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

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

#131

Post by protomyth » Tue, Aug 03, 2010, 3:53 PM UTC

sethg wrote: post #104

silentbicycle wrote: post #36

I've been using OpenBSD for several years (since 3.4...wow, that's almost seven years), as my primary OS. I had been running Debian for 2~3 years, and Red Hat (briefly, ick) before that. A lot has been covered already, but: 1. The BSDs feel significantly more cohesive to me. Other people have mentioned this, but it deserves greater emphasis. The config files, man pages, etc. are quite a bit more consistent, and my fi…

I used to use OpenBSD as a personal mail/web server on a freecycled 486, and decided to go with Linux when I upgraded to newer and faster machines. My rationale was that even though I respect OpenBSD’s security philosophy, if anyone pwns my server, they’re not going to go through a hole in the base system; they’re going to go through a hole in the PHP scripts that run my blog. (Where, oh where, is a featureful blog-s…

Well, the point of OpenBSD's security is that you can isolate Apache so they can pown Apache but won't get the rest of the server.

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

#132

Post by tzs » Tue, Aug 03, 2010, 3:58 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #88

tzs wrote: post #66

One nice thing about the BSDs is that their users don't get annoying things like this when they look for basic manual pages: The GNU folks, in general, abhor man pages, and create info documents instead. The maintainer of tar falls into this category. This man page is neither complete, nor current, and was included in the Debian Linux packaging of tar entirely to reduce the frequency with which the lack of a man page…

That's a bit like complaining that when I use the BSDs they don't have documentation in Microsoft CHM format, or that they put stuff in /usr/local. Different systems simply have different conventions, and GNU picked GNU Info over man pages. That bastard GNU tar(1) man page was created because Debian has a policy that everything must have a manpage. I like Unix, but the GNU Info format solved some real issues with man…

> Different systems simply have different conventions, and GNU picked GNU Info over man pages.

Sure, but that's no reason to be hostile to man pages. Ideally you have a man page, which provides a standard quick reference for those how know the command, and then other documents (such is Info) for people who need more detailed information, complete manuals, etc.. In fact, that's how it was way back in the Seventh Edition days of Unix, with the UPM providing the in-depth documentation and the man pages providing the quick reference.

If the GNU people don't want to actually write the man pages, they could at least not stand in the way of those who would like to provide them. Here's another variant of the note from the GNU tar man page on some Linux systems:

    The GNU folks, in general, abhor man pages, and create info
    documents instead.  Unfortunately, the info document describing
    tar is licensed under the GFDL with invariant cover texts, which
    makes it impossible to include any text from that document in this
    man page.  Most of the text in this document was automatically
    extracted from the usage text in the source.  It may not completely
    describe all features of the program.

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

#133

Post by ax0n » Tue, Aug 03, 2010, 4:05 PM UTC

bl4k wrote: post #58

I have been an OpenBSD and FreeBSD user, as well as minor contributor, since the mid-90s. All the answers here are good, and I would like to add: * FreeBSD is on the cutting edge of performance. Because it is a total OS (as opposed to just a kernel), performance improvements are made and integrated into the binary packages and ports build options of common packages. FreeBSD was one of the first operating systems to i…

This post is awesome, but I do have to argue your point on FreeBSD 5. The release might have been very structured, but for me it was a gigantic clustercoitus that caused me to turn my back on FreeBSD.

Just one of the many annoyances: The package manager would attempt to use gunzip on the new packages which had been tar/bzipped and thus binary package installation was completely borked for a good while after release. I ended up having to manually patch the package utils.

I agree with everything else. It's amazing how Open, Net and FreeBSD work together on a lot of things, particularly hardware support and userland performance. The BSD Way (all of it) is a great comfort to me, and knowing The BSD Way ahead of time really helped me out when I went to start working on big enterprise platforms like Solaris and AIX. I fear many GNU/Linux admins would take much longer to adapt to how things are done on those platforms than someone with a really solid BSD background.

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

#134

Post by grammaton » Tue, Aug 03, 2010, 4:07 PM UTC

sigil wrote: post #42

silentbicycle wrote: post #36

I've been using OpenBSD for several years (since 3.4...wow, that's almost seven years), as my primary OS. I had been running Debian for 2~3 years, and Red Hat (briefly, ick) before that. A lot has been covered already, but: 1. The BSDs feel significantly more cohesive to me. Other people have mentioned this, but it deserves greater emphasis. The config files, man pages, etc. are quite a bit more consistent, and my fi…

> 5. I really like source / ports-tree-based packaging ... Some Linux distros (Arch and Gentoo) have similar packaging systems, now. FreeBSD user here. I've always been curious about the ports-tree-based packaging systems found in these Linux distros. Is anyone familiar enough with both to offer a comparison?

I've used FreeBSD since the mid nineties (it's what I cut my teeth on, Unix wise). I've also been using Gentoo images over at Rackspace for a while now. From a basic standpoint, the two are the same - one command and off it goes, with a well thought out set of "pre-cooked" installations ready to go. However, I have to give Gentoo credit for being a bit smarter about dependencies. On the other hand, the structure for the actual portage tree is....less preferable than FreeBSD's layout for the ports collection. Also Gentoo's portage can "mask" certain builds, basically deprecating them in a way that's really hard to turn off, and that can get annoying at times.

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

#135

Post by sigil » Tue, Aug 03, 2010, 4:12 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #100

bl4k wrote: post #58

I have been an OpenBSD and FreeBSD user, as well as minor contributor, since the mid-90s. All the answers here are good, and I would like to add: * FreeBSD is on the cutting edge of performance. Because it is a total OS (as opposed to just a kernel), performance improvements are made and integrated into the binary packages and ports build options of common packages. FreeBSD was one of the first operating systems to i…

> 15. FreeBSD hasn't had a default install, STABLE security advisory in ~10 years. Do you use the default install? Even OpenSSH (which would be in the default install of Linux) is from ports IIRC.

No, OpenSSH is a part of the base system, and is included in a default FreeBSD install. http://svn.freebsd.org/viewvc/base/stable/8/crypto/openssh/

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

#136

Post by grammaton » Tue, Aug 03, 2010, 4:19 PM UTC

Put simply, it's more integrated and unified than most Linux distributions. Instead of packaging this thing from here, that thing from over there, and ramming in this new toy from that place there, everything in each release - tools, userland, ports, kernel - moves in lockstep. The result is an OS that's very consistent once you figure out how it does things, and rock solid stable. It takes a bit more tweaking to get, say, your compositing window manager running - but once you do, you can be guaranteed it will keep running - even when you change or upgrade other things - with all the stupid consistency of a rotating planet unless you screw up and do something very bad. Also, in my experience, it's much more customizable than Linux. The kernel sources are included in the distribution, right there for the building, and the process of configuring and making your own kernel is fairly straightforward, even easy. Contrast with the closest thing I've seen on Linux, Gentoo - which is significantly more involved. That may seem like an obscure point, but if someone walked up to me and told me I needed to put a *nix on a server tomorrow and strip it down to get every last iota of performance out of that server, FreeBSD would be the first thing I reached for.

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

#137

Post by lsc » Tue, Aug 03, 2010, 4:28 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #33

lsc wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is this true? hot damn, I am behind the times. do you know if it's the paravirtualized kernel? last I checked it wasn't particularly stable... but damn. I don't see it in their 'distro manager' thing

They don't officially support it. But they just run a normal Xen setup. Setting up any Xen OS that supports running in domU is relatively easy. There's a few people that have already done it for FreeBSD and NetBSD. You can try it out locally by setting up Linux and running FreeBSD in domU. Then just transfer that image to Linode.

So, like I do with NetBSD then? well, I guess I actually have the netbsd installer in there.

freeBSD 8 requires at least xen 3.3 to run in paravirt mode; this is why it won't work on ec2, so I don't know if that counts as a 'normal xen setup' -

The thing is, last I read FreeBSD8 was not stable under paravirt xen, and I was hoping to hear this had changed. Also, last I remember, it didn't work at all with more than one vcpu.

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

#138

Post by 16s » Tue, Aug 03, 2010, 4:29 PM UTC

I like OpenBSD the best of them all. The project has principles and they stick to them. It is simple and understandable and people like Stuart Henderson are very helpful with ports and new developers. It's a much smaller and friendly project than you may believe.

Theo and Ted and Marco and OGA and all the other devs are great and they are all very open about everything they do. I only have one majpr concern with OpenBSD:

* Multiple CPUs/Cores

With the lateral move by Intel and AMD to more and more cores rather than more hertz the future of CPU processing seems very clear. The problem is that OpenBSD has primitive SMP support, and is nowhere near FreeBSD or Linux. It's hard to find single core servers these days and in a few years, 12 or 16 cores will probably be entry level and 48 to 64 will be common... maybe more.

In short, I hope OpenBSD can keep up with multiple CPUs/cores. Otherwise it will seem just wrong to load it on new servers.

If they do not keep up, I would still buy the CDs to support the project and its many side projects (OpenSSH, OpenBGP, OpenNTP, the new smtp system, etc.). Even if you, as a Unix user absolutely hate OpenBSD for whatever reason, you should still buy the CDs to support OpenSSH.

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

#139

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 03, 2010, 4:46 PM UTC

a2tech wrote: post #32

lsc wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is this true? hot damn, I am behind the times. do you know if it's the paravirtualized kernel? last I checked it wasn't particularly stable... but damn. I don't see it in their 'distro manager' thing

I emailed them about it after 8 was released-they have a 'non supported install method' for OpenBSD that a forum member wrote. They told me it SHOULD work for FreeBSD, but they're currently not devoting any resources to figuring out how to make it go

[deleted]

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

#140

Post by tvon » Tue, Aug 03, 2010, 4:47 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #45

avar wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah point #1 is odd. GNU/Linux doesn't let licenses get in the way of technical decisions. DTrace and ZFS aren't in Linux because Sun explicitly designed their licensed to be GPL-incompatible. Where that isn't the case nobody is seeking to replace code due to license reasons. E.g. you don't see Linux people trying to replace X11 or Sendmail because of their licenses. But the BSD systems are actively trying to phase…

Exactly. I always read BSD discussions and think "what a bunch of licensing fanbois". I guess since the OS and the license have the same name... Anyway, here's why I support Linux and the GPL: the WRT54G. Linksys would have never released the source code for the router's kernel without being forced to. But when they did it, an amazing thing happened, third-party developers made their product one of the most popular w…

I'm not convinced this was such a great thing for Linksys, and I always thought it served as a warning to other companies that using GPL'd code can be a bit of a trap.