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  "publishedAt": "2026-05-01T23:41:37.000Z",
  "site": "http://forum.palemoon.org",
  "textContent": "I did try building on FreeBSD in a VM at one point while trying to figure out issues dbsoft was having with the Python 3 port (all resolved now), and it seemed like it didn't build correctly on FreeBSD 15 (from what I've heard it requires an older version to build)... so if we're basing it on ease of building it from source, it's still a _bit_ preliminary, but getting there. However, the pre-built binaries being provided work as well as any Unix-like binaries I've seen, if that's what is being measured. Actually, it seems like if anything it runs better on FreeBSD than it does on Linux, though I could be imagining it. YouTube itself seems to load up fine and play videos with no problem.\n\nI would say currently all Unix-like builds use a similar old X11/GTK stack that is not particularly well-maintained, and if anything it is aging better on FreeBSD than it is on Linux, since people are more likely to use X11 directly on FreeBSD rather than going through XWayland. I'm tempted to joke that maybe we should list the Linux builds as beta because of how much everything is in flux on Linux and tends to break things at random depending on distro and version... but yeah, FreeBSD seems to my eyes to be up to the Linux standard. Maybe even a bit more predictable, but mostly because FreeBSD comes from one vendor and diverges from Linux in ways that mostly result in \"it builds or it doesn't\" (kernel, libc, and malloc compatibility) rather than subtle breakage. Get past that, and the rest of it is just the Unix stack that behaves the same on everything that's not Win/Mac. Supporting BSD or non-Linux Unix is pretty much a challenge one level up from supporting a weird \"alt-Linux\" that doesn't use glibc as the libc or has a non-GNU userland.\n\nFor Windows and Mac, we do expect a bit more polish and handling of edge cases. But based on my Linux experience and building on other Unix-like systems in the past, I think the bar here is more like... if it builds, doesn't crash after an hour of messing around with YouTube or TikTok, plays sound, and the GTK3 version looks okay on MATE using MATE's TraditionalOk theme... it's as good as it's going to get, because that's roughly where the bar is on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems right now.\n\nEssentially, we can't control much on those systems, but it seems like the best-case scenario is to hand it off to MATE on a pure X11 server, and hope the user isn't using a weird theme. There's a lot of crossing your fingers and hoping the user knows what they're doing... on pretty much everything that's not Win/Mac, I think.\n\n* * *",
  "title": "Browser Development • Re: FreeBSD builds: beta status?",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-01T23:41:37.000Z"
}