NomadBSD

Reader supplied reviews for NomadBSD Average rating 7.9 from 41 review(s) Version: 141r Rating: 8 Date: 2026-02-26 Country: United States Votes: 0 I've been wanting to learn BSD for quite a while. GhostBSD doesn't allow installing to an external drive. I had it running in VirtualBox, but wanted to see how it would do on my bare metal. So I was pleased to see that NomadBSD, which I had less awareness of than Ghost, is designed for thumb drives, with persistence. I flashed the .IMG in Rufus on Windows, but then I couldn't figure out how I was going to get persistence, since Rufus didn't give the option. I went ahead and flashed it. On the first bootup I watched the scrolling text and I saw where BSD was "expanding the pool" to the end of the drive. I've installed a lot of Linux distros, and I'm used to thinking in 'partitions', which of course are rigid after you create them. So this was a new and very cool experience. So far I am extremely impressed with NomadBSD. I'm surprised at how much they've done to make it easy to use along with Windows and Linux. The exFAT file system is the only one I"ll have to do work in the console to make read/write-able. The one area where I ran into (potential) trouble was when I attempted to install the Linux internet browser with the NomadBSD script. I had no idea what was happening. The scrolling seemed to go on for an eternity. It looked like it was installing an entire Linux OS. Suddenly it stopped with an error. After some time of waiting to see what it was going to do, I cautiously hit Cancel. And there appears to be no changes in Nomad, and it's running the same as before. So I don't know what that was all about. I'll enjoy tinkering with NomadBSD, and I thank the developers for an impressive and pleasurable way to dive into BSD. Version: 141r Rating: 10 Date: 2026-01-02 Votes: 1 I have been looking for exit strategies from mainstream linux to get away from systemd, wayland, etc. I've been exploring Artix and Devuan and PCLinuxOS but I always wanted to explore BSD. GhostBSD looks attractive but I maintain a fleet of older computers that can't meet the 8GB memory requirement. MidnightBSD seems unworkable in current form (just looking at the reviews) and I don't want have to build up from command line to install X etc from Netbsd or Freebsd itself. Tried NomadBDS and even though it is not up to date with the latest Freebsd edition, I am very pleased with it. Boots right to a nice XFCE desktop, and has the capability of both continuing to run from the USB or being installed. I installed to disk, then ran through the updates to upgrade what looks to be most every package in the system, but at the end of the process I have a nice looking uptodate XFCE desktop with ZFS file system for snapshotting and access to major linux browsers like Vivaldi. This looks like it is going to be a great learning experience even on the old atom netbook on which I installed it. Appears to originate from a small team in Germany but I wish them the best and hope they get more recognition. For an older midrange computer, NomadBDS looks to me like the fastest way to get to a daily driver system in BSD. Thanks guys and keep working to build the distro and community! Version: 141r Rating: 6 Date: 2025-06-06 Votes: 3 Well, overall system is quite good but... developers still didn't fix the issue with turning off monitor in screensaver mode. When NomadBSD blanks screen after some time of user's inactivity user cannot back to the desktop by typing keys or moving the mouse. The screen stays blank and you cannot do anything about it. You can only reset the machine and boot up system again. The same bug was in previous versions of NomadBSD. So be warned. It would be great if system is compatible with more network hardware and graphic adapters hardware. See all 41 reader reviews of NomadBSD...