FreeSBIE 2.0 on a MacBook Pro
I decided I would take the new FreeSBIE version for a spin, based on 6.2 it was supposed to have support for booting on the new Intel Mac's that don't have legacy hardware support anymore (PS/2 and whatnot). FreesBIE started booting, and that is when I lost all keyboard control. I left my MacBook Pro sit for a good 15 minutes, after which I heard the CD spin down, disappointed I saw that the FreeSBIE logo was still sitting over top of the screen.
Not expecting much, I hit the space bar on my laptops keyboard, and away it went. I was sitting at the console logged in as the FreeSBIE user. My initial thought was dmesg. By accident I typed this on my Bluetooth enabled keyboard, and it really surprised me that it even worked. It had detected my Bluetooth keyboard, and connected to it somehow so it could be used with my MacBook Pro!
After the dmesg I grabbed a USB mouse and plugged it in (using X11 without a right click button is just about as hard as in Windows), as it had not connected to my Bluetooth Mighty Mouse. Upon plugging my mouse in, it recognized it, however it did not start a moused for it. So I had to start it myself:
moused -t auto -p /dev/ums3
Then to make sure it worked, I enabled the console based mouse pointer:
vidcontrol -m on
And moved the mouse around. Sweet it worked.
I then proceeded to try Xorg, with startx as the FreeSBIE user, and it worked. I had a fully working XFCE desktop sitting in front of me. The MacBook Pro is mighty fast running XFCE, I opened up FireFox which took a while to load from the CD, however once in Cache, opening FireFox took merely seconds, which is faster than when running it in Mac OS X where it will sit in the Dock and bounce a few times before opening, then again, FreeBSD had 1.8 GB of ram left over after starting XFCE, Mac OS X takes up at least 700 Mb with all the stuff I normally have running, so that could make the difference.
Everything worked great, two minor things that did not work: Wireless and Wired
internet. Just minor :P. That is the reason that right now you are not also
looking at screen shots. I don't actually own any USB flash drives, since I
transfer all files over the network, and I lose the damn things all the time.
According to Mac OS X it is an Atheros based 5424 card, which also supports N.
The older model MacBook Pro's with the Core Duo's did have their Wireless card
supported, so I am unsure why it is failing, maybe it is because the chipset
has changed, the ath_hal does not support it yet. The wired card is not working
either, and that is probably since the if_sk driver has not been updated yet.
There is an experimental driver in -CURRENT which has better support for the
Marvell chipset for the GigBit-E cards, which will be awesome.
I am looking forward to more improvements in FreeBSD to run on the newer hardware, and soon I might be triple booting my MacBook Pro with Mac OS X, Windows, and FreeBSD. It might sound weird, but Mac OS X does not have the same interfaces available in terms of being able to develop for it as Mac OS X, so it makes sense to have it on my main laptop as well.
FreeSBIE has changed a lot since it's 2.0 inception, and certainly still has places it can go, however for what they have packed onto one CD it is very impressive.
It was an experience, and it was a shame wireless did not work, otherwise it would have made it much easier for me to decide to go with it, and do it. We shall see what the future holds for me, and my MacBook Pro.
