Thanks for mentioning this, I am just beginning my FreeBSD journey and wanted to setup a small pre-boot env with mfsBSD[1], didn't know FreeBSD has a tool already to do something like that.
Do the same for X! Well.. a layered addition maybe. I've always felt it's bringing swags of stuff which never gets used. A non accelerated fb or vesa binding would do for a lot of things.
I liked this piece a lot. Nice write up of how you explored the space.
> What I really loved is that XLibre X11 packages DOES NOT CONFLICT with Xorg packages. You just install xlibre instead of xorg and everything works … even better then with Xorg
How do you control which one is used? I was expecting xlibreinit or something, but the rest of the post appears to just run xinit like normal with nothing that I noticed that would select an X implementation
In there an “accessible” BSD on the level of live CD Linux distros, like Debian? Hey you can play around but also install it if you want right here right now with a DE
I tried them all. Surprisingly macOS + homebrew feels more like FreeBSD with a layer of something else over the top that runs Photoshop. I am happy with that mid-ground.
I ran FreeBSD on actual hardware doing mail/web from about 1997-2014 then quit trying.
I haven't checked out GhostBSD's site in a while, and saw they had a version with a DE called "Gershwin" I've never heard of before. It looks really cool for those Apple folk among us https://github.com/gershwin-desktop/gershwin-desktop
I'd be interested to know too. I haven't seen one, but that's probably because the majority of the BSD demographic is for servers and such, which are mostly all headless.
I switched from Devuan (Debian without SystemD) to GhostBSD a few weeks ago. Until now it seems a very pleasant travel, even bringing back nice memories of Unix in the 1990 while using all the modern tools.
I suspect English is not your first language based on your profile and I'd like to give a tip: "until now" implies that what follows is no longer true, due to a recent event that changed it. "So far" is probably closer to what you wanted, which expresses that it's still true, but based on limited time / experience.
I always like to have options - with /rescue you have statically linked bectl(8) and zpool(8) and zfs(8) commands - which help to manage ZFS and ZFS Boot Environments.
Vaguely related, FreeBSD has a tool to generate custom small footprint variants, called nanobsd - https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=nanobsd&sektion=8&...
Thanks for mentioning this, I am just beginning my FreeBSD journey and wanted to setup a small pre-boot env with mfsBSD[1], didn't know FreeBSD has a tool already to do something like that.
[1]: https://github.com/mmatuska/mfsbsd
Debian Netinst joined the chat.
If you wanna a reliable, stable, dramas free and small Linux system (I know FreeBSD isn't Linux), Debian Netinst is the way.
I run it on my homelab for DNS, K8S, love it!
Do the same for X! Well.. a layered addition maybe. I've always felt it's bringing swags of stuff which never gets used. A non accelerated fb or vesa binding would do for a lot of things.
I liked this piece a lot. Nice write up of how you explored the space.
Thank You :)
I kinda did ... but for RAM usage and not disk space.Details here:
- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2026/01/18/200-mb-ram-freebsd...
> What I really loved is that XLibre X11 packages DOES NOT CONFLICT with Xorg packages. You just install xlibre instead of xorg and everything works … even better then with Xorg
How do you control which one is used? I was expecting xlibreinit or something, but the rest of the post appears to just run xinit like normal with nothing that I noticed that would select an X implementation
In there an “accessible” BSD on the level of live CD Linux distros, like Debian? Hey you can play around but also install it if you want right here right now with a DE
I tried them all. Surprisingly macOS + homebrew feels more like FreeBSD with a layer of something else over the top that runs Photoshop. I am happy with that mid-ground.
I ran FreeBSD on actual hardware doing mail/web from about 1997-2014 then quit trying.
GhostBSD is FreeBSD with GUI installer and MATE by default - it also comes with XFCE flavor.
Highly recommended.
I haven't checked out GhostBSD's site in a while, and saw they had a version with a DE called "Gershwin" I've never heard of before. It looks really cool for those Apple folk among us https://github.com/gershwin-desktop/gershwin-desktop
Oh wow I love that look! Might have to check this out as well.
Thanks exactly what I was looking for
I'd be interested to know too. I haven't seen one, but that's probably because the majority of the BSD demographic is for servers and such, which are mostly all headless.
Ghost BSD?
I switched from Devuan (Debian without SystemD) to GhostBSD a few weeks ago. Until now it seems a very pleasant travel, even bringing back nice memories of Unix in the 1990 while using all the modern tools.
I suspect English is not your first language based on your profile and I'd like to give a tip: "until now" implies that what follows is no longer true, due to a recent event that changed it. "So far" is probably closer to what you wanted, which expresses that it's still true, but based on limited time / experience.
> Also keep in mind that You have entire static FreeBSD Rescue System available under /rescue dir.
If you have ZFS with boot environments, how valuable is that?
I always like to have options - with /rescue you have statically linked bectl(8) and zpool(8) and zfs(8) commands - which help to manage ZFS and ZFS Boot Environments.
You can access /rescue without rebooting, for one thing.
Wait until you run `pkg upgrade` and it takes several times the 150MiB...
Please read entire article (or at least skim read it) because I also cover that part :)