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BSD vs. Linux (2005)

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Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#171

Post by Bromskloss »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #16
nixos wrote: post #12

I know Linux (Debian) quite well and would like an excuse to try learning FreeBSD, but I just can't find any serious use-cases where FreeBSD would be of any advantage. I run a small site on a VPS, so: 1. I don't have GBs of free memory for ZFS 2. I don't have GB of RAM, CPU and HD space to build everything from ports, and most importantly, no need. Except for an Application Firewall for nginx, what does ports have ov…

1. zfs runs well on a lot of systems. You might have to change a setting or two but it's not as you say. 2. pkg install and the related pkg utilities have existed for awhile. 5. systemd isn't and shouldn't be a requirement for applications going forward. Any application that requires it is limiting its portability for unknown reasons. The joy of trying a new system is the little things you learn that you weren't even…

> systemd isn't and shouldn't be a requirement for applications going forward. Any application that requires it is limiting its portability for unknown reasons.

How should one do it instead? Treat each alternative system specifically? Or is there a way to cover them all at once, including unknown and future ones?

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#172

Post by pavanky »

Guys, this article was written somewhere in between 2002 and 2005 (based on the author mentioning bitkeeper being used for the kernel). Someone edit the title to reflect this please.

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#173

Post by vertex-four »

behnamoh wrote: post #170

Something I don't understand about FreeBSD is why they use the evil daemon for the logo? Whatever story behind it, I just think there are many other alternatives they could use as the logo.

It's a daemon. As in a long-running background process.

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#174

Post by microtonal »

lisivka wrote: post #140
microtonal wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a start, X11's security model. Every X11 application can read all keystrokes, mouse events, do screengrabs of other window's contents, etc. In other words, your browser can snoop on what passwords you type into an X terminal if it wanted to or is compromised.

I.e. X11 working in same way as Windows, OS/2, BeOS, MacOS, OSX, etc. But in Linux, I can run application in container or VM and then use VNC, RDP, or Spice to connect to it in secure manner.

I.e. X11 working in same way as Windows, OS/2, BeOS, MacOS, OSX, etc.

No, it's not. OS X has GUI isolation, an application cannot read keystrokes or read other application's contents, unless you explicitly give permission to do so. This is the reason why applications that can do more, such as Alfred, require you to explicitly enable these rights in the Privacy section of the Security & Privacy prefpane.

Windows also has GUI isolation (UIPI), but it's a bit murkier. As far as I understand, lower-privileged applications cannot read events from higher-privileged applications.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb625963.aspx

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#175

Post by onli »

vertex-four wrote: post #147
pimeys wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As for the DE experience on other platforms, Windows has had a kinda-tiling WM that regular people do use in the form of AeroSnap, while macOS is now getting tabs-in-the-window-manager, and Exposé+Spaces that evolved into Mission Control has been a positively brilliant experience for years. > Meanwhile on Linux, the very fact that you have to massage it into something useful ever so slightly at every level is, to m…

Most people, otoh, enjoy playing games, watching videos, that sort of thing. Some people even do work that's dependent on the graphics card. Just because you use your computer for a very minimal amount of tasks doesn't mean everyone else does.

That misrepresents the situation on Linux. You can play with it, seriously since Steam is there, and you can watch videos since forever.

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#176

Post by Klover »

xkarga00 wrote: post #165
vertex-four wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people, otoh, enjoy playing games, watching videos, that sort of thing. Some people even do work that's dependent on the graphics card. Just because you use your computer for a very minimal amount of tasks doesn't mean everyone else does.

Ever heard of Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman?

I think you are referring to the critique on television? Perhaps you can pay more attention to the last sentence of vertex-four's comment. That being "Just because you use your computer for a very minimal amount of tasks doesn't mean everyone else does."

There are a million and one ways to use your graphics. Be it watching videos or gaming, which while you might have a problem with that, is actually done by people. It can also be used to smoothly decode and render a training video, or to make spreadsheets more pleasant to crawl through without the screen tearing and making everything look like a mess. There are even more minuscule applications you can do with graphics hardware and the software to drive it: transparency to subconsciously still remember what you're returning to when you click on another window, for example.

As nice of you as it is to warn the parent about their information-action ratio, you could use this opportunity to appreciate people's freedom of choice as well as understand there is more to Windows and Mac than Netflix and Call of Duty.

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#177

Post by fnord123 »

brulard wrote: post #92
_wdzx wrote: post #86

> I like FreeBSD, and I use it as a server OS and on a NAS box but you only need look at https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics to understand that if the "Linux Desktop" is a joke compared to MacOS and Windows then the "FreeBSD Desktop" is even more so. I've never heard anything good about the "MacOS desktop" and I'm pretty sure that the "windows desktop" is far behind the "linux desktop"(plugins, performance, menus etc.)…

I've never heard the opposite. I've switched to OsX 4 years ago after being completely unhappy and irritated with Windows for over 12 years. Now after months of using Ubuntu (unity, xfce) and Mint (Cinnamon) I'm convinced that OsX is best for average (and power) desktop user by a huge margin. Although I would be much more happy with something Open Source.

You can hear the opposite from me then. I have an OS X laptop and a desktop running Gnome (Fedora) and I find Gnome far better. Originally, I didn't like Gnome 3, but after I used it a lot, I got used to it; I added some extensions, and now I prefer it. In my opinion:

* Finder is garbage (alt tab is broken and non configurable. I can't figure out how to convince it that the built in display is always the primary display. It seems to struggle with nfs mounts which Gnome doesn't at all. I've had just as many, or more issues with OS X and projectors as I have with Gnome). Where is the centralised location for Finder extensions to tweak it to my preferences?

* The default command line tools that come with OS X are old and basic (reminds me of Sun's tools) and have a death of a thousand paper cuts (e.g. top defaults to sorting by pid, lol; they still ship bash 3.5.57, locales are all fucked up).

* brew, compared to dnf or apt, is not good. But that's Open Source people trying to shore up OS X deficiencies so I won't call it "garbage". (F)OSS people put in a lot of effort to keep it running and they deserve praise.

* The programs from Apple are all terrible. I literally don't use any except Safari sometimes since it allegedly doesn't use as much battery as Chrome or Firefox. I guess I sometimes copy paste stuff into Textedit and I sometimes use Calculator.

It's all certainly usable but there is no consensus that OS X is the best. YMMV. My feeling is that each time there is an OS X release, it jumps ahead of Gnome; but Gnome usually trundles along and surpasses it and maintains a lead most of the time.

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#178

Post by dspillett »

ktRolster wrote: post #54
badsock wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One big thing for me is that I trust the FreeBSD devs to not completely reinvent things unless they're sure it's an improvement. I got sick of the churn in Linux, having to relearn things all the time and then find out when I'm done that it's not any better, just different. Things I learned how to do in FreeBSD a decade ago still work. For example, to get a NIC configured I can either put one or two lines of text in…

Watching iptables get replaced was a really depressing example of that, after the developers swore that "this time we got it right" when replacing ipchains......

In fairness IPTables has been around and considered stable for, what, more than a decade and a half now?

I'm sure there are great many things that I consider "right" now that will be wrong in 15 years time either due to changes in the environment in which they work or me otherwise learning new information or developing new techniques over time.

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#179

Post by woodman »

nixos wrote: post #12

I know Linux (Debian) quite well and would like an excuse to try learning FreeBSD, but I just can't find any serious use-cases where FreeBSD would be of any advantage. I run a small site on a VPS, so: 1. I don't have GBs of free memory for ZFS 2. I don't have GB of RAM, CPU and HD space to build everything from ports, and most importantly, no need. Except for an Application Firewall for nginx, what does ports have ov…

> 1. I don't have GBs of free memory for ZFS

Others have already addressed the memory hog myth, so I'll just say that you aren't required to run ZFS - UFS still works just fine. I just sshed into my freebsd AWS instance (UFS) to see 116d uptime with 130MB ram in use and the remaining 110MB being free. I've made no effort to optimize resource usage on the instance, but if I wanted to I could pretty easily cut that by a third without a noticeable impact on performance.

> 2. I don't have GB of RAM, CPU and HD space to build everything from ports, and most importantly, no need.

You might be surprised to learn how many build options there are for the software you use daily. I jumped in with both feet and setup a jailed build server after wanting some uncommon build options for vim, ncurses and sqlite3.

> 5. systemd? ... didn't have the manpower ... I don't know how FreeBSD is doing in that regard.

It has made no attempt, which I'm pretty happy about. The only annoying thing from linux that keeps popping up on my freebsd desktop is dbus.

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#180

Post by fao_ »

roblabla wrote: post #163
_wdzx wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For summary - X is just as insecure as windows/macos - we know it: wayland, mir and snappy is coming. For your disclosure - don't be too lofty with me - I'm trying to understand your problems because I've a very different experience.

It's not a security problem really. That's just a side issue. The problem is, today, if I want to watch a movie, play a game, do anything that requires using some slightly advanced GPU stuff, I'll get tearing, artifacts, or downright crashes. This is mostly because X11 sucks. (It's also partly because the proprietary nvidia drivers sucks). Nowadays I reboot on windows to watch netflix or play games (even linux-compat…

I think this honestly comes down to driver support rather than the Xorg stack. I dual boot with Windows 8.1 (Which is the OS supported by my manufacturer) and Arch Linux, and Arch is consistently more stable and faster for viewing videos and playing games than W8.1.

For example, I tried watching TNG from my external drive the other day (Using the latest VLC for both). On Linux this isn't a problem, the quality is good and there's no stuttering. On Windows it was hellish: The quality was extremely poor and it froze every (literal) 10 seconds to grab more data from the disk.

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