Stefano Marinelli

About a month ago, while talking with a colleague who had experience only with Linux, he mentioned that he knew of the BSDs but had never "had the courage" to try them. I suggested he give them a shot, reminding him not to think of BSDs as "just another Linux" but as entirely different operating systems. Focusing on security, I recommended OpenBSD - also mentioning HardenedBSD, sure it would pique his interest.

A few hours ago, he called me about something else and confirmed that for weeks now, he's been using OpenBSD on his laptop (disk encrypted), FreeBSD on two servers, and NetBSD on an embedded device at home. He plans to experiment with HardenedBSD and DragonflyBSD in the coming weeks.

However, he did have one complaint: we've known each other for five years, and I never encouraged him to try this earlier! 😀

#BSD #OpenBSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #HardenedBSD #DragonflyBSD #Security #Tech #FOSS #RunBSD

Feb 13, 2025 at 9:09pmWeb
Show threadPsyhackologicalFeb 13, 2025
@stefano will Free/OpenBSD work out of the box for programming on the laptop though?
Show threadPeter N. M. HansteenFeb 14, 2025

@psyhackological @stefano In my experience, OpenBSD tends to Just Work(tm), but you may hit snags if the hardware is new enough that no developer has had their hands on the kit or if it's otherwise somewhat exotic.

Hints can be found in this piece which is mostly about planned obsolescence https://nxdomain.no/~peter/blog_wild_wild_world_of_windows.html (also links therein).

The Impending Doom of Your Operating System Going to or Past 11, Versus the Lush Oasis of Open Source Systems

Show threadGabe SaltarFeb 14, 2025
@stefano Hi. This past week I have been trying out Freebsd 14.2. Coming from a Linux background, I was able to get my laptop configured and running Freebsd no problems, until I realized I couldn't get #Spotifyd working. I even tried to get it working in Linux, and no luck over there either. If you have any ideas on how to get Spotify working in Freebsd, please share. Thanks.
Show threadTomAokiFeb 14, 2025

@gabe_saltar @stefano
How did you try to install Spotidyd?
I myself don't use Spotify, so not sure they actually works or not, but searching "spotify" on https://www.freshports.org/, 4 results.
https://www.freshports.org/audio/spotifyd/
https://www.freshports.org/audio/spotify-player/
https://www.freshports.org/audio/spotify-qt/
https://www.freshports.org/audio/spotify-tui/

Each pages has informations about availabilities of pre-built (with default options) packages.

And for audio/spotifyd, looking into
https://cgit.freebsd.org/ports/tree/audio/spotifyd
there is files/spotifyd.in.
https://cgit.freebsd.org/ports/tree/audio/spotifyd/files/spotifyd.in
This file should be installed as /usr/local/etc/rc.d/spotifyd with some automatic replace on build or install (%%PREFIX%% in it should be replaced with actual place to be needed).
See line 8 to 16 for how to configure.

And note that even with the configurations, if you want it running before restarting the whole system, you would need `service spotifyd start`. See service (8) manpage for detailed usage of `service` command.

#FreeBSD #Spotify #FreshPorts

FreshPorts -- The Place For Ports - Most recent commits

Most recent commits

Show threadGabe SaltarFeb 14, 2025

@TomAoki @stefano Thanks for the info. I will look into this.

FYI. I was able to get #Spotifyd running in discovery mode in my #ArchLinux machine. However, I am trying to get #Spotify-TUI to use #Spotifyd but no luck so far.

My idea was to try to get it running in Linux first, because I am more familiar with it, and then retry it on Freebsd.

Show threadDavid Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)Feb 14, 2025
@gabe_saltar @TomAoki @stefano I managed to get spotifyd working occasionally but never via the rc script. It also doesn't work if avahi is running. I spent some time trying to debug, but couldn't figure out the problem.
Show threadGabe SaltarFeb 16, 2025

@TomAoki @stefano Hello Gentlemen! So I went down the #Spotify #Freebsd rabbit hole... And these were my findings:

1) #librespot, & #spotifyd were the only #Spotify clients I was able to get to “work". | discovery mode only.

2) The #psst github project seems promising.

https://github.com/jpochyla/psstI

a) I built it & ran it successfully in Linux.

b) In bsd fails to build. Complains about not finding a git config file. Don't know how to fix that.

3) Ideas are welcome.

Show threadTomAokiFeb 16, 2025

@gabe_saltar @stefano
Well, psst doesn't seems to be in ports tree (including deleted ones).
https://www.freshports.org/search.php?stype=name&method=match&query=psst&num=10&category=&deleted=includedeleted&orderby=category&orderbyupdown=asc&search=Search&format=html&branch=head

With this search, all ports including "psst" somewhere in its ports name (like appst, bpsstc,...) are looked for.

And any software which are NOT aware of FreeBSD (or use nothing outside POSIX spec) usually requires some porting for FreeBSD to build/work.
So anyone want it to work on FreeBSD usually needs functionalities of ports framework.

If you want it to be built on FreeBSD by yourself, you'd better reading Porter's Handbook (and for better understanding, reading files in /usr/ports/Mk/, starting from /usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk).
https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/porters-handbook/
https://cgit.freebsd.org/ports/tree/Mk

Some hints (quite rough predictions without reading the psst repo):
If the path in shebang line ( for example, something Linux has in /bin/ but FreeBSD optionally has in /usr/local/bin/ if installed) is the issue, "USES=shebangfix" in ports Makefile would be wanted.
If the upstream is GitHub, "USE_GITHUB= yes" in ports Makefile would help.

#FreeBSD #ports

Show threadGabe SaltarFeb 16, 2025
@TomAoki @stefano
Thanks again for the info. I just was able to build #psst and successfully run it in FreeBSD. Download the source code with git, and build it there. And that was it. It ain't perfect, but it works.
Show threadDavid Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)Feb 16, 2025
@gabe_saltar @TomAoki @stefano I gave up on spotifyd and installed shairport, which makes the FreeBSD machine appear as an AirPort speaker, so a phone can stream to it. Since we were using the phone to control it, this didn’t make much difference (except maybe to the phone’s battery life).
Show threadGabe SaltarFeb 16, 2025

@david_chisnall @TomAoki @stefano
Spotifyd and Librespot, work in discovery mode. Which is exactly what you described as an AirPort speaker.

I was trying to build Psst from their source code provided in github, but it fails to build. Something about a git config file not been found. Please see the link below. FYI. They claim it is in WIP for OpenBSD.

https://github.com/eecs183finalprojects/psst2

GitHub - eecs183finalprojects/psst2: Fast and multi-platform Spotify client with native GUI

Fast and multi-platform Spotify client with native GUI - eecs183finalprojects/psst2

GitHub