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Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs

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Re: Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs

#121

Post by nailer »

silentbicycle wrote: post #117
nailer wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux has had the FHS since the late 90s. * Config files go in /etc. * Spools, caches an so on go in /var * Binaries for all users go in /bin if they're important, /usr/bin if they're less so * Binaries for root go in /sbin if they're important, /usr/sbin if they're less so The standard was mature a decade ago and long before then. I suspect you just may have not been used to the standard.

I get that Linux uses a different standard layout than BSD. I really do. The thing is that when I was using RedHat, years and years ago, its paths were not internally consistently. I'm talking about that specific distro, at that specific time. Debian was much better in that regard, and I didn't look back.

OK. I (and it seems the other poster) knows from our own experience that Red Hat's stuck closely to the FHS for years. There's only one folder - /etc/rc.d/init.d - consistent in Red Hat but symlinked to the correct /etc/init.d location used by other distros - that's been a significant difference in the last decade.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs

#122

Post by sophacles »

danielrhodes wrote: post #35
fjarlq wrote: post #3

I've used FreeBSD continuously (as a server, no GUI) since 1995, with some Linux use here and there, and I find myself leaning toward Linux lately, mainly because Ubuntu has done a lot of great work recently to support Amazon EC2. FreeBSD has fallen behind on Amazon EC2 support for some reason. I was initially attracted to FreeBSD because I had first learned Unix on a BSD system in the late 80s, and the more restrict…

I think FreeBSD boxes are generally used as perimeter boxes by most sys admins because of their reliability, therefore compatibility with virtualized environments is not a priority.

We once had some sort of explosion regarding mail-servers at a company I worked for. I have no idea, what the actual problem was, other than too much incoming mail combined with some settings goof. The mail server software ended up eating memory and cpu cycles like crazy. This was on a FreeBSD box. I remember the sysadmin saying "You know, linux would have just OOM-killed it at this point, but its a BSD box so it's doing the right damn thing". Ever since then I've carried around this idea that BSD is stable to a fault :)

Re: Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs

#123

Post by vdm »

konad wrote: post #73
tedunangst wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of that applies to OpenBSD as well, except we did let licenses stand in the way of importing DTrace and ZFS.

And the Plan9 compilers, the OpenSD team wanted to lose GCC and were considering the plan9 toolchain. Turning Plan 9 from open source into Free had plenty of teething troubles, getting the lawyers from Bell-Labs then Lucent then Lucent-Alcatel into the idea took years. Originally Plan 9 was paid for software with full source included. Then from v.3 it was a free download but with its own license which included a "if…

+1 insightful. Huge missed opportunity.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs

#124

Post by kunley »

I work on both BSDs and Linux boxes and this fact struck me recently:

for i in /bin /usr/bin /usr/local/bin; do ls $i|wc -l; done

Linux: 124 2155 67

FreeBSD: 44 430 1067

On BSD, you clearly see which programs are essential for your system to be up & well, which are service additions and which are 3rd party stuff (yeah I missed sbin but you see the picture). On Linux there's a big bag of /usr/bin and a beginner can have no clue if some stuff is important or not.

And the sources. On BSD, sources of kernel all system programs are at your disposal in /usr/src and that's it; they represent a coherent view of what meat you have running. On Linux of course you can download the sources and most probably your distro will help you with obtaining the right version. But it isn't the same when you hit the problems, esp. on production. Well even without the need of fixing anything or tracking problems, the sources serve a great educational value with an immediate availability.

In general, the BSD approach seems to come from a longer experience of establishing best practices. I'd say the principle is the same with Linux and BSD, but the devil (pun intended) is in the details, and BSD details look as better engineered for many.

[edited for clarity]

Re: Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs

#125

Post by njharman »

cperciva wrote: post #46
njharman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, trollish, etc. But, really none of those are very compelling and a couple are negatives. I can see 3,4,5 being important if I developed software that is directly affected by any of that. 1 is a political argument and one that I stand on other side of the fence on. 2 just sounds like it takes longer for stuff to be released. 3 meh. 4,5 extra meh. Recompiling is so trivial that not h…

But, really none of those are very compelling and a couple are negatives For you, that might be entirely true. We're not fanatics; we have no trouble accepting that for some people FreeBSD isn't the best OS for every task. There are FreeBSD developers who are perfectly happy using Linux, OS X, OpenSolaris, and even Windows on a daily basis.

Yes, obviously. But, the point of this thread was to show/"convince" Linux heads what they are missing.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs

#126

Post by cperciva »

njharman wrote: post #125
cperciva wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, really none of those are very compelling and a couple are negatives For you, that might be entirely true. We're not fanatics; we have no trouble accepting that for some people FreeBSD isn't the best OS for every task. There are FreeBSD developers who are perfectly happy using Linux, OS X, OpenSolaris, and even Windows on a daily basis.

Yes, obviously. But, the point of this thread was to show/"convince" Linux heads what they are missing.

I wasn't trying to convince anyone of anything. I was just trying to answer the question asked.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs

#127

Post by dschobel »

Lammy wrote: post #64
dschobel wrote: post #39

I've been using FreeBSD since the 8.1 release a few weeks back and as my first *BSD experience it is fantastic. The only thing which will keep me from committing to it is the absence of a stable and/or official version of Google Chrome (the only freebsd versions of Chromium I've found have been very much alpha software). I (like a lot of people I suppose) spend too much time in my browser to have this be a negotiable…

I'm using the official port right now with no trouble: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=146302 It's not in the tree yet due to some licensing problems that need to be sorted out. The newest shar file as of this writing is here: http://chromium.hybridsource.org/chromium-stable-125.shar.tx...

Thank you, I'll check it out.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs

#128

Post by njharman »

palish wrote: post #53
njharman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, trollish, etc. But, really none of those are very compelling and a couple are negatives. I can see 3,4,5 being important if I developed software that is directly affected by any of that. 1 is a political argument and one that I stand on other side of the fence on. 2 just sounds like it takes longer for stuff to be released. 3 meh. 4,5 extra meh. Recompiling is so trivial that not h…

[Taking more time to develop features correctly] just sounds like it takes longer for stuff to be released This attitude demonstrates a pretty significant lack of experience.

The OP stated "This often means that it takes longer before we acquire new features." And the sentence contains the workds "Taking more time"

Your reading comprehension needs improvement.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs

#129

Post by jtchang »

My first unix like system was FreeBSD. I then moved to Linux because it is more widely used and supported.

I still have a sweet spot though for FreeBSD. The main reason is that they have figured out the perfect balance of how much to include without being overwhelming. It is also a great learning system because FreeBSD forces you to understand all the pieces of *nix.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs

#130

Post by rubashov »

kunley wrote: post #124

I work on both BSDs and Linux boxes and this fact struck me recently: for i in /bin /usr/bin /usr/local/bin; do ls $i|wc -l; done Linux: 124 2155 67 FreeBSD: 44 430 1067 On BSD, you clearly see which programs are essential for your system to be up & well, which are service additions and which are 3rd party stuff (yeah I missed sbin but you see the picture). On Linux there's a big bag of /usr/bin and a beginner can ha…

That's a distro thing. A slackware or debian setup will not have much superfluous stuff installed.
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