FreeBSD 15.0 (almost)-RELEASE, using pkgbase, on my Ryzen 9 MiniPC (and compared to openSUSE Tumbleweed):
- Full disk encryption works beautifully via GELI, as usual.
- Installing KDE is easy and it works perfectly on Wayland.
- All my main apps work. Others will run via the Linuxulator or Wine (Linux browsers, WinBox for MikroTik, etc).
- The fan seems more relaxed.
- The system generally feels snappier.
- Native ZFS. I can autosnapshot every 5 minutes. If I try to do this with btrfs - snapshots of the home directory included and quotas enabled - the system hangs while handling them (which is why Tumbleweed doesn’t snapshot home by default).
- The media keys on my keyboard work, but volume control uses huge steps and 30 percent is already extremely loud. This can be fixed. The monitor brightness setting is also a bit off, but I don't care.
- amdgpu works perfectly.
- The wifi card works. I haven’t tested the speed because I immediately installed the realtek-re-kmod driver to use the 2.5 Gbit ethernet connection.
- Suspend doesn’t work. This is a big problem for me. It’s probably more psychological than technical, but I can’t leave the computer powered for hours when I’m not using it. I already have servers running 24/7 here. I even considered putting my Qotom FreeBSD server in a VM. It would probably work, but next summer it might be an issue because temperatures here aren’t low and spinning disks don’t love heat (and I don’t love their noise).
- It’s stable and reliable. I’ve done almost everything and it just works, as expected.
- Some small glitches remain, mostly due to missing configuration or packages (I didn’t tune anything. I just installed it and started using it).
A much smoother experience than a year ago, when I bought it.
Will I keep using FreeBSD on this minipc?
I’m not sure yet, since Tumbleweed works great and the lack of suspend really influences my choice. I'll contact Aymeric and try to offer some help to improve this.
For now, I’ll keep it on an external SSD and switch from time to time, especially when I know I’ll be using the minipc for hours.
Tom
in reply to Stefano Marinelli • • •Jason Tubnor 🇦🇺
in reply to Tom • • •Tom
in reply to Jason Tubnor 🇦🇺 • • •dch
in reply to Tom • • •Tom
in reply to dch • • •Jason Tubnor 🇦🇺
in reply to Tom • • •You may have earlier pkg-base configurations floating around. It is noted that even the RC and RELEASE have duplicates in places and this probably needs to be mentioned for a manual cleanup within the release notes.
You /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf should have (but not enabled):
FreeBSD-base: {
url: "pkg+pkgbase.FreeBSD.org/${ABI}/bas…
mirror_type: "srv",
signature_type: "fingerprints",
fingerprints: "/usr/share/keys/pkgbase-${VERSION_MAJOR}",
enabled: no
}
Where you are probably having issues is with /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD-base.conf
FreeBSD-base: {
url: "pkg+pkg.FreeBSD.org/${ABI}/base_re…
mirror_type: "srv",
signature_type: "fingerprints",
fingerprints: "/usr/share/keys/pkg",
enabled: yes
}
Your base release didn't have a minor version listed (either hard coded 0 or ${VERSION_MINOR} ). If it isn't defined, you'll follow stable.
You should be able to downgrade to 15.0-RELEASE if you configure this and your pkg version is 2.4.2_1 and issue a 'pkg upgrade'
Mason Loring Bliss
in reply to Stefano Marinelli • • •Stefano Marinelli
in reply to Mason Loring Bliss • • •Mason Loring Bliss
in reply to Stefano Marinelli • • •feld
in reply to Mason Loring Bliss • • •I don't know if that's ever been true. I've had the same large workload on identical servers that takes Linux to hundreds or even 1000+ load average but FreeBSD handles it just fine staying under 100
Also FreeBSD can still be ssh'd into when the load average is near 1000, but Linux... good luck. You'll be waiting tens of minutes just for the shell prompt if you can get past the sshd
Mason Loring Bliss
in reply to feld • • •@feld My impression is that it didn't show up in the ability to process things in bulk - all scheduler stuff - so much as the ability to not use power at idle; think laptop battery life, for example.
But it's been a while since I've spent significant time with FreeBSD in an environment where idle-time power consumption was measurable, let alone mattered.
feld
in reply to Mason Loring Bliss • • •feld
in reply to Mason Loring Bliss • • •ooh i forgot to mention this trick I found posted somewhere online
hw.pci.do_power_nodriver=3
put that in your /boot/loader.conf and it will reduce power usage caused by any devices we don't have a driver for
Mason Loring Bliss
in reply to feld • • •@feld Oh, interesting. I'm curious why that's not a default! I wonder what the best way is to list driverless hardware.
Is this documented somewhere? The default is zero, and if "3" is magic there must be a range of options. Also, must it be in /boot/loader.conf? Seems like it could live in /etc/sysctl.conf, or is that too late?
feld
in reply to Mason Loring Bliss • • •