150 MB Minimal FreeBSD Installation (vermaden.wordpress.com)
114 points by vermaden 5 days ago
aforwardslash 5 hours ago
Vaguely related, FreeBSD has a tool to generate custom small footprint variants, called nanobsd - https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=nanobsd&sektion=8&...
paffdragon 5 hours ago
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.
ggm 42 minutes ago
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.
vermaden 15 minutes ago
Thank You :)
> Do the same for X!
Details here:
- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2026/01/18/200-mb-ram-freebsd...
haunter 4 hours ago
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
vermaden 3 hours ago
GhostBSD is FreeBSD with GUI installer and MATE by default - it also comes with XFCE flavor.
Highly recommended.
nazgulsenpai an hour ago
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
Forgeties79 an hour ago
haunter 2 hours ago
Thanks exactly what I was looking for
seanw444 4 hours ago
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.
paulryanrogers 3 hours ago
Ghost BSD?
JPLeRouzic 3 hours ago
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.
Zambyte 2 hours ago
yjftsjthsd-h 4 hours ago
> Also keep in mind that You have entire static FreeBSD Rescue System available under /rescue dir.
If you have ZFS with boot environments, how valuable is that?
vermaden 3 hours ago
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.
cperciva 2 hours ago
You can access /rescue without rebooting, for one thing.
crest 4 hours ago
Wait until you run `pkg upgrade` and it takes several times the 150MiB...
vermaden 3 hours ago
Please read entire article (or at least skim read it) because I also cover that part :)