My FreeBSD setup

Update in 2025: After using FreeBSD for a few years, the little netbook gave up the ghost. I no longer use FreeBSD as a daily driver. I’m leaving the information below in case I ever pick FreeBSD up again.

Over the past few years, I’ve been feeling more and more ill at ease with my Linux systems. The main reason for this is systemd. I won’t go into a full-on anti-systemd rant in this post; there has been enough ink spilled on that topic.

Initially, I tried out OpenBSD, but had a bit of trouble getting going started (mainly, I couldn’t get neovim to build), and the system performance on my netbook was pretty bad. I switched to FreeBSD, assuming that some of these things would be better, and indeed, they were. Neovim is just a pkg command away (even though it’s version 0.1.2), and the whole system feels incredibly responsive.

I also decided to drop KDE and switch to i3, the window manager. I never used KDE on my netbook, on that one I always kept OpenBox. I’m absolutely in love with i3. It’s very lightweight, though requires a pretty fair amount of configuration in order to be usable (or at the very minimum, fit my needs).

After a few days of mucking about, this is what my setup looks like:

Netbook screenshot

And this is what my lock screen looks like:

Lock screen

I’ll keep this article updated with my configuration, mostly as a way to help myself set up new systems. Some of this stuff might end up in my dotfiles repository, though.

Base system

/etc/sysctl.conf:

# Enchance shared memory X11 interface
kern.ipc.shmmax=67108864
kern.ipc.shmall=32768

# Enhance desktop responsiveness under high CPU use (200/224)
kern.sched.preempt_thresh=224

# Bump up maximum number of open files
kern.maxfiles=200000

# Disable PC speaker
hw.syscons.bell=0

# Shared memory for Chromium
kern.ipc.shm_allow_removed=1

# Allow users to mount disks
vfs.usermount=1

# Synaptics configuration
hw.psm.synaptics.min_pressure=40

# Suspend on lid close
hw.acpi.lid_switch_state=S3

/boot/loader.conf:

# Load intel graphics driver
i915kms_load="YES"

# Reduce GPU power consumption (SandyBridge/IvyVridge)
drm.i915.enable_rc6=7

# Allow loading of the realtek firmware (wifi dongle)
legal.realtek.license_ack=1

# Use new graphical console driver
kern.vty=vt

# Devil worship in loader logo
loader_logo="beastie"

# Boot-time kernel tuning
kern.ipc.shmseg=1024
kern.ipc.shmmni=1024
kern.maxproc=10000

# Load MMC/SD card-reader support
mmc_load="YES"
mmcsd_load="YES"
sdhci_load="YES"

# Access ATAPI devices through the CAM subsystem
atapicam_load="YES"

# Filesystems in Userspace
fuse_load="YES"

# Intel Core thermal sensors
coretemp_load="YES"

# In-memory filesystems
tmpfs_load="YES"

# Asynchronous I/O
aio_load="YES"

# Handle unicode on removable media
libiconv_load="YES"
libmchain_load="YES"
cd9660_iconv_load="YES"
msdosfs_iconv_load="YES"

# Load sound subsystem
snd_driver_load="YES"

# Enable better trackpad support
hw.psm.synaptics_support=1

/etc/rc.conf:

hostname="somemachine.home.wedrop.it"

# Enable DHCP but don't let it block the boot process
background_dhclient="YES"

# Try to configure re0 (wired) on boot
ifconfig_re0="DHCP"

# Clone urtwn0 to a device called wlan0
wlans_urtwn0="wlan0"

# Configure wlan0 to connect through WPA and use DHCP
ifconfig_wlan0="WPA SYNCDHCP"

keymap="uk.iso.kdb"

# Remote logins
sshd_enable="YES"

# Set dumpdev to "AUTO" to enable crash dumps, "NO" to disable
dumpdev="AUTO"

moused_enable="YES"

# powerd: hiadaptive speed while on AC power, adaptive while on battery
powerd_enable="YES"
powerd_flags="-a hiadaptive -b adaptive"

# Reduce power consumption by using higher C-states than the default of C1
performance_cx_lowest="Cmax"
economy_cx_lowest="Cmax"

# Enable bluetooth
hcsecd_enable="YES"
spdp_enable="YES"

# Synchronize system time
ntpd_enable="YES"
# Let ntpd make time jumps larger than 1000sec
ntpd_flags="-g"

# Enable dbus (IPC)
dbus_enable="YES"

# Enable hald (hardware detection), should not be required.
# hald_enable="YES"

# Enable graphical login
slim_enable="YES"

User configuration

I haven’t documented or stored all of this to my dotfiles repositories yet. Come back later? :)

Installed ports

Following is a list of packages that I usually install pretty quickly after setting up a new system:

Terminal and shell stuff

  • pv (pipe viewer)
  • rxvt-unicode (terminal)
  • scrot (screen capture)
  • sudo
  • the_silver_searcher (grep replacement for vim)
  • zsh (shell)

Development

  • neovim (from source)
  • autotools
  • clang38
  • cmake
  • git
  • gmake (BSD-make is sadly not very supported)

Desktop environment

  • dmenu (app launcher for i3)
  • feh (background manager)
  • firefox
  • git-gui
  • i3-gaps (from source)
  • keepass (password manager)
  • slim (graphical login)

I’m an absolute FreeBSD noob, so some of the stuff listed here is probably suboptimal. Feel free to tell me on Twitter or drop me an email if there’s anything I should change.