FreeBSD for Elive - Spoiler: No

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A few days ago I started with BSD, again. I've already used a FreeBSD in past, but some time there was no need for it.

I asked myself 'why is there no EliveBSD? Lets take a look:

I remembering the old days, at first I was 'wow, what a great concept!'. Just 400 MB on a USB Stick, Boot up, install Base, Kernel and a small toolset. It is installed in less then 1 hour.
Than there are the ports. Just portsnap update and portsnap extract and the system is ready to get everything right from the internet.
Just do cd /usr/port/[group]/[program] && make install clean.

Okay. At the first attempt my Laptop was plugged to a power extension with a power switch. My wife switched it off at night ... The next day, my wife wanted to make it better and recorded our second router. My laptop was direct on a wall outlet, but the router was switched off ... As I said before, no Internet, no port installations.

Now I moved the Laptop from bedroom to my office. And since 3 days I'm installing the basics.

cd /usr/ports/sysutils/screen && make install clean - OK
cd /usr/ports/x11-wm/fluxbox && make install clean - Lets start low, OK
startx -> not known. startfluxbox -> no x awailable
cd /usr/ports/x11/xorg && make install clean -> make error: wrong python.
cd /usr/ports/devel/llvm80 && make install clean -> OK
cd /usr/ports/x11/xorg && make install clean -> OK
cd /usr/ports/www/firefox && make install clean -> make error: wrong python
cd /usr/ports/devel/llvm90 && make install clean -> OK
cd /usr/ports/www/firefox && make install clean -> OK
But while it is compiling firefox, we can start to configure the base ... No vim?
cd /usr/ports/editors/vim && make install clean -> multiple make errors
cd /usr/ports/editors/vim-console && make install clean -> OK
[...]

3 Days later, I see why FreeBSD is not the first choice for a beginner friendly environment. And most time it is compiling, I've not tried something like WLAN, Bluetooth, APM or custom kernel by now!
And don't forget to use setenv BATCH yes (using csh)! Else you'll need to press a lot of enter during the process. The defaults are often very good for a starting point.

For my final project I don't need X11 (xorg or any window/display manager) and I am very happy about that!
But for my it helps to walk the whole way to understand the (ports) system better. I don't think FreeBSD on the Thinkpad R500 will survive for long. At least because I need the laptop to test ELive 64bit :slight_smile:

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Wouldn't it have been safer to make that BSD environment with Vbox or chroot on a Elive 64bit?
That way you can mess around without losing too much.....on top:
If you do get done, I'd be quite interested in a .ova file (with minimal install) for Vbox ....... I'm simply too busy to start hacking BSD too. :face_with_head_bandage:

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See: Download FreeBSD
-> FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE - Virtual Machine Images
Readme: https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/VM-IMAGES/README.txt
Download: Index of /ftp/releases/VM-IMAGES/12.0-RELEASE/amd64/Latest/

Yeah, I've thought also about that. But I have too much hardware lying around, to play with. And If I try to do something virtual, I'm too much distracted with other possibilities at the Host. with VBox I always forget to setup the routes. It's easier to do reverse proxies and ssh tunnels with real interfaces, for me.
And every virtualization get to suck at one point. USB pass through, networking with limited routing capabilities, hard orchestration/monitoring, intransparent provisioning...

Do you think with less time FreeBSD is the right version?
OpenBSD - Yeah, secure!
FreeBSD - Yeah, compiling everything by myself!
NetBSD - Yeah, even running at my toaster!

But do yourself a favor and don't try X11 :slight_smile: Even if X was running in OpenBSD right from the beginning. Only a little less fancy, If you're used to see penguins.

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