This release comes with a new live system that leverages ZFS, compression, and replication first introduced in FuryBSD by Joe Maloney. The 20.11.28 release contains numerous improvements, including OS fixes for linuxulator to improve Linux Steam performance, an updated kernel, and GhostBSD userland updates. Userland updates include a MATE desktop upgrade to version 1.24.1, Software Station performance improvements, and numerous application updates.
Does anybody have any experiences with Linuxulator? I’m quite curious about its performance compared to running the same binaries on Linux, and just how easy it is to use.
I’m a fan of Mate, use it on my Linux based systems whenever I can when setting up a new Linux desktop machine. But with BSD I’ve had problems getting hardware support, primarily because I’m biased towards hardware with Nvidia graphics which is often problematic, not just for BSD but Linux problematic as well. Regardless I’m going to have a crack at GhostBSD using the latest drivers, the install can churn away in the corner of the lab while I work.
Also it’s a bit of a pity this is only 64-bit, as I’d love having a crack at new desktops on older hardware, sometimes it does surprise!
My experience with the Linuxulator is a decade past, but when I was using it, I was using it to play the Linux version of Unreal Tournament 2004 on FreeBSD.
Playing UT2k4, I was getting a framerate about 30% higher than in Linux, putting it on part with Windows. Of course, in that era, Linux was a lousy performer when it came to graphics. The Linux version was also officially supported under FreeBSD’s Linux emulation as well, so it may have been an outlier.
As for setup, it’s about as easy as anything in FreeBSD that’s FreeBSD specific:
Add the appropriate entry in /etc/rc.conf, install the appropriate port or package, and you’re ready to go. I believe the Linuxulator is currently synced to CentOS 7, so the package for it installs the base CentOS system into a directory on your FreeBSD filesystem. From there you just need the appropriate Linux versions of missing libraries for software you use; there’s plenty of tutorials and walkthroughs online. It isn’t anything terribly complicated if you’re not afraid to use the command line.
This is pretty similar to my experience, but more like two decades ago around FreeBSD 4.x. Linux binaries ran pretty well (I think I was hosting a Quake server on the BSD box for my LAN). I do remember some binaries failing looking for ld-linux.so, but the Linux compatibility layer was pretty new at that point.
I ran FreeBSD as a desktop and router for a long time, and later even on some x86 laptops for a network demo tool. I haven’t booted it up in a long time, I should take it for a spin.
I’ve tried FreeBSD’s Linux compatibility layer on recent versions and many of the programs I’ve tried didn’t run (MAME was the biggest one that actually worked). It seems as if they no longer consider it all that important, even as they are losing market share to Linux. I think there’s an opportunity for alternative OSes that take advantage of the broad application support (and even driver support with the LKL project, which turns the Linux kernel into a library) that Linux provides, while still being better than Linux in some way (I’m working on such an OS; it won’t be BSD-based as such but many of its basic utilities will be from BSD).