Anyone using FreeBSD?

Lounge EndeavourOS pub
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Hello everyone (who reads this),
A little while ago, I bought a new computer and now I have a spare/no-longer-important machine to experiment with. I’ve downloaded FreeBSD-13.1-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso which is a 4+ GIG ISO file and used imagewriter to create a bootable USB stick.
Upon booting, I get three options of which the third one is Live DVD (or something “live”). Then the system boots and stops at a login prompt. I can log in as root and issue a few commands but find it strange that no graphical user interface gets loaded for the live preview option.

If anyone has figured this out than I’d be grateful for a super quick tut on how to boot FreeBSD 13.1 live preview with a functioning DE.
Thank you! - v

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While I was waiting for someone to respond I lucked out and found the info which I couldn’t find all afternoon.
https://people.freebsd.org/~rodrigc/doc/handbook/using-live-cd.html
The Live CD option does not boot into a graphical user interface.

I wish this tiny bit of info was available on their download page.

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hello,

FreeBSD comes without GUI and is a little bit more difficult than arch linux.
If you want to test it in the gui, you can try NomadBSD. NomadBSD is based on FreeBSD and contains GUI. you can test it as a live system and you can also install it. For installation NomadBSD needs the full disk, it doesn’t support installation on a partition.

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Aren’t there support channels for FreeBSD?

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I am running FreeBSD on my home server. It seems snappier than it did with Linux, though that’s subjective.
I might recommend ghostbsd for the LiveCD with GUI. Though to me, BSD seems a bit farther behind (in the desktop arena) than Linux.
As far as support channels, umm…there’s less activity and less speedy response as far as I can tell (compared to Linux forums).

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If there are fewer users then there will be fewer people reading forums etc. It’s still better to try to get help in the right places though.

Otherwise, every forum might as well be a general tech forum where noone can find anything and the same questions get asked over and over. :pensive:

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I have been using BSD for years now from version 3.3 on. So far I have had good experiences with the support forums. The documentation is also great (like arch). But you just have to put a bit of work into reading the documentation. Just like I am doing now with Endeavouros. If you want a nice desktop and don’t like tinkering around maybe you can better use a linux disto. But if you like a bit of tinkering around BSD fun, and rock stable. But I’m biased

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@dbarronoss
thank you for your suggestions. Unfortunately, that first experience made me lose interest.

@pycrk
I should have picked NomadBSD but I didn’t know. Thanks for suggesting it.

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Hi bsdton,
welcome to the EndeavourOS community! :slight_smile:

I knew that FreeBSD has a support forum but I didn’t post there because I didn’t want to create an account for a one time only use. My hunch was that some EOS users will know which was the case.