FBSD on Mac

[Felix Friedlander]

> On 27 May 2018, at 13:28, blubee blubeeme <gurenchan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Sun, May 27, 2018, 10:03 Felix Friedlander <felixphew0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 27 May 2018, at 10:23, blubee blubeeme <gurenchan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On Sun, May 27, 2018, 08:02 M. P. <wintermute24x7 at icloud.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Hello I have succeded in creating an install disk for Mac but when I try
>>>> to install single user the process hangs and I get the message  Power Fault
>>>> Detected. Any Ideas? Does the Mac hard drive have to be formatted for FBSD?
>>> 
>>> I wouldn't recommend trying to run anything not Mac OS on their machines.
>>> 
>>> If your Mac is up to version 11.2 or lower you should be fine.
>>> 
>>> The new Mac hardware actively does things to thwart anyone who tries to run
>>> non Mac OS.
>>> 
>>> Even if you do get it up and running, the wifi will be broken so you'll
>>> need a dongle.
>>> 
>>> GPU will give you trouble as well.
>>> 
>>> If it's one of the newer Mac with those led buttons you're totally out of
>>> luck.
>>> 
>>> If you are able to reverse engineer custom hardware and write custom
>>> drivers then you might be OK.
>>> 
>>> If not, either run FreeBSD in a VM on Mac, sell that Mac and buy a
>>> compatible laptop or ...
>>> 
>>> Best,
>>> Owen
>> 
>> On the contrary, I’ve had great success running FreeBSD on Apple hardware. The hardware’s not actively thwarting anything, and FreeBSD already has drivers for most of the custom or less common hardware. (The one exception is Wi-Fi, which is unlikely to work unless you have quite an old Mac.)
>> 
>> When you say the boot process hangs, does the entire OS stop responding, or just the installer? Is there any more detail in the message than Power Fault Detected?
>> 
>> And to answer your question, yes, the hard drive has to be formatted, but the FreeBSD installer will do that for you automatically.
>> 
>> - Felix
> 
> What Mac hardware version do you run?
> Like I said in my previous reply if the user has newer Mac hardware he's going to be in for a world of pain.
> 
> I have a 11,4 retina macbook pro and it's so problematic I bought a new laptop.
> 
> Audio also proves problematic.
> 
> If the users laptop is newer than 11,2 there will be issues.
> 
> Best,
> Owen

I’ve run FreeBSD on everything from a PowerBook G4 through to a MacBookPro12,1 (which is a retina the same vintage as the 11,4 except with 13" screen). Audio works fine, as does graphics (after I submitted a 2-line patch to fix the vt(4) hard-coded resolution limit).

A touch bar will probably cause major issues, but those are only present on the 13,2 and 13,3 (and their successors).

Other than that there may be minor issues (e.g. the tilde key needing to be remapped), but nothing that would stop me from installing FreeBSD.

- Felix