grahamperrin

A concise comparison of operating systems. Some focus on root-on-ZFS, and on Plasma. Not intended to be comprehensive.

Describing availability is not necessarily a recommendation to install what's available.

The systems

• FreeBSD
• GhostBSD

grahamperrin

Seeking the best unofficial resources

I fed a forty-word paragraph to Google Gemini 2.5 Pro (Experimental) on the evening of Sunday 20th April. Twenty of the forty:

Where can I find general troubleshooting advice for FreeBSD? Emphasis on: general. … I'm looking for the best unofficial resources. Thanks.

Gemini offered a 508-word response. I:

1. reduced it to around 330 (not counting * or … as words)
2. added a link to the third edition (2018) of Absolute FreeBSD

grahamperrin

Script started on Sun Apr 13 01:59:44 2025
You have mail.
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # echo $SHELL

/bin/csh
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # date ; uptime

Sun Apr 13 01:59:52 BST 2025
 1:59AM  up 3 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.14, 0.24, 0.12
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # ghostbsd-version

grahamperrin

Script started on Sat Apr 12 20:16:09 2025
You have mail.
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # echo $SHELL
/bin/csh
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # date ; uptime
Sat Apr 12 20:16:19 BST 2025
 8:16PM  up 14 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.34, 0.15, 0.08
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # ghostbsd-version
24.10.1
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # freebsd-version -kru

grahamperrin

Script started on Sun Apr 13 12:15:30 2025
You have mail.
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # echo $SHELL
/bin/csh
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # date ; uptime
Sun Apr 13 12:15:40 BST 2025
12:15PM  up 2 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.24, 0.16, 0.07
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # ghostbsd-version
25.01-R14.2p2
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # freebsd-version -kru

grahamperrin

Script started on Sun Apr 13 08:18:53 2025
You have mail.
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # echo $SHELL

/bin/csh
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # date ; uptime

Sun Apr 13 08:19:04 BST 2025
 8:19AM  up 8 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.13, 0.08, 0.02
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # pkg -v

grahamperrin

grahamperrin:~ % echo $SHELL
/bin/tcsh
grahamperrin:~ % uname -mKU
amd64 1500030 1500030
grahamperrin:~ % setenv ABI FreeBSD:15:i386
grahamperrin:~ % /usr/bin/time -h pkg -o ABI_FILE=/usr/lib32/libc.so.7 -o INSTALL_AS_USER=true -o RUN_SCRIPTS=false --rootdir /home/grahamperrin/.i386-wine-pkg upgrade --fetch-only --quiet --yes --repository FreeBSD-ports-i386
Conflicts with the existing packages have been found.
One more solver iteration is needed to resolve them.
        1m3.60s real            7.07s user              1.75s sys
grahamperrin:~ % pkg -o ABI_FILE=/usr/lib32/libc.so.7 -o INSTALL_AS_USER=true -o RUN_SCRIPTS=false -r /home/grahamperrin/.i386-wine-pkg upgrade -F -r FreeBSD-ports-i386  Updating FreeBSD-ports-i386 repository catalogue...

grahamperrin

Script started on Sun Dec 22 07:30:24 2024
You have mail.
root@fourteen-pkgbase:~ # echo $SHELL
/bin/tcsh
root@fourteen-pkgbase:~ # date ; uptime
Sun Dec 22 07:30:30 GMT 2024
 7:30AM  up 6 mins, 2 users, load averages: 0.21, 0.12, 0.05
root@fourteen-pkgbase:~ # echo $EDITOR
vi
root@fourteen-pkgbase:~ # grep nano /etc/csh.cshrc

grahamperrin

Script started on Sun Dec 22 06:45:49 2024
You have mail.
root@fourteen-pkgbase:~ # echo $SHELL

/bin/tcsh
root@fourteen-pkgbase:~ # date ; uptime

Sun Dec 22 06:46:01 GMT 2024
 6:46AM  up  1:18, 1 user, load averages: 0.20, 0.33, 0.39
root@fourteen-pkgbase:~ # freebsd-version -kru ; uname -aKU

grahamperrin

Script started on Thu Dec 19 18:57:07 2024
root@pkg:~ # echo $SHELL

/bin/csh
root@pkg:~ # bectl list -c creation

BE                                Active Mountpoint Space Created
13.3r                             -      -          53.3M 2024-07-20 15:42
14.1r                             NR     /          6.77G 2024-12-19 16:57
13.3-RELEASE-p8_2024-12-19_172054 -      -          2.11M 2024-12-19 17:20