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Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)

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Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)

#31

Post by cperciva »

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #13

Let me pick and choose a few points since replying to everything will necessitate a similar 40-page post. FreeBSD has great engineering and release management practices When someone gets an idea and develops something new, it first gets peer technical reviews The recent WireGuard debacle left a bad taste about this. As it actually turns out, sometimes there is zero technical review for very important patches and a fe…

The recent WireGuard debacle left a bad taste about this. As it actually turns out, sometimes there is zero technical review for very important patches and a few blessed developers can (and sometimes do) just throw their stuff directly into trunk.

This seems like a misunderstanding of the FreeBSD development model. Yes, immature code landed in HEAD, but it was removed before the next release.

In general in FreeBSD there's no expectation that HEAD is always usable. Sometimes it won't even build! It's a place where code can land in the hope that it will be ready by the time the next release rolls around, but "remove code which isn't ready for prime time" isn't an exceptional case.

FreeBSD has a very strong history of post-commit code review, largely because every FreeBSD committer gets email when commits go into the tree -- that's a lot of eyeballs. We're moving towards increased pre-commit review thanks now that better tools are available for that, but that's a separate matter.

(Yes, Netflix runs FreeBSD HEAD. I think they're nuts.)

Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)

#32

Post by Klonoar »

bxparks wrote: post #20

I have tried learning FreeBSD occasionally, mostly for nostalgia because I learned Unix on BSD 4.3 (or 4.4?) on MicroVaxes many years ago. But I get stuck on some very basic things: - My wifi card doesn't work. The installer recognizes it, but the driver doesn't work. - The console terminal defaults to 80x25, I don't know how to resize it. - I can't figure out how to start X Windows. - If I run it in a VM (e.g. Virtu…

>- My wifi card doesn't work. The installer recognizes it, but the driver doesn't work.

(Even if you get it to work, it's not going to be full speed)

Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)

#33

Post by awuji »

itvision wrote: post #4

> Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux On the server/router maybe. For IT pros maybe. The desktop is a whole different matter.

I have been daily driving FreeBSD as a desktop since the last time this article was posted and I love it. It is super consistent and reliable, and after I got it set up, I don't have to worry about anything breaking. I can easily use it daily for coding and web browsing, and it feels as smooth and fast as a Linux setup on the same hardware.

That said, I still have a Linux system for things like gaming, Cuda, and containers. Though, as I never have time to game anyways, I could just use the Linux system as a server.

But, I've used Linux for 10+ years and it only started annoying me recently so I may also get frustrated with freeBSD eventually.

Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)

#34

Post by pdimitar »

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #13

Let me pick and choose a few points since replying to everything will necessitate a similar 40-page post. FreeBSD has great engineering and release management practices When someone gets an idea and develops something new, it first gets peer technical reviews The recent WireGuard debacle left a bad taste about this. As it actually turns out, sometimes there is zero technical review for very important patches and a fe…

> Most services on my machines are heavily locked down and isolated from each other since systemd makes this very easy

Do you have a guide handy? A quick Google search only showed generic nonsense. I'll appreciate a recipe-like pointer. Been curious about this for a while.

Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)

#35

Post by matthews2 »

how2cflags wrote: post #26
jester23947 wrote: post #19

I really like this article about FreeBSD. One really nice feature that is not cover though is to set the immutable flags on some binaries with the command chflags. It's possible to boot your very secure system into securemode level 1 or higher. In this mode, it's impossible to delete those files. rm -rf /* has very limited damage. chmod -R 0000 /* won't touch chmod and all kind of ooops become much less destructive.…

Just wanted to say that in linux you have extended attributes on files, check the man page on chattr. I believe the -i option makes files immutable. I picked this little trick up watching a red team discuss how they set themselves persistence on the target system by making /etc/shadow immutable this way.. Fun bit is, root can't even remove the file until the flag is removed, and you can't see the immutable flag on th…

FreeBSD has the concept of a 'security level'. You can increase it at runtime, which disables more functionality, but you can't decrease it without a reboot.

At security level 1, the immutable and append only attributes on files can't be removed, so even chattr -i would be useless.

Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)

#37

Post by a-dub »

how does the kernel compare these days? pre-cfq i remember the scheduler was far better than linux, but what about raw performance for single and multithread/process workloads with lots of i/o going through the kernel?

raw cve counts seem meaningless without a denominator to me. those numbers should be normalized by estimated install base if they're going to be compared.

Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)

#38

Post by jsiepkes »

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #13

Let me pick and choose a few points since replying to everything will necessitate a similar 40-page post. FreeBSD has great engineering and release management practices When someone gets an idea and develops something new, it first gets peer technical reviews The recent WireGuard debacle left a bad taste about this. As it actually turns out, sometimes there is zero technical review for very important patches and a fe…

> ZFS has first-class support on Ubuntu and is compiled into the kernel.

And Ubuntu is also the only distribution which has ZFS. Using ZFS on any other distribution (for example RHEL, Rocky Linux, etc.) is a pain. Every update is Russian roulette in which it can break.

And everyone except Ubutunu thinks it's a violation of the CDDL. Keep in mind that Oracle is the copyright holder of ZFS. So you (and Ubuntu) are violating Oracle's license terms. Would be realy interesting to see what happens if Oracle decides to sue an Ubuntu user. Would Ubuntu step in to help?

> There's also real DTrace on Oracle Linux if you're ready to sell your soul:

I can't run Ubuntu (for ZFS) and Oracle Linux (for DTrace) at the same time. Besides, like you said; Why would anyone want to use Oracle's Unbreakable Linux?

> Well... linux has containers, and if all you need is isolation...

No that's not all I need. I need things like virtual networking between my containers.

> I actually think it's worse in this regard because of the link above.

Depends. If you put them in a FreeBSD jail they are probably better isolated then only using systemd.

Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)

#39

Post by 5e92cb50239222b »

cperciva wrote: post #31
5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #13

Let me pick and choose a few points since replying to everything will necessitate a similar 40-page post. FreeBSD has great engineering and release management practices When someone gets an idea and develops something new, it first gets peer technical reviews The recent WireGuard debacle left a bad taste about this. As it actually turns out, sometimes there is zero technical review for very important patches and a fe…

The recent WireGuard debacle left a bad taste about this. As it actually turns out, sometimes there is zero technical review for very important patches and a few blessed developers can (and sometimes do) just throw their stuff directly into trunk. This seems like a misunderstanding of the FreeBSD development model. Yes, immature code landed in HEAD, but it was removed before the next release . In general in FreeBSD t…

Thanks for clarification. Although IIUC the "bad" WireGuard implementation was stopped from being released just barely:

https://lwn.net/Articles/850098

It was rushed because a particular vendor wanted to have it as soon as possible. If not for Jason Donenfeld's diligence it looks like we would have out there in the open, full of bugs and all.

Doesn't seem like a normal occurrence though, seeing how much noise it made.

Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)

#40

Post by gray_-_wolf »

I've considered migrating my NAS to openbsd few times, but one thing I was not sure about is with that to replace the filesystem with. I'm currently running btrfs and I like it. Few things I would like to have in a replacement:

1. copy-on-write and snapshots

2. checksums that are automatically verified on reads

3. btrfs' version of RAID1 (meaning I don't have to buy identical HDDs only)

What would be my options?

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