Adventures with FreeBSD on Raspberry Pi

 

Raspberry Pi Board with FreeBSD Logo

The Raspberry Pi is a great device to learn about computing, to run small server tasks, and to experiment with. Unfortunately, Raspberry Pi OS is 1) Debian-based and 2) is just plain weird. If you really want to use the Raspberry Pi as a learning tool, I recommend installing FreeBSD. It uses plain text configuration files for pretty much everything, which makes understanding the underlying processes much easier. You can also use jails, which are a great way to experiment without risk and are much easier to setup than Linux alternatives like Containers or Docker. FreeBSD is commonly used for routers, meaning that it works well on low powered devices. With FreeBSD 13.0, the system now fully supports ARM.

The following how-to articles follow my personal setup for my home Pi. I’m using it as a file server, ad blocker, and VPN. I’ll also do a bunch of other stuff just to experiment and write articles about it. If there’s anything you would like me to write about, you can reach out at [email protected].

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