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Linuxulator on FreeBSD Feels Like Magic

This post details a developer's journey to achieve a seamless remote development experience on FreeBSD using VS Code's Remote SSH feature. Facing the challenge of an unsupported platform, the author cleverly leveraged FreeBSD's Linuxulator to run Linux binaries transparently. The resulting 'magic' setup provides a fast, smooth, and fully-featured environment, solving a major productivity bottleneck and showcasing the impressive stability of the Linux ABI.

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on Front Page
First Seen
Feb 22, 7:00 PM
Last Seen
Feb 22, 10:00 PM
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The Lowdown

The author, a Visual Studio Code enthusiast, faced a significant hurdle in fully embracing FreeBSD as a daily driver: the lack of a performant ARM64 laptop rivaling Apple Silicon and the productivity killers associated with traditional remote development setups like NFS or SSHFS. This led to an exploration of VS Code's Remote SSH extension, which, despite initial platform limitations, proved to be an unexpected game-changer when combined with FreeBSD's powerful Linuxulator.

  • The author, accustomed to VS Code, found traditional remote development methods (NFS, SSHFS) became a significant productivity drain for large projects, taking minutes to open files.
  • VS Code Remote SSH surprisingly worked out-of-the-box on OpenWRT, leading the author to attempt it on FreeBSD.
  • Initial attempts on FreeBSD were met with an 'Unsupported platform' error, as expected.
  • The solution involved enabling FreeBSD's Linuxulator emulation layer and installing a Linux base system (Rocky 9).
  • Crucially, a specific Linux PATH was configured to be sourced only when VS Code connects via SSH, ensuring transparent execution of Linux binaries.
  • The final setup involved modifying sshd_flags and client-side SSH configuration to pass the BASH_ENV variable.
  • Against initial skepticism, the remote development environment worked flawlessly, with extensions functioning as expected; even a problematic Rollup dependency was resolved using its WASM build.

This robust and transparent integration of Linux binaries on FreeBSD via the Linuxulator completely transformed the author's workflow, eliminating a major friction point and highlighting the remarkable stability and compatibility provided by FreeBSD's emulation capabilities.