So, I'm trying to make #FreeBSD bootable on my laptop. It's a relatively recent system, but Linux is now hopelessly bloated and the distributions are all partaking of Lennart Poettering's Kool-Aid which is only making it worse.

Only the firmware won't recognize any FreeBSD install medium. I tried a bunch of things. The install medium is dead to my firmware. It's a #UEFI / #GPT mess. The firmware does recognize a PC-BSD install medium, but then the PC-BSD system fails to boot (yes, I tried all three options).

So I emptied out a USB disk, put a #ZFS pool on it and unpacked the FreeBSD distribution onto it. FreeBSD is actually pretty easy that way.

Now I'm trying to figure out how to make it bootable. I see two avenues of approach:

• I've done battle with UEFI/GPT on this system before, so I have rEFInd on it. I need a suitable stanza for the configuration; my attempts to concoct one are failing.


• Get grub2 from my Sabayon system to recognize the FreeBSD system and boot it. Only grub2, at least on Sabayon Linux, apparently doesn't do ZFS.