FreeBSD: Installation & First Look

hey guys welcome back to another video today we are going to have a first look at freebsd what is freebst well you might think oh yeah freebsd is another linux distribution it's not the difference between freebsd and actually a linux distribution is that freebsd is actually a whole operating system meaning they are providing with the kernel with the drivers the software the documentation and everything else whereas in linux we have the kernel and the drivers and the distribution will come up with the rest of the software that's the main difference between freebsd and linux there are also some other differences like for example the licensing but the main technical thing is that freebsd is a whole operating system whereas linux provides you only with the kernel and the drivers and then as i said before you will have distributions like ubuntu like arch linux like mangero and so on who will provide the rest of the packages so in this tutorial i'm going to install freebsd on kvm and i will just have a quick look on how to install it and how it works and especially how to install and remove packages so without further ado let's get going let's get going here and install freebsc on kvm now i'm assuming you are in arch linux so if you have kvm installed you can install freebsd here so that you can have a first look and you can see how you feel about it you can also install of course on virtualbox the procedure is going to be more or less the same except a few things that i will leave also in the video description below to a document on the freebsd website where it explains you what you have to do in case you're installing freebsd on virtualbox now i'm choosing kvm here because performance wise it is definitely better so the first thing we need to do is to decide which iso we want to download and i have already the website here open which is freebst.org so if you want go ahead and look through the website it's very nicely written and they have actually an excellent documentation on how to install freebst as well now to get started with a normal installation here we can go to download freebsd or go to getfreebst i'll click here on download and now we are asked to choose the image so most of the time we are going to choose amd64 so this is what i'm going to do here and we have several options here that we can download so we have the boot only iso we have the disk iso or the dvd iso so the difference here is that on the disk and dvd iso you'll have more packages already available in the medium what else in the boot only iso you will basically install everything from the network in my case i'm going to go with boot only because i want to install everything from the internet and the image to download is much smaller now i've already done that so i don't need to do this right now and i can close this up so i already prepared my virtual machine and if you have kvm you'll know already how to build anywhere your virtual machine i decided here to go with ufi so let me pull this up and click the start button here and go full screen so the machine and the installer are going to start in a second so this is the pre-bsd installer and i'm going to hit enter here to start installation now this is going to be a little bit strange because during the installation actually the monitor is recognized correctly but the installation process is going to hang very soon during one function and this is the function sm bus 0. so what we need to do here we actually need to change to the serial port so we need to go basically here to kvm and close this down then go to view and go to text console and select serial one now there is nothing here and let me go here to the view menu and take out the toolbar but if i hit enter the installer is starting now we can proceed here with the installation of previous d so we can hit install and we are asked to select our keymap so i'm gonna scroll down here and select mine which is the swiss keyboard here with accents and i can go on the top section here and click continue give a name to this machine i'm gonna call mine kvm free and then hit ok now here we can select the distribution components we want to install or not install so in my case i'm going to go with the defaults but i'm going to install also the ports 3 which is going to help me install also some other modules afterwards and then i can hit enter some installation files were not found on the boot volume the next few screens will allow you to configure networking that's fine so we can just hit enter and this is a network adapter i have in the virtual machine so i can hit enter here and i do want to configure ipv4 so i just hit yes and i want to configure also dhcp so i hit yes and it's going to take a moment to do this i don't need to configure ipv6 so i go for no here and hit enter by the way i'm moving here with the arrow keys and hit enter and for the resolver configuration for the name i'm just going to put in something here like kvm dot psd and dns one is fine and for the dns2 i'm going to put here just an example 8.8.8.8 and i'm going to hit okay now we're gonna select the mirror so you can scroll down here the list of countries i know there is one mirror for switzerland there you go and hit okay and now we can select the partitioning so we can go here for automatic manual we can open the shell and do it there or we go for automatic zfs i'm going to go this time just because i want to make it simple here to auto so i'm just going to hit ok and i want to use the entire disk so i'm just going to select the first option here now we can select the label we want to use in my case i'm going to use here the gpt label because it's a ufi system i could use also the bsd labels but this time i'm going to go for gpt so i can hit ok and this is fine for me so i'm just gonna hit finish here and commit now it's gonna connect to the server here and download and install the base packages so i'll be back when this is done so we are asked now for a new password for the root user so let me enter this very quickly and we type it and now we can select our time zone so let's go to the time zone you can select of course yours i'm going to select here mine which is down here and cest for observation is fine so i can hit yes i'm going to skip the time here and the date because anyway it's correct and now i can go with the system configuration so what i want to do here i want to enable several things sshd is already enabled i want to enable also mouse d to have my mouse or trackpad working i want to enable also ntpd to synchronize the system and the network time and i don't actually need power d because this is a virtual machine so i can hit ok and now we can select the options for the system hardening so here we have several things we can enable or disable for example on a normal installation i would probably disable reading kernel messages buffer for unprivileged users and the same also for process debugging but because this is a throwaway machine that's fine for me so the only thing i want to do actually here it's to disable send mail because i will not have a mail system in here and i will let rest as it is so i just hit ok and i would like to create a new user yes so the username my case my name the full name and uid we can leave empty for the default this is the user id and it's going to be selected by the system automatically logging group is going to be also automatically selected so we can let this empty so we can just hit enter and we can invite this user to another group i actually do want to do this i want to invite this to the wheel group because i'm going to configure this later for the sudo privileges and then we can hit enter login class i will let the default same for the shell and also the home directory and the home directory permissions now use password-based authentication yes so we can hit enter password empty no as a default so we can hit enter and random password also no so we can hit enter and now we can select the password for the user and retype it lock out the account after creation no as a default so we can hit enter and now we can write the user to the system by hitting y and hit enter i don't want to create other users here so i can type in and hit enter and we go back to our installer so the basic installation is actually done so if you have some things that you want to adjust here you can go ahead and do that by selecting the menus but in my case here i just want to exit and apply the configuration so i'm just going to hit ok so depending on the machine this is going to take some time so be patient here until the next dialogue comes up there you go so the installation is unfinished before exiting the installer would you like to open the shell for manual modifications i would say no for now so i just hit enter here and i want to reboot the machine so i hit reboot and the machine is going to reboot now so i go back now to the graphical console and as you can see now i actually can put back the toolbar and go full screen now the machine is rebooting and we are now in the boot menu so we can hit enter to start a new system and this time it should put actually up fine so i'm gonna take a moment here and then we will be asked to enter the username and the password there you go so i'll enter the root name here so root and the password because we need to see configure the system so let's clean this up i see it's working fine and the mouse also in the system is working fine and the keyboard as well so that's already a good sign what we need to do now is to actually build up our desktop environment now i will leave a link to the desktop environment manual on the video description below so that you can choose the one you want to install there are also the instructions there on how to activate all the components however before continuing let me just briefly tell you how the system startup works in freebsc so as opposed to the linux distributions that uses for example system 5 or systemd freebsd uses actually the traditional bsd style in it so under this style of units there are no run levels there are no init tab or such a things the startup is controlled by rc scripts so basically what this means is that when your system boots up the rc script reads the rc.com file and the rc.com file under defaults to determine which services are to be started so that means for example to enable gdm or stdm you're going to have to go into the rc.com file and enable the service there so that when the system boots up the rc script can boot up the service directly this makes the whole init system a little bit faster compared to a traditional linux in it and you can definitely feel it especially if you're installing this on real metal so let's go ahead now and install some packages that we need for our installation now the package manager in freebsd is called pkg very simply and the first package i want to actually install is sudo so to install it because it's not installed by default i can type in now install sudo any tensor now the package management tool is not yet installed on the system so we want to install it now i will type in yes and hit enter and it's gonna install that first and it's gonna take a second to do that there you go and now we can type in y and hit enter there you go and let me clean up the terminal now vim is not installed in freebsd so we need to use the by sudo command to change the settings for the pseudo privileges so let's type in vice sudo and hit enter and we basically scroll down here again to the regroup we talked about before which is right here and we delete the hashtag here and then we can save the file and exit v and this is done so let's clean up the terminal now the command to remove a package is pkg remove and then the name of the package itself it's a very simple package manager and until now when i tried it out it worked always very reliably so the next step would be actually to install the components we need for the desktop environment meaning the display server a display manager and the desktop environment itself so we can install this all at once so let's type in install display server is x work as you know and for the desktop environment it depends of course on which desktop environment you want to install in my case i want to go for kde so i want to install first sddm because it's display manager and i'm going to install also kde 5 which is going to include everything in kde including the applications and one component for sddm i want to install is plasma 5 sddm kcm and then we can hit enter now we can press y and hit enter to start the installation now this is going to take some time because it has to basically download extract and install the packages so be patient here and i'll also wait here of course and i'll be back when it's done so there you go the packages are now installed now there are still a few steps we need to do before we can actually reboot the machine first we need to actually enable the services we need and we need to actually configure also xor to work with kvm now if you're installing this on a laptop or on a pc you can probably skip this step but if you're installing on kvm you might have to do it because otherwise the video driver will not work correctly so let me clean up the terminal and type in x-work dash configure and hit enter and what we need to do basically we need to copy this xor.com.new file into the localhcx11 directory so to do this we can type in cp and then exwork.com.new and we can copy this in under slash user slash local slash etsy slash x11 and the name of the file is xorg.conf and then we can hit enter now we need to edit this xor.com file to make sure that the kvm machine uses the correct video driver so to do this we can type in v and then slash users slash local slash etsy slash x11 slash xorg.com any tensor and we need to basically go down here to the device section and change the driver here from mode setting to scfb to the sc frame buffer so we can type in here s c f b we close the double quotes and then we can save the file and exit v and this is done now we need to enable the services we need for kde now on freebsd there is a specific sequence of things we need to do and the first one is to enable the scripts we need if you are not comfortable working with v you can install also vim in freebst by typing in pkg install vim and hit enter type in the y here and it's going to take a second here to download and install there you go and now we can type in vim slash etsy slash rc.com and hit enter now this is the file where the services are going to be defined and the rc script is going to read from here when the machine boots up so what we want to do here we're going to enter insert mode and enter a few lines and the first one is dbus underscore enable equal double quote yes double quote so kde uses dbus and also the hull service for a message bus and hardware abstraction so we need to enable both so d bus is enabled next we are going to enable the halt service so we can type in hold underscore enable equal double quote yes and double quote to close and last but not least we need to enable also stdm our display manager so we can type in sddm underscore enable equal double quote yes and then double quote again let me just delete these last two lines here there you go and let's save the file and exit them let's clean up the terminal and the last step we need to do before we reboot the machine is to also mount the proc directory because it's required for kde so let's edit our fstab file by typing in vim slash etsy slash fstab and hit enter and we'll go down to the last line here and we enter a new line and the device is proc and the mount point is slash proc the file system type is proc fs the options are read in bright and the dump is zero and the path is also zero then we can save the file and exit them and clean up the terminal now we are ready to reboot the machine so let's type in reboot and hit enter now the disk is syncing and this is done and up time was 20 minutes and now it's rebooting it's going to take a second and we are going to be back in the boot menu there you go now we can hit enter and if everything went well we will be greeted by the sddm display manager there you go here we have stdm so we can enter our password and hit enter and we are now in the kde desktop and the resolution is also fine that means the video driver is working correctly so let's check here our installation you can see the difference for example between linux and freebst in linux you can choose whether you want to have everything installed in kde in previousd when you install the kde5 package it's going to install basically everything what's available in kde so for example here in the internet section we have lots of programs we have also kmail for example we don't have a browser this we can install it manually anyway under office we don't have libreoffice but we can install this of course but all other programs required for kde are already installed by default so let's type in here console and let's go full screen here and i will increase also the font size so to update the system we need to type in now sudo free psd dash update and then fetch to fetch the updates this corresponds basically to opt update command in ubuntu now we can hit enter and enter our pseudo password and it's going to check now for updates basically and this is going to take a moment so as i said in the intro the difference between linux and freebsd is freebsd is not a distribution freebsd is an operating system so it basically has everything inside it has a kernel drivers software documentation all comes with it whereas linux is actually coming only with a kernel at the drivers and it requires third party to build the distribution on top of it so arch linux for example is a distribution because it takes the kernel of linux and its drivers and then it builds on top of those and the same goes for other linux distributions so here we have basically a whole os it's maintained by freebsd all the packages all the system is installed at once basically and it's a completely different approach from linux by the way the licensing terms also for previous d are also different from linux linux has a copy left gpl or else freebsd uses actually a permissive bsd license so this is also to keep in mind now the system updates here it seems like it takes long but what it's doing here basically it's fetching the updates and prepare them to be applied to the system then once those are ready to install them it's going to take like one second so it's kind of a different approach on how we can update the system but it works very reliably i've been using now freebsd for the last couple of days and the difference in speed actually it's quite noticeable kde especially because it's a desktop environment which requires a lot of resources it's quite heavy nevertheless with previous d it's actually very snappy so here we can quit out of this and we can pull up basically the last command here with the up arrow and replace fetch with install and hit enter and now it's installing the updates and you will see it's really going to take like a couple of seconds and then it's going to be done there you go the updates are now installed so we have an up-to-date system now we can clean up the terminal and close this up and let's have a look at the info center let's type in info and as you can see here we are on kd plasma version 519.2 and the kernel version of freebsd is now 12.1 dash release so it's the latest one available and it runs really smoothly so again the packaging system here in freebsd it's very simple let me increase the font sizes again here so through this we can type in sudo pkg install firefox for example and hit enter enter the sudo password and it's going to check the repositories now we hit y and hit enter to install firefox it will take a second to do this there you go and firefox is now installed now if we go here to the launcher and we type in here firefox we'll see we have the firefox browser in here for us ready to go and there you go we can close this up now to remove a package here in freebsd is also very very simple so to do this we can type in sudo pkg remove firefox and hit enter proceed with the installing the packages yes and hit enter and now this is done so if we go back again into the launcher and we type in here firefox it's not anymore available in the system so all in all this is a quick overview on how you can install freebsd on kvm now if you want to try out freebsd and see how it works for you kvm or a virtual machine like virtualbox for example it's a great way to start up and see if you like the system and there is no better way to find out than trying out for yourself freebsd to see how it fits your workflow so there you go this is the basic installation of freebsd in this case on kvm so far i have to say i like freebsd it's very fast even on a virtual machine it feel very fast but of course this is just a first look and i will keep using it now for a while on the virtual machine and see how i feel about it and eventually i will do a more in-depth video in the future i hope you liked the video guys if you did please hit the like button below and subs to the channel if you haven't already subs always helps us out and if you want to support the channel you can do so by visiting our patreon website or you can donate via paypal to our website as well thank you so much for watching the video guys and i'll see you very soon in the next one

Channel: EF - Linux Made Simple

Views: 105,286

Rating: 4.9121389 out of 5

Keywords: Linux, Arch Linux, Software, Training, how to install, install arch linux, install linux, tech tips, it tips, linux tips, UEFI, linux help, linux uefi, freebsd

Id: kZyW7oiAvvo

Length: 23min 36sec (1416 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 19 2020