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By running Folding@Home you can provide computing power that helps to find therapeutics for COVID-19 and other diseases. Please see Coronavirus – What we’re doing and how you can help in simple terms for more information. The software is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. If you want to run Folding@Home on FreeBSD, install the port biology/linux-foldingathome.

About

NomadBSD is a persistent live system for USB flash drives, based on FreeBSD®. Together with automatic hardware detection and setup, it is configured to be used as a desktop system that works out of the box, but can also be used for data recovery, for educational purposes, or to test FreeBSD®'s hardware compatibility.

Requirements

For a list of installed software packages see the MANIFEST file

The images for 64-bit and 32-bit computers fit on a >=5GB USB flash drive. A system with a 1.2GHz CPU and 1G of RAM should be able to run NomadBSD decently. Booting is possible via BIOS and UEFI.

Current Version

1.3.2



Errata

Development

n/a

You can check out the latest code and configuration files at GitHub.

Contributing to NomadBSD

News

Would you like to translate program interfaces or documentation? Are you a designer or programmer? Check out the open issues on GitHub . Do you have a cool idea for the project? Join the NomadBSD developer mailing list and let us know.

We are pleased to present the release of NomadBSD 1.3.2.

Changes since 1.3.1

The base system has been upgraded to FreeBSD 12.1-p6.

rtsx-kmod, which is a driver for Realtek card readers, has been added.

The ZFS layout used for installing NomadBSD on a harddisk has been changed to allow beactl to back up the boot environment. Thanks to @maurizio-emmex.

load_iichid has been added. It is a rc-script, which offers the user, via a dialog (1) menu, to load the experimental iichid driver from sysutils/iichid if it finds a I2C HID.

has been added. It is a rc-script, which offers the user, via a (1) menu, to load the experimental iichid driver from sysutils/iichid if it finds a I2C HID. graphics/intel-backlight has been added.

A curses menu has been added, which allows user to acknowledge licenses of certain wireless drivers in order to use them.

A unionfs_maxfiles rc.conf variable has been added. It controls how many files can be opened on the unionfs.

variable has been added. It controls how many files can be opened on the unionfs. graphics/mirage has been replaced by graphics/viewnior.

A patch from 12-STABLE has been added to the acpi_video module, which sends devd events whenever the brightness was changed.

module, which sends events whenever the brightness was changed. brightness_listener has been added. It is a tool that listens in the background on devd events for keypresses of screen brightness buttons and shows the current brightness level using dunst (1).

has been added. It is a tool that listens in the background on devd events for keypresses of screen brightness buttons and shows the current brightness level using (1). volumecontrol has been added. It is a wrapper around /usr/sbin/mixer to increase, decrease and toggle mute the soundcard and display the current value with dunst (1).

has been added. It is a wrapper around to increase, decrease and toggle mute the soundcard and display the current value with (1). Spanish translations have been added to nomadbsd-adduser . Thanks to Hugo Salgado.

. Thanks to Hugo Salgado. A bug which makes the brigtness keys of the ThinkPad T450 fail has been fixed.

The bwn(4) module was build with BWN_GPL_PHY enabled to build it with N-PHY support, which is needed for BCM43224 and BCM43225 devices.

enabled to build it with N-PHY support, which is needed for BCM43224 and BCM43225 devices. x11-drivers/xf86-input-keyboard and x11-drivers/xf86-input-mouse have been replaced by x11-drivers/xf86-input-libinput.

We now have set up a forum for you to look for help and give us feedback: https://forum.nomadbsd.org

We are pleased to present the release of NomadBSD 1.3.1.

Changes since 1.3

The base system has been upgraded to FreeBSD 12.1-p2

The automatic network interface setup has been improved. This includes better hardware detection, and support for IPv6.

The NomadBSD image size has exceeded the 4GB mark. A flash drive >= 5GB is now required.

Due to the bigger image size, mail/claws-mail was replaced by mail/thunderbird.

The NomadBSD setup now locks all kernel module packages to prevent users from running into problems when upgrading their packages.

nomadbsd-chusr , which is a graphical tool for modifying user accounts, has been added.

, which is a graphical tool for modifying user accounts, has been added. nomadbsd-sysinfo , which is a shell script to collect information about the running system, has been added.

, which is a shell script to collect information about the running system, has been added. Zeroconf via avahi and mdns has been added.

via and has been added. Czech translations have been added by Martin Orszulik.

French translations have been added by Grégory Reinbold.

Indonesian translations have been added by Andreas Bayu.

Key bindings for taking screenshots ( [Print] ), and for locking the screen ( Ctrl + Alt + L) have been added.

), and for locking the screen ( A theme for the lock screen has been added.

Several small tweaks and bug fixes have been added.

NomadBSD 1.3 is now available!

We are pleased to present the release of NomadBSD 1.3.

Changes since 1.2

The base system has been changed to FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE-p1

Due to a deadlock problem, FreeBSD's unionfs has been replaced by unionfs-fuse

The GPT layout has been changed to MBR. This prevents problems with Lenovo systems that refuse to boot from GPT if "lenovofix" is not set, and systems that hang on boot if "lenovofix" is set.

Support for ZFS installations has been added to the NomadBSD installer.

The rc-script for setting up the network interfaces has been fixed and improved. Support for setting the country code for the wlan device has been added.

Auto configuration for running in VirtualBox has been added.

A check for the default display has been added to the graphics configuration scripts. This fixes problems where users with Optimus have their NVIDIA card disabled, and use the integrated graphics chip instead.

NVIDIA driver version 440 has been added.

nomadbsd-dmconfig, a Qt tool for selecting the display manager theme, setting the default user and autologin has been added.

nomadbsd-adduser, a Qt tool for added preconfigured user accounts to the system has been added.

Martin Orszulik added Czech translations to the setup and installation wizard.

The NomadBSD logo, designed by Ian Grindley, has been changed.

Support for localized error messages has been added.

Support for localizing the password prompts has been added.

Some templates for starting other DEs have been added to ~/.xinitrc .

. The interfaces of nomadbsd-setup-gui and nomadbsd-install-gui have been improved.

A script that helps users to configure a multihead systems has been added.

The Xorg driver for newer Intel GPUs has been changed from "intel" to "modesetting" .

to . /proc has been added to /etc/fstab

A D-Bus session issue has been fixed which prevented thunar from accessing samba shares.

DSBBg which allows users to change and manage wallpapers has been added.

The latest version of update_obmenu now supports auto-updating the Openbox menu. Manually updating the Openbox menu after packet (de)installation is therefore no longer needed.

Support for multiple keyboard layouts has been added.

www/palemoon has been removed.

mail/thunderbird has been removed.

audio/audacity has been added.

deskutils/orage has been added.

the password manager fpm2 has been replaced by KeePassXC

mail/sylpheed has been replaced by mail/claws-mail

multimedia/simplescreenrecorder has been added.

DSBMC has been changed to DSBMC-Qt

Many small improvements and bug fixes.

The first release candidate of NomadBSD 1.3 is now available!

The image(s) and instructions can be found here

We are pleased to present the first release candidate of NomadBSD 1.3.

Changes

The base system has been changed to FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE-p1

Due to a deadlock problem, FreeBSD's unionfs has been replaced by unionfs-fuse.

The GPT layout has been changed to MBR. This prevents problems with Lenovo systems that refuse to boot from GPT if lenovofix is not set, and systems that hang on boot if lenovofix is set.

is not set, and systems that hang on boot if is set. Support for ZFS installations has been added to the NomadBSD installer.

The rc-script for setting up the network interfaces has been fixed. Support for setting the country code for the wlan device has been added.

Auto configuration for running in VirtualBox has been added.

A check for the default display has been added to the graphics configuration scripts. This fixes problems where users with Optimus have their NVIDIA card disabled, and use the integrated graphics chip instead.

NVIDIA driver version 440 has been added.

nomadbsd-dmconfig, a Qt tool for selecting the display manager theme, setting the default user and autologin has been added.

nomadbsd-adduser, a Qt tool for added preconfigured user accounts to the system has been added.

Martin Orszulik added Czech translations to the setup and installation wizard.

The NomadBSD logo, designed by Ian Grindley, has been changed.

Support for localized error messages has been added.

Support for localizing the password prompts has been added.

Some templates for starting other DEs have been added to ~/.xinitrc .

. The interfaces of nomadbsd-setup-gui and nomadbsd-install-gui have been improved.

A script that helps users to configure a multihead systems has been added.

The Xorg driver for newer Intel GPUs has been changed from intel to modesetting .

to . DSBBg which allows users to change and manage wallpapers has been added.

The latest version of update_obmenu now supports auto-updating the Openbox menu. Manually updating the Openbox menu after packet (de)installation is therefore no longer needed.

Support for multiple keyboard layouts has been added.

www/palemoon has been removed.

mail/thunderbird has been removed.

audio/audacity has been added.

deskutils/orage has been added.

The password manager fpm2 has been replaced by KeePassXC

Many small improvements and bug fixes.

The first rolling release of NomadBSD based on FreeBSD 13.0-CURRENT is now available!

The image(s) and instructions can be found here

We are pleased to present the first rolling release (rr130c190919) of NomadBSD based on FreeBSD 13.0-CURRENT.

Changes

The rc-script for setting up the network interfaces has been fixed. Support for setting the country code for the wlan device has been added.

Support for ZFS has been added to the NomadBSD installer.

The GPT layout has been changed to MBR layout used by the FreeBSD memstick images. This prevents problems with Lenovo systems that refuse to boot from GPT if "lenovofix" is not set, and systems that hang on boot if "lenovofix" is set.

Support for multiple keyboard layouts has been added.

Auto-configuration for running in VirtualBox has been added.

The Xorg driver for newer Intel GPUs has been changed from "intel" to "modesetting".

A check for the default display has been added to the graphics configuration scripts. This fixes problems where users with Optimus have their NVIDIA card disabled, and use the integrated graphics chip instead.

The latest version of update_obmenu now supports auto-updating the Openbox menu. Manually updating the Openbox menu after packet (de)installation is therefore no longer needed.

Support for configuring a multihead system has been added.

Some templates for starting other DEs have been added to ~/.xinitrc.

The setup wizard and the installer have been improved.

NomadBSD 1.2 Errata available

The image(s) and instructions can be found here

The errata file for NomadBSD 1.2 is now available.

NomadBSD 1.2 released!

We are pleased to announce the release of NomadBSD 1.2! We would like to thank all the testers who sent us feedback and bug reports.

Changes

The base system has been upgraded to FreeBSD 12.0-p3

TRIM has been enabled by default.

A vt(4) color theme has been added.

color theme has been added. The dialog(1) based setup has been replaced by a Qt GUI which supports dynamic translation. Currently available translations are German and Russian.

based setup has been replaced by a Qt GUI which supports dynamic translation. Currently available translations are German and Russian. In order to reduce the number of implicit package upgrades and possible inconsistencies, the pkg(8) default repository has been changed to "Quarterly".

default repository has been changed to "Quarterly". A recent copy of the NomadBSD handbooklet has been added to nomad's home dir.

A new option has been added to the boot menu which allows users to set hw.syscons.disable .

. The kernel tunable vfs.root_mount_always_wait=1 has been added to /boot/loader.conf to prevent mountroot from mounting the root partition before the device is available.

has been added to /boot/loader.conf to prevent mountroot from mounting the root partition before the device is available. Dynamic creation of configuration files for Intel GPUs has been added. For GPUs using the legacy i915kms driver, the UXA acceleration method is used. For newer GPUs SNA is used which fixes performance problems (at least on HD Graphics 5500 (Broadwell))

The backend for compton has been changed to xrender. This fixes input delay problems with the NVIDIA driver. Further, it makes using compton with VESA and SCFB possible.

x11/dmenu has been added which can be started by pressing Ctrl+Space.

A bug where the NVIDIA GLX libraries could not be found because of path changes in the nvdia-driver-{304,340,390} packages has been fixed.

A bug where executing pkg install / delete lead to overwriting the library path to the NVIDIA libraries has been fixed.

/ lead to overwriting the library path to the NVIDIA libraries has been fixed. A dialog(1) menu has been added to the initgfx script which allows the user to choose between auto detection and a non-accelerated graphics driver.

menu has been added to the script which allows the user to choose between auto detection and a non-accelerated graphics driver. The detection of network devices has been improved.

A script with a Qt5 frontend for installing NomadBSD on a hard disk has been added.

Support for building 32bit images has been added.

The user interface has been slightly changed.

Support for the local keymap when entering the geli password has been added.

Support for resetting NomadBSD has been added. Users can execute /usr/libexec/nomad/nomad_setup reset in single user mode to bring NomadBSD back to its initial state.

in single user mode to bring NomadBSD back to its initial state. Localized XDG standard dirs have been added.

The swap partition has been removed.

linux_base has been removed.

Several small improvements and bugfixes.

NomadBSD 1.2-RC2 released!

The image(s) and instructions can be found here

The second release candidate of NomadBSD 1.2 is now available! We would like to thank all the RC1 testers who sent us feedback and bug reports. If you notice any problems, please let us know.

Changes since 1.2-RC1

The base system has been upgraded to FreeBSD 12.0-p3

TRIM has been enabled by default.

A vt(4) color theme has been added.

color theme has been added. The dialog(1) based setup has been replaced by a Qt GUI which supports dynamic translation. Currently available translations are German and Russian.

based setup has been replaced by a Qt GUI which supports dynamic translation. Currently available translations are German and Russian. In order to reduce the number of implicit package upgrades and possible inconsistencies, the pkg(8) default repository has been changed to "Quarterly".

default repository has been changed to "Quarterly". A recent copy of the NomadBSD handbooklet has been added to nomad's home dir.

A new option has been added to the boot menu which allows users to set hw.syscons.disable .

. The kernel tunable vfs.root_mount_always_wait=1 has been added to /boot/loader.conf to prevent mountroot from mounting the root partition before the device is available.

has been added to /boot/loader.conf to prevent mountroot from mounting the root partition before the device is available. Dynamic creation of configuration files for Intel GPUs has been added. For GPUs using the legacy i915kms driver, the UXA acceleration method is used. For newer GPUs SNA is used which fixes performance problems (at least on HD Graphics 5500 (Broadwell))

The backend for compton has been changed to xrender. This fixes input delay problems with the NVIDIA driver. Further, it makes using compton with VESA and SCFB possible.

x11/dmenu has been added which can be started by pressing Ctrl+Space.

A bug where the NVIDIA GLX libraries could not be found because of path changes in the nvdia-driver-{304,340,390} packages has been fixed.

A bug where executing pkg install / delete lead to overwriting the library path to the NVIDIA libraries has been fixed.

/ lead to overwriting the library path to the NVIDIA libraries has been fixed. A dialog(1) menu has been added to the initgfx script which allows the user to choose between auto detection and a non-accelerated graphics driver.

menu has been added to the script which allows the user to choose between auto detection and a non-accelerated graphics driver. The driver database of sysutils/dsbdriverd has been extended to detect more network devices: The device ID list for run(4) , iwm(4) and firmware modules has been extended. A record for rtwn(4) devices has been added.

A script for installing NomadBSD on a hard disk has been added.

Support for building 32bit images has been added.

The image(s) and instructions can be found here

NomadBSD 1.2-RC1 released!

The first release candidate of NomadBSD 1.2 is available! If you notice any problems, please let us know.

Changes since 1.1

The Base system has been upgraded to FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE

The setup menu has been improved, and new configuration options for choosing the standard web browser, e-mail client, filemanager, and editors have been added.

The script for detecting and loading the Intel video driver has been improved.

The user interface has been slightly changed.

Support for the local keymap when entering the geli password has been added.

Support for resetting NomadBSD has been added. Users can execute /usr/libexec/nomad/nomad_setup reset in single user mode to bring NomadBSD back to its initial state.

in single user mode to bring NomadBSD back to its initial state. Localized XDG standard dirs have been added.

The swap partition has been removed.

linux_base has been removed.

Several small improvements and bugfixes.

New packages: devel/geany x11-wm/plank x11-themes/lxappearance



The image(s) and instructions can be found here

NomadBSD 1.1 released!

Changes since 1.0.1

Base system has been upgraded to FreeBSD 11.2-RELEASE

Basic support for MacBooks has been added

A script for loading the matching DRM driver from graphics/drm-stable-kmod for Radeon GPUs has been added. Together with x11-drivers/xf86-video-amdgpu more recent AMD Radeon chipsets should now work out of the box.

For all Intel GPUs the new i915kms from graphics/drm-stable-kmod is now used.

x11-drivers/xf86-video-scfb and x11-drivers/xf86-video-vesa have been added as fallback drivers.

Autodetection of the VirtualBox pseudo GPU has been added.

Fallback configuration of SCFB

EFI booting has been fixed.

Support for modern Intel GPUs has been added.

Support for installing packages has been added.

Improved setup menu.

More software packages: benchmarks/bonnie++ DSBDisplaySettings DSBExec DSBSu mail/thunderbird net/mosh ports-mgmt/octopkg print/qpdfview security/nmap sysutils/ddrescue sysutils/fusefs-hfsfuse sysutils/fusefs-sshfs sysutils/sleuthkit www/lynx x11-wm/compton x11/xev x11/xterm

Many improvements and bugfixes

The image(s) and instructions can be found here

NomadBSD 1.1-RC2 released!

Changes

A script for loading the matching DRM driver from graphics/drm-stable-kmod for Radeon GPUs has been added. Together with x11-drivers/xf86-video-amdgpu more recent AMD Radeon chipsets should now work out of the box.

For all Intel GPUs the new i915kms from graphics/drm-stable-kmod is now used.

x11-drivers/xf86-video-scfb and x11-drivers/xf86-video-vesa have been added as fallback drivers.

The second release candidate of NomadBSD-1.1 is available!The image and instructions can be found here

Review of NomadBSD by barnabyh

NomadBSD 1.1-RC1 released!

Changes

The base system has been upgraded to FreeBSD 11.2-RC3

EFI booting has been fixed.

Support for modern Intel GPUs has been added.

Support for installing packages has been added.

Improved setup menu.

More software packages: benchmarks/bonnie++ DSBDisplaySettings DSBExec DSBSu mail/thunderbird net/mosh ports-mgmt/octopkg print/qpdfview security/nmap sysutils/ddrescue sysutils/fusefs-hfsfuse sysutils/fusefs-sshfs sysutils/sleuthkit www/lynx x11-wm/compton x11/xev x11/xterm

Many improvements and bugfixes

The first – and hopefully final – release candidate of NomadBSD 1.1 is available!The image and instructions can be found here

Review of NomadBSD 1.0.1

RoboNuggie made a review of NomadBSD 1.0.1. You can find the video here . Thank you!

NomadBSD 1.0.1 released

Changes

Fix a problem with graphics driver detection.

Fix a boot problem on Lenovo ® X220 .

. Disable the terminal bell.

Add a rc script to automatically load the correct acpi module.

Close/lock root shells on ttyv{0,1,2}.

NomadBSD on BSDNow

NomadBSD was mentioned in BSD Now 238 . Thank you, guys!

NomadBSD 1.0 released

Changes

The setup process has been improved.

Support for optional geli encryption of the home partition has been added

Auto-detection of NVIDIA graphics cards and their corresponding driver has been added. (Thanks to holgerw and lme from BSDForen.de)

An rc script to start the GEOM disk scheduler on the root device has been added.

More software has been added:

accessibility/redshift (starts automatically)



audio/cantata



audio/musicpd



audio/ncmpc



ftp/filezilla



games/bsdtris



mail/neomutt



math/galculator



net-p2p/transmission-qt5



security/fpm2



sysutils/bsdstats



x11/metalock



x11/xbindkeys

Several smaller improvements and bugfixes.

NomadBSD 0.5.3 released

Changes