It really depends on your Wi-fi card. If you're installing FreeBSD on bare metal with an Intel card, iwx now supports Wifi 6 and 6E cards. Although, since I haven't tested it myself, I can't say it will work as expected if it works at all.

> - The console terminal defaults to 80x25, I don't know how to resize it.

Select console terminal at the boot screen and type the following:

  gop list
  gop set {mode number}

> - I can't figure out how to start X Windows.

Assuming you've installed the appropriate graphics driver from the pkg or ports repo:

  pkg install xorg
  startx

> - If I run it in a VM (e.g. VirtualBox), the network bridging doesn't work so my FreeBSD instance has no internet access.

https://freebsdfoundation.org/freebsd-project/resources/inst...

Step 8 might help.

Anyway, there are some options to ease into it more. I find some of the ancient FreeBSD-isms a bit grating on occasion but overall I'm glad it's part of the mix.

----

0: https://ghostbsd.org/

1: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/not-actually-linux-d...

You do need to be sure your desktop machine is well-suited for OpenBSD. This means supported Intel or AMD graphics (Nvidia won't work well if at all, and not all AMD will either) and network/wifi card.

https://awesomewm.org/

Most of what I do happens in a browser, terminal, or emacs.

The only place FreeBSD (or any of the other BSDs) is less robust is driver support, though most common stuff is available. In any event, those needing support for the latest greatest of hardware are probably better of with Windows.

This is why FreeBSD loses in my view. The arrogance of claiming to be a complete system when basic stuff like wifi doesn’t work.

Wi-fi is not basic.

Having written a wifi driver, that’s something I’m comfortable stating unequivocally.

The hardware is almost always proprietary and undocumented, and in many cases (looking at you, Broadcom), a poorly-designed shitshow of complex errata, proprietary magic numbers required for initialization, and in general, an absolute dogshit technology stack.

The only reason Linux has working Wi-Fi at all tends to be because it was used to power a lot of cheap consumer access points, and Wi-Fi chipset manufacturers released binary and open-source Linux drivers — generally of horrific quality, but drivers nonetheless.

For me, FreeBSD wifi works straight of the box on the laptop I have.

It will "work" correctly when it supports general consumer expectations e.g 5ghz networks, which has been a common complaint about FreeBSD for years now.

(Even if you get it to work, it's not going to be full speed)

Does this mean WiFI is only for Win/Mac?

The last time I had wifi driver issues on Linux was 2008.