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You should try FreeBSD (2014)

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Re: You should try FreeBSD (2014)

#101

Post by jms703 »

jamescun wrote: post #8

I recently switched my personal box to FreeBSD. I honestly find it significantly easier to manage than Linux, and have greater trust in its reliability merely from its simplicity. The single biggest thing which stood out for me was PF (from OpenBSD). Anybody who has ever had the grace of managing IPTables on Linux, give PF a go with /etc/pf.conf (docs: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/firewalls-pf.html , my confi…

That PF code is from OpenBSD 4.5, released in May 2009. I wonder what fixes and improvements are missing.

Re: You should try FreeBSD (2014)

#102

Post by unluckier »

mhandley wrote: post #97
unluckier wrote: post #22

How's FreeBSD doing in the exploit mitigation department? Last I checked, they didn't even have ASLR. http://networkfilter.blogspot.com/2014/12/security-openbsd-v...

I'm not sure I'd place much faith in ASLR these days. Bittau's Blind Return Oriented Programming (BROP) http://www.scs.stanford.edu/brop/ makes that only a speedbump, not a real obstacle, for any server that suffers from a stack overflow vulnerability and respawns after a crash. Basically, you can read the return address off the stack a byte at a time by detecting the difference between a crash (you got the overflowe…

We all know that exploit mitigations aren't perfect. But to not even bother using them... that's just ridiculous. There are plenty of scenarios where ASLR helps prevent exploitation. And the fact that FreeBSD doesn't even have it is pretty damning.

Re: You should try FreeBSD (2014)

#103

Post by takeda »

tobik wrote: post #67
olavgg wrote: post #9

Actually, FreeBSD is a great platform to learn about Linux. The more you learn about FreeBSD, the more will you understand Linux. The only time I will advice not spending time on FreeBSD, is when you have to deal with Java.

What problems did you have with Java on FreeBSD? I've done Java, Scala, and Clojure development on FreeBSD and had no problems whatsoever.

The issue was that in the past JDK (offered by Sun and Oracle) had no binaries available for FreeBSD (I believe the source was available but was not the same that Sun JDK was built from). If you wanted to run it, you would have to download the Linux version and run it in compatibility mode.

Later FreeBSD get some kind of deal with Sun to provide native Sun JDK for FreeBSD and made them available through http://www.freebsd.org (you can check web archive to see older versions).

Nowadays starting since JDK 7, OpenJDK supposed to be fully compatible with OracleJDK, so it should no longer be a problem anymore.

Re: You should try FreeBSD (2014)

#104

Post by floatboth »

protomyth wrote: post #92
byuu wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess Linux has SystemD and the BSDs have NextBSD to be fearful of. Pretty much. But the FreeBSD developers have a history of being much more conservative on these types of changes. But then again, Debian used to as well. So you never know. I'm all for people experimenting and trying out new types of init systems and the like. I just don't like having them forced upon me when they're clearly not ready for product…

I'll watch. LaunchD isn't bad on the OS X boxes we have[1] and I guess coming from NeXTSTEP, Mach isn't something I have a problem with. I will see how it works, but I'm an OpenBSD user these days so I will wait and see what they think. 1) my main complain has already been addressed with the switch from XML

I've actually listened to the BSD Now podcast episode where they discussed NextBSD…

IIRC, launchd is a simple process manager, and it never had anything to do with XML. XML/plists are used in Apple's implementation of launchCTL, the command line client.

http://www.nextbsd.org/welcome-to-ghost/ NextBSD is explicitly a "science project" – they don't want upstream FreeBSD to become NeXTSTEP :)

Re: You should try FreeBSD (2014)

#105

Post by mhandley »

unluckier wrote: post #102
mhandley wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I'd place much faith in ASLR these days. Bittau's Blind Return Oriented Programming (BROP) http://www.scs.stanford.edu/brop/ makes that only a speedbump, not a real obstacle, for any server that suffers from a stack overflow vulnerability and respawns after a crash. Basically, you can read the return address off the stack a byte at a time by detecting the difference between a crash (you got the overflowe…

We all know that exploit mitigations aren't perfect. But to not even bother using them... that's just ridiculous. There are plenty of scenarios where ASLR helps prevent exploitation. And the fact that FreeBSD doesn't even have it is pretty damning.

I didn't say not to bother; I just said the protection provided by ASLR is weaker, even on 64-bit systems, than most of us believed a couple of years ago.

Re: You should try FreeBSD (2014)

#106

Post by wooger »

J_Darnley wrote: post #4

I can't even stick with using Linux. No way will I manage a BSD.

There's a very great difference between using BSD on the desktop vs. using it on a server. FreeBSD is years behind Linux in desktop support in terms of GPU drivers (still no haswell graphics support), desktop environment slickness and audio latency etc.

It will fall further behind still in the near future, as desktop Linux embraces Wayland.

On a server though, it's just fine.

Re: You should try FreeBSD (2014)

#107

Post by JupiterMoon »

lgunsch wrote: post #95
cwyers wrote: post #42

> If your understanding of the server OS does only allow you to copy/paste random strings from Stackoverflow, you might not really enjoy FreeBSD (or anything besides Ubuntu) — but then, why are you operating a server in the first place? To serve stuff. (To expand on this -- most people don't use software, they use software to GET STUFF DONE. Very few people want to operate a server. They operate a server because it a…

That type of viewpoint is hurting our industry. Just blindly doing things is not productive at all. You should learn and understand what it is you are doing before you do it. Just getting shit tonnes of stuff done is not productive at all if you don't understand how or why you are doing it. Truck drivers actually know how to drive, Crane operators know how to run a crane, and people operating production servers costi…

As a counterpoint. Truck drivers don't need to know how to build a truck nor to crane operators need technical understanding of the materials in the crane's structure.

Re: You should try FreeBSD (2014)

#108

Post by floatboth »

tmbsundar wrote: post #80

I have freebsd in one of my VMs and like it very much. One reason I am reluctant to move it as my primary OS is the lack of CUDA support (this might be an nvidia thing and not the fault of freebsd devs). But still it's seems to be a blocker. Is there a way to make CUDA work in freebsd? Would be glad to know.

No. NVIDIA hasn't ported CUDA to FreeBSD.

There is OpenCL though https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics/OpenCL for Intel and Radeon.

Re: You should try FreeBSD (2014)

#109

Post by themartorana »

lgunsch wrote: post #95
cwyers wrote: post #42

> If your understanding of the server OS does only allow you to copy/paste random strings from Stackoverflow, you might not really enjoy FreeBSD (or anything besides Ubuntu) — but then, why are you operating a server in the first place? To serve stuff. (To expand on this -- most people don't use software, they use software to GET STUFF DONE. Very few people want to operate a server. They operate a server because it a…

That type of viewpoint is hurting our industry. Just blindly doing things is not productive at all. You should learn and understand what it is you are doing before you do it. Just getting shit tonnes of stuff done is not productive at all if you don't understand how or why you are doing it. Truck drivers actually know how to drive, Crane operators know how to run a crane, and people operating production servers costi…

As another counterpoint, my small business that runs full-stack in AWS and FreeBSD - I am most certainly not perfectly educated in server and network management, and actually excel in software engineering as opposed to server management and configuration.

AWS lets me get shit done. I know enough to get several services running on an EC2 server, and I don't have close to the $100k+ required to hire an excellent network engineer.

That's part of why AWS, GCE, and DO (and their contemporaries) exist. I'm more educated than most at this point, but that's only because of doing when necessary to get things done.

Re: You should try FreeBSD (2014)

#110

Post by joshbaptiste »

dorfsmay wrote: post #64
myztic wrote: post #56

I wonder why this got so many votes to be honest, it's from May 2014 and as far as why one would want to try FreeBSD it is not very detailed. That being said: I use FreeBSD and (obviously) prefer it, but: 1) ZFSonLinux has made huge steps forward and actually (at least in my opinion) is production ready and rock solid (of course it's not as good as ZFS on FreeBSD though, for example it's lacking some features and of…

Are there significant differences in usability between BSD jails and LXC?

BSD Jails were built with security in mind, LXC is now improving the security model as the prominence of Docker has shed light on it.
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