Testing FreeBSD as a Daily Driver Desktop

Yesterday I deleted my local installation of Qubes OS and moved on to FreeBSD on an Intel laptop. Qubes OS is great, however, it does limit the ability to screencast and establish online video presentations, which I need for software development. I already run a FreeBSD VPS server on the cloud and I’m happy to now test it as a daily driver on a laptop.

After using Qubes continuously for more than half a year, I see that installing and booting Qubes OS off an external USB SSD is better for me and my workflow. With an external Qubes installation I can still take advantage of security and compartmentalization features when I really need them and still use FreeBSD in a daily basis for business and communications.

In the future I expect to dedicate this Intel laptop exclusively to Qubes OS and do most of my work on a more powerful FreeBSD desktop.

Review of the Installation Process

Installing FreeBSD on this laptop was easy. However, I completed the process twice, because I first choosed UFS as my file system, which does not support disk encryption. The second time around I choosed ZFS and set up encryption.

Then I continued to installing XORG and i3 which is more easy than I expected. In my case it din’t need extra configuration apart from creating a properly configured “.xinitrc” file on your home directory.

Furthermore, I installed XRDP so I’m able to control this laptop from the comfort of my Macbook. This way I don’t need to use a KVM switch as I’m already at home within a LAN network.

FreeBSD is a great alternative to Linux as a server and I’m happy to further test drive it as a desktop.