Thanks for mentioning this, I am just beginning my FreeBSD journey and wanted to setup a small pre-boot env with mfsBSD[1], didn't know FreeBSD has a tool already to do something like that.
Do the same for X! Well.. a layered addition maybe. I've always felt it's bringing swags of stuff which never gets used. A non accelerated fb or vesa binding would do for a lot of things.
I liked this piece a lot. Nice write up of how you explored the space.
In there an “accessible” BSD on the level of live CD Linux distros, like Debian? Hey you can play around but also install it if you want right here right now with a DE
I tried them all. Surprisingly macOS + homebrew feels more like FreeBSD with a layer of something else over the top that runs Photoshop. I am happy with that mid-ground.
I ran FreeBSD on actual hardware doing mail/web from about 1997-2014 then quit trying.
I haven't checked out GhostBSD's site in a while, and saw they had a version with a DE called "Gershwin" I've never heard of before. It looks really cool for those Apple folk among us https://github.com/gershwin-desktop/gershwin-desktop
I'd be interested to know too. I haven't seen one, but that's probably because the majority of the BSD demographic is for servers and such, which are mostly all headless.
I switched from Devuan (Debian without SystemD) to GhostBSD a few weeks ago. Until now it seems a very pleasant travel, even bringing back nice memories of Unix in the 1990 while using all the modern tools.
I suspect English is not your first language based on your profile and I'd like to give a tip: "until now" implies that what follows is no longer true, due to a recent event that changed it. "So far" is probably closer to what you wanted, which expresses that it's still true, but based on limited time / experience.
I always like to have options - with /rescue you have statically linked bectl(8) and zpool(8) and zfs(8) commands - which help to manage ZFS and ZFS Boot Environments.
[1]: https://github.com/mmatuska/mfsbsd
I liked this piece a lot. Nice write up of how you explored the space.
Details here:
- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2026/01/18/200-mb-ram-freebsd...
I ran FreeBSD on actual hardware doing mail/web from about 1997-2014 then quit trying.
Highly recommended.
If you have ZFS with boot environments, how valuable is that?