Hello based people of lemmy,

I have recently started trying out BSDs as an alternative to Linux and found out that Spotify isn’t supported. Before you say try it in a browser this doesn’t work as spotify has DRM that doesn’t work on BSD OSes.

Now is there a way to stream music similar to Spotify? I know there is a downloader program available.

Furthermore do you know what self-hosted options are available? I already have a basic *arr stack and am always up for convoluted server and Linux hijinks.

  • areyouevenreal@lemm.eeOPEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    Hi, I am currently on GhostBSD but that could change so I didn’t want to be too specific in the post. I have tried installing spotify the way you suggest and it just crashes before I can get to a login screen. Do you think there is a way to make it work?

    • amigan@lemmy.dynatron.meEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      I do not use GhostBSD and am not familiar with it. It can be done on vanilla FreeBSD, you need to bootstrap an Ubuntu base system which is somewhat involved since there is not a package for it. Google is your friend.

      • areyouevenreal@lemm.eeOPEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        I already have an Ubuntu system bootstrapped. It doesn’t work. I think I messed it up somehow. Do you have a specific guide?

          • areyouevenreal@lemm.eeOPEnglish
            1·
            9 months ago

            Those steps are outdated. I specifically had to lookup spotify’s directions for installing on Ubuntu as the public key has changed I think. It’s also just sort of freezes, it doesn’t close or anything. There is a message about the GPU drivers I don’t really understand and probably can’t fix as that’s a kernel issue.

            • amigan@lemmy.dynatron.meEnglish
              1·
              9 months ago

              Spotify is just an electron app. You can disable any GPU access just like you can with chrome via a flag.

              My point is, unless spotify is trying to call a heretofore unimplemented syscall, it can be made to run. The linuxulator is basically as good as native.

              • areyouevenreal@lemm.eeOPEnglish
                1·
                9 months ago

                Yeah tbh I made a mess of the Linux environment. I am gonna reinstall and see what happens. There are other potentially GPU related things going on on this system though so IDK. Like I could disable it for that one application but that wouldn’t fix the other issues if that makes sense.

                The Linuxulator is cool but I kind of don’t trust it. Maybe I will try Linux containers.

                • amigan@lemmy.dynatron.meEnglish
                  1·
                  9 months ago

                  My advice is to ditch GhostBSD, you are basically putting yourself further into the corner than you already are by trying to use FreeBSD on the desktop.

                  Linux binaries run just by a syscall shim. There’s not much to trust or distrust. If all the syscalls are implemented and mapped to native FreeBSD syscalls, the thing works. Otherwise, it doesn’t.

                  • areyouevenreal@lemm.eeOPEnglish
                    1·
                    9 months ago

                    Oh I am sure the kernel support is great. I am more having issues working with chroots directly. I am much more at home managing docker and lxc which are more isolated. I just broke something trying to remove a couple chroots while stuff was still mounted - I think I nuked /home. You don’t really have that issue with docker containers or lxc, it’s a simple command to remove.

      • areyouevenreal@lemm.eeOPEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        Oh and GhostBSD uses FreeBSD packages essentially. It’s like how Endeavour OS is to Arch linux of that makes sense.

          • areyouevenreal@lemm.eeOPEnglish
            1·
            9 months ago

            Honestly I haven’t found them to do anything daft yet. From my understanding FreeBSD is a pain to configure for desktop usage as it’s designed more for servers. Tell me if I am wrong.

            • amigan@lemmy.dynatron.meEnglish
              1·
              9 months ago

              Yes, you are wrong. FreeBSD is a general purpose operating system. You install what you need and configure what you need. GhostBSD and its ilk are for weenies.

                • amigan@lemmy.dynatron.meEnglish
                  1·
                  9 months ago

                  I use Arch too. I’ve been using FreeBSD for 21 years, though. I run everything on it, even this Lemmy instance.

                  • areyouevenreal@lemm.eeOPEnglish
                    2·
                    9 months ago

                    Okay I will probably move to FreeBSD proper eventually. I am still new to this though and likely to break things. I don’t want to have to go through a whole process every time I mess up to get a usable working system until I actually know what I am doing.

                  • areyouevenreal@lemm.eeOPEnglish
                    1·
                    9 months ago

                    Out of curiosity what do you use Linux for and what do you use FreeBSD for? Do you use FreeBSD as a desktop or only as a server?