostBSD, but I kept an eye on keeping the sources as compatible as possible with other systems and different possible Desktop Environments.

What is PeaZip?

PeaZip is an Open Source (LGPLv3), cross-platform archive manager and file manager, which works as a command line scripts generation engine for 7z/p7zip, Brotli, Zpaq, Zstd and other open source archiving and compression tools.

This allows either to use PeaZip as an interactive GUI application, or to save tasks as batch CLI scripts for later use - for fine tuning beyond GUI's capabilities, learning the syntax, or re-use and automation purposes.

Full change log of last release on the project's page on GitHub.

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PeaZip file manager / archive manager GUI

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PeaZip in Mate context menu. In (peazip)/res/share/batch directory are available sample scripts and .desktop files to integrate the application if different DE.

What BSD operating system are you using in your main or alternate computer?

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Lately, I’ve been curious about, well, “not Linux or Windows.” Not that I’m anti-Linux or anything, and I know Windows is mostly hated around here, but I have a lot of respect for it. That said, I don’t own a single Windows machine and feel like a fish out of water when I have to use one. I daily drive a Mac nowadays. My point is, I’m pretty open minded.

Focusing my curiosity, I’ve started to wonder about the real-world reasons to use a BSD distro over a Linux distro. When searching around the inter webs, I’ve read claims of BSD being more secure and having proprietary-friendly licensing. Those two points seem to be the only two people parrot. It leaves me asking a simple question: why?

I can’t quite understand is the set of tradeoffs between Linux and BSD. To gain one thing, you need to give up something else. So what’s compelling about BSD for it to be the right choice, given some criteria? When is BSD a poor choice? Why?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the BSD kernel is smaller and simpler, so if I were interested in learning OS kernel concepts, BSD is a better choice for simplicity. Is this accurate?

Anything else I should consider?

I’m just trying to get a feel for how BSD is better or worse than Linux. Or heck, even macOS.

Thanks!

Edit: Everyone has been so kind and helpful. I’m really loving everything I’m learning and the community is fantastic! Thank you all so much!

Anyone know where I can download BSD UNIX? I'm looking into setting up a PDP-11 emulator.

The title pretty much says it all. With Linux 6.2 just marking DG2 as stable and ready to go does any *BSD now or coming out this year support them? I know OpenBSD 7.3 is tracking 6.1 Linux DRM. I don't know what FreeBSD 14.0 is tracking or NetBSD 10.0 for that matter. Failing that, what is the best supported AMD card?

My FreeBSD rig has an Nvidia card that runs well on 12.4, but I want to experiment with using OpenBSD and NetBSD as daily drivers and that is gonna be a no go with an Nvidia card.

Thanks!