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.
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I’m trying to finally switch from Windows to Linux, meanwhile this mf is already trying out alternatives to Linux. That’s when you know you’re late to the game.
Yep, installed my first Linus Distro in primary school at about 11 yo. Now I am 23.
In all seriousness while I think FreeBSD and GhostBSD are very cool, and have some interesting server applications they do have some annoying limitations. It’s not really their fault either, it sucks being the 4th most common platform/kernel/whatever. The FreeBSD people seem less uptight about working with proprietary software as it’s not the same kind of Open Source Linux is because it’s not copyleft. So you can use their code wherever even in closed source products. They include things like Nvidia drivers straight in their repos.
As for what makes them different/interesting: Linux is very capable but also kind of over engineered, confusing, and somewhat jank. BSDs are generally more simple. You would think this makes them less capable but aside from software support they often have more useful features. BSDs had Jails before Containers where supported properly on Linux.
BSD is almost what Linux is to Windows: faster, more stable, less annoying, and with a fraction of the users, hardware and software support. It’s also a bit more complex to do certain things out of the box - though GhostBSD does give you a GUI and decent installer.
Also BTRFS on Linux feels like this:
Child: “Can we have ZFS?”
Mother: “We have ZFS at home.”
ZFS at home: BTRFS
Like it’s good that it exists, a lot better than other OSes had for a while, but it just doesn’t compare to the stability and performance of the original. There are some areas where it’s a bit more flexible and that can be useful, but generally it’s just not as good. Pretty much Linux, then Apple, then Microsoft all tried copying ZFS, only worse. Heck it actually came from Sun Microsystems, then got Open Sourced allowing the FreeBSD people among others to port it to their system. Linux now has BCacheFS which might be even better but it’s too early to tell.
Sorry for the long response. Thought I would explain some stuff while I am here.
No worries, 'twas a very interesting read!
Glad you enjoyed. I would give one of the BSDs a go. NomadBSD is a good option to try out as it’s designed as a persistent live system that runs from a USB drive. Let me know if you have any questions, though I am far from an expert on this yet.
There are some BSDers that unironically consider Linux too mainstream.
You can add lidarr to your stack. Its not that good like radarr/sonarr imo
You can try YT music via piped.
try Qobuz. They dont have that hardcore drm afail
Gonic / jellyfin / subsonic for streaming your local cd rips
Or
pirated stuffother legally aquired media
Real pirates wouldn’t care because they would have downloaded everything they want to listen to anyway /s
Jokes aside, is
mpdnot supported? These days I don’t even want to go to Spotify with how good YT Music is with my recommendations. I just download something if I listened to it more than three times.I can personally vouch for Qobuz as they usually have the music I’m looking for. Deezer is also a really popular option. Idk if they have all that drm stuff or not. Ofc YT music exists, but they don’t have lossless audio
Deezer by default has drm I think. But people are also sharing premium arls that one can use with demix? Might have that name slightly wrong but with the win/Linux app one can grab music as mp3 320kbps.
“BSDs” are not a monolith. You should actually specify what the hell it is you are talking about. Spotify runs just fine under the Linux ABI on FreeBSD.
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?
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.
Oh and GhostBSD uses FreeBSD packages essentially. It’s like how Endeavour OS is to Arch linux of that makes sense.
I am sure they have muddied the waters with some garbage “user-friendly” configuration.
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.
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.
Now you sound like an Arch kid. I say this as someone who used to be an Arch kid sort of.
I already have an Ubuntu system bootstrapped. It doesn’t work. I think I messed it up somehow. Do you have a specific guide?
https://www.micski.dk/2022/01/19/how-to-install-spotify-on-freebsd/ https://www.micski.dk/2021/12/21/install-ubuntu-base-system-into-freebsds-linux-binary-compatibility/
If it is crashing, you should probably figure out why.
man ktraceman lldb. Linux coredumps are supported now, too.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.
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.
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.
I use Jellyfin to stream my music library (which is over 20 GiB) everywhere.
Also, there is this unofficial way to install Jellyfin on BSD.
Edit – I am willing to give you temporary access to my public server, if you want to try it out.
I tried that method. It’s seriously borked if you ever want transcoding to work. Jellyfin has a customized version of ffmpeg they used that just dosen’t exist on FreeBSD to the best of my knowledge. You can maybe make it work with the FreeBSD version but it would be an ugly hack.
If music available on YouTube is enough, you can use, or host your own Beatbump server. beatbump.io is a what I use occasionally.
BSD for media applications of any kind is gonna give you a bad time. It’s still very much meant for non-drsktop applications. Network hardware, sure. Desktop, naw.
