If it also recommended well supported laptop models...
There are details on what is working and what isn't for a slew of models on the FreeBSD wiki:
Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)
61–70 of 376 posts
Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)
#62I am using freebsd since version 8 for all my server needs (was using linux, but got repelled by its chaos which I dont care about on my laptop, but it pisses me off on server).
Some more points:
- bhyve, developed by netapp, they ditched all old technologies support and it works faster on my i5 server than kvm on my i7 laptop. Snapshoting using ZFS is not a feature to discard either.
- FIBs, absolute miracle routing tables that you can apply to whatever software, define the routes as fib 1 (lets say it is openvpn) and then use them as simply as `setfib 1 bash` to use them in all child processes
- backward compatibility, this is where linux is really horrible, there was an article about compiling binary on freebsd 2 and running it on freebsd 10. Try this on linux, binaries are not compatible even on minor versions.
- jails... docker? Really? Jails are 15+ years old implementation, kernel supported, that stood test of time, actually being a security feature. It runs circles around the docker in everything except how much it was adapted by community. I never understood why people rather used an inferior solution like docker.
- not to mention all the chaos in linux ecosystem, in next sub-version, the commands can have completely different switches,...
I will never understand on what technical merits people are using linux for servers except the support-ability of hardware. Due to the whole show that linux is getting we would prosper as a humanity by ditching the linux. Unfortunately, marketing is worth more than anything.
(I do understand that people will not agree due to their preference, but try to use it. I doubt you will prefer linux ever again.)
Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)
#63It is not early days anymore and we have given it a quarter of a century for these 'alternatives' OSes to do something on the desktop and it is still plagued with issues for just simple desktop usage.
This list of reasons here makes it easy for me and others to choose neither and tell users to just stick with either Windows or macOS (which macOS is a BSD Unix, but the users don't care and they should not).
Both FreeBSD and the trillions of GNU/Linux distros are still not ready for a simple desktop usage.
This is even before mentioning the in-fighting on swapping out system components like desktop environments, windowing systems, init systems, service, etc.
Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Desktop Linux is pretty comfortable and intuitive, actually. There's no challenge involved.
A guy I know (relatively skilled) spent a whole week setting up Linux on his laptop the other day. So I don't think it's always as predictable as to say there's never a challenge involved in 2022.
"Relatively" seems like it's doing a lot of work there.
Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)
#65Let 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 viol…
It's not "only Ubuntu". I'm using ZFS (not for boot or root partition) on Gentoo for some time. It's a separate package from kernel, and has to rebuild after a kernel upgrade but it works as expected.
Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)
#66I use FreeBSD on servers instead of Linux for one reason: ZFS. It's really that much better than anything that is currently available on Linux. BTRFS is not even close.
Yes I know it's available on Ubuntu but everything else about Ubuntu is just so messy.
Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
I haven't seen any decent articles on this (doesn't mean there aren't any) that mention anything besides most basic flags. Have a gander at the comment I linked ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29976096 ). --- Probably the easiest way to start is to create your unit file as usual, copy the list from the comment into it, and then run: $ systemd-analyze security unit-name It prints a huge list of suggestions alon…
Thanks a bunch! I'm absolutely bookmarking your comment and will go back to it.
Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)
#68I am using freebsd since version 8 for all my server needs (was using linux, but got repelled by its chaos which I dont care about on my laptop, but it pisses me off on server). Some more points: - bhyve, developed by netapp, they ditched all old technologies support and it works faster on my i5 server than kvm on my i7 laptop. Snapshoting using ZFS is not a feature to discard either. - FIBs, absolute miracle routing…
I use Linux all day long and none of this is an issue for me, so I guess that's the counterpoint. I'm just a desktop/server user/developer though and not a guru by any stretch.
Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)
#69I am using freebsd since version 8 for all my server needs (was using linux, but got repelled by its chaos which I dont care about on my laptop, but it pisses me off on server). Some more points: - bhyve, developed by netapp, they ditched all old technologies support and it works faster on my i5 server than kvm on my i7 laptop. Snapshoting using ZFS is not a feature to discard either. - FIBs, absolute miracle routing…
Some of this may be true, though I have some disagreements about the accuracy of some (and also the issue that "Linux" is a broad target and some of these apply more or less to different distributions or os'), but freebsd definitely had its share if chaos in its history. The fbsd4-6 era was a difficult one to navigate and it's basically where I feel off the freebsd bandwagon.
Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)
#70I am using freebsd since version 8 for all my server needs (was using linux, but got repelled by its chaos which I dont care about on my laptop, but it pisses me off on server). Some more points: - bhyve, developed by netapp, they ditched all old technologies support and it works faster on my i5 server than kvm on my i7 laptop. Snapshoting using ZFS is not a feature to discard either. - FIBs, absolute miracle routing…
> backward compatibility, this is where linux is really horrible, there was an article about compiling binary on freebsd 2 and running it on freebsd 10. Try this on linux, binaries are not compatible even on minor versions.
What a completely bizarre claim. I have commercial linux/x86 binaries from the 90s that work perfectly well on my current PC running Linux 5.15.