Ghostbsd installation
2026-06-14
messing around on a sunday
So now we have Microsoft delivering Linux, and the Arch based AUR getting wrecked by people who should be locked into a public pillory, and I have some free time. Well in fact a lot of free time now that I'm retired.
So. I downloaded the latest #Ghostbsd Mate and cut a usb key, then plugged it into my Thinkpad X220.
The installation was simple and uneventful, and it booted without problem. Everything worked out of the box. Mate seems pretty and unobfuscated, just like me.
So far I've done just two things:
(1) to get some thinkpad function keys to work I've added in /boot/loader.conf
acpi_ibm_load="YES"
Printscreen works, brightness and volume controls work, vol mute
works, lid led works, but the MICMUTE button doesn't work.
For the X220 MICMUTE key, which is F20 or 0xBE (190), unfortunately
Ghostbsd's acpi_ibm doesn't pass on the event, so any script for it in
/etc/devd won't be fired. Checking the source code, acpi_ibm only accepts
a subset of events accepted by Linux's thinkpad_acpi, which appears to
cover them all. It's unfortunate as I'm a bit pedantic about keys but I
guess I'll have to live with it as the code is 20 years old and I
doubt it will change anytime soon.
FYI, acpi_ibm accepts only these keyboard events:
LCD_BACKLIGHT
SUSPEND_TO_RAM
BLUETOOTH
SCREEN_EXPAND
SUSPEND_TO_DISK
BRIGHTNESS_UP
BRIGHTNESS_DOWN
THINKLIGHT
ZOOM
VOLUME_UP
VOLUME_DOWN
MUTE
ACCESS_IBM_BUTTON
(2) to enable the automounting of usb storage media:
sudo pkg install automount
I've replaced the default Firefox with Librewolf, and I'm not too sure about zsh instead of bash, and why not doas instead of sudo?
Ghostbsd is a very nice BSD distribution that's been around since 2010.