Who dual-boots Debian & FreeBSD (or other BSD) & why?
Posted: 2019-07-21 06:37
So...I had a spare SATA disk lying around so I inserted it into my main desktop computer which boots Debian Buster and Windows 7. The two disks show up in the system as /dev/sda and /dev/sdb.
I wondered what to do with it so I thought to myself: why not install FreeBSD on the second drive?
So I did.
I then edited the file /etc/grub.d/40_custom like this:
And now, after updating grub, I'm able to boot Debian, Windows (almost never) & FreeBSD (mate session), with no alsa, pulseaudio or systemd.
Why? I've always been interested in the BSDs but my interest is primarily because I consider the sound system provided by FreeBSD or by OSS4, which I've written about in another topic, superior to Alsa plus PulseAudio with the sound cards I use. I hope I am mistaken but it seems to me that in Debian, development of the alternative has ground to a halt, specially after the time Debian's kfreebsd project was discontinued, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if OSS4 disappeared from all Debian repositories entirely. Choice is still possible but my own attempt to build OSS4 in Buster has been tortuous. Some packages are so intertwined with other packages as to make using mega packages very complicated; try simulate removing, for instance libasound2, the shared library for ALSA applications, and it is well-nigh impossible.
I wondered what to do with it so I thought to myself: why not install FreeBSD on the second drive?
So I did.
I then edited the file /etc/grub.d/40_custom like this:
Code: Select all
#!/bin/sh
exec tail -n +3 $0
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries. Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment. Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.
menuentry "FreeBSD 12.0" {
set root='(hd1,1)'
kfreebsd /boot/loader
}
Why? I've always been interested in the BSDs but my interest is primarily because I consider the sound system provided by FreeBSD or by OSS4, which I've written about in another topic, superior to Alsa plus PulseAudio with the sound cards I use. I hope I am mistaken but it seems to me that in Debian, development of the alternative has ground to a halt, specially after the time Debian's kfreebsd project was discontinued, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if OSS4 disappeared from all Debian repositories entirely. Choice is still possible but my own attempt to build OSS4 in Buster has been tortuous. Some packages are so intertwined with other packages as to make using mega packages very complicated; try simulate removing, for instance libasound2, the shared library for ALSA applications, and it is well-nigh impossible.