So, i’ve been away from FreeBSD for a while (used to run it as a desktop back in 2001-2005 :D) and was wondering on a few things.
what is the state of 3d acceleration? AMDGPU ok? What about Vulkan?
what is the state of running things like say, Steam via Linux compatibility? Is this something that works?
Anyone crazy and trying to use FreeBSD as a unix gaming platform?
(i swear its a curse, i finally get Linux running relatively happily for the stuff i care about, so back to something even more frickin niche Getting too much actual stable game time in Witcher 3 it seems… )
edit:
Thread open for status updates on other stuff that does/doesn’t work from a desktop end user point of view…
I have 4 days off this weekend and a second box with a Vega 64 in it that doesn’t get used much. Might give it a shot…
I would love to get out of linux with all the shit thats been happening. But, I can’t do everything I do in linux on freebsd, unfortunately. Nor on windows for that matter.
I hope theres some energy into either a fork or BSD soon or IDK what I’m gunna do.
Probably. Its the same code as in linux, though porting some features over probably also has some trouble. I should add freeBSD stuff to my AMDGPU thread huh?
Not that i don’t believe you, but any examples of problems you’ve run into (both so i know what i’m looking at running into and/or maybe have seen it before)?
Like i said, i’ve been away a while, but i did run BSD on the desktop for a few years back in the early-mid 00s…
I’ve got a haswell box with a spare vega 64 in it sitting there mostly idle. Its currently running ubuntu and mostly just doing ad blocking web proxy at the moment… but now i run brave that’s less important.
Its mostly apps that I use. I like REAPER in linux more than I do in windows because I can use apps like patchage and build a stupidly complex audio setup for things I’m doing. Music production wise and DJ software wise, as well, BSD is just not there for me.
Plus, steam. I’d like it if I could stream games from steam to twitch but BSD can’t really… do that.
On top of all that I run a lot of random applications all the time. And even my linux installs are randomly run. I have backups of systems I’ve built to specifically stress test hardware in many different ways to test things like LD and LI cache speed, different heatsoak stress tests, and the like. My favorite thing to do is make a computer cry, and unfortunately BSD mostly makes me cry, not makes the hardware cry, lol.
And the worst part of all of it is my favorite is openbsd, the least featured one, lol.
Tested KDE version of FuryBSD few days ago. The installer didn’t ask what keyboard layout I’m using so after fresh install I was stuck with US-ANSI, and installer only configured ZFS, no UFS options.
Those are just minor inconveniences in my opinion, other than that FuryBSD is pretty good option if you don’t want to go and configure desktop environment yourself.
Stuff like Netflix does not work as far as I know.
I am using a GTX 1080 with Nvidia 440 driver at 1440p and 144hz.
Really good. No tearing. KDE, i3wm, awesomewm.
You would have to use WINE. I use FreeBSD as a hypervisor and development machine so I haven’t installed WINE/Steam.
Maybe that helps?
Looks like there are a ton of people on the FBSD forums and YouTube.
The package management has been superb. Bhyve is flawless with Free/Net/OpenBSD, Debian, and Ubuntu VMs. Can’t get around XFS errors to get CentOS going. Electron stuff is becoming more available on FreeBSD so if you like Atom, VSCode, etc. you’ll have access to that stuff.
As a systems engineer you probably already know this but definitely get used to /usr/local/etc over /etc/
SDDM is a great DM, handles a lot of the settings and loading things for you. You can still tweak ~/.xinitrc but I’ve not had to with SDDM.
vim plugins have also been 100%. YouCompleteMe, vim-go, vim-airline, color schemes, etc.
Of course, if you go FreeBSD full time you’ll have to use Emacs if you don’t already. It’s the requirement.
Getting too much actual stable game time in Witcher 3 it seems… 
