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…
Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)
91–100 of 376 posts
Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)
#92I 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…
FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD are for servers, appliance servers and embedded devices mostly. You can use them as a desktop, but that's not where their strengths are. If you want to learn or use FreeBSD in this case I strongly suggest setting up a home server and learn as much as possible.
If the user has run of the mill hardware, that only is true in the sense that FreeBSD does not offer to install a desktop environment at time of initial install/setup. Nothing precludes you from installing Gnome, KDE, or any of the many others. IE pkg install gnome.
The only place FreeBSD (or any of the other BSDs) is less robust is driver support, though most common stuff is available. In any event, those needing support for the latest greatest of hardware are probably better of with Windows.
Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)
#93I 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.
but you can use ZFS on linux?
Yes but it’s clunky. ZFS on FreeBSD is smooth as silk. Ubuntu is the only distro that I would say has good integration with ZFS but I don’t like anything else about Ubuntu.
Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)
#94Earlier 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.
I just installed Fedora 36 on my Thinkpad. It went pretty smoothly. Single monitor, AMD CPU/iGPU.
There are a few gripes about the discoverability of the keyboard shortcuts. Unity was good with this, holding down the Win/Meta key showed all the DE shortcuts.
Also, there is not an easy way to change certain settings (like system font!) without installing an obscure package "Tweaks" that should be built into the system settings.
Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)
#95Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)
#96> Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux On the server/router maybe. For IT pros maybe. The desktop is a whole different matter.
Can you watch Netflix on FreeBSD yet? That was what prevented me from switching from Linux last time I tried.
Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the desktop, Linux is going to be challenging anyway. Many people love that challenge and make it work, and that's cool. But my point is that if you can make it work on desktop Linux you will make it work on FreeBSD as well, given some decent skill.
> But my point is that if you can make it work on desktop Linux you will make it work on FreeBSD as well, given some decent skill. As someone who has run Linux and FreeBSD desktops for years -- no, Linux on the desktop is actually quite a bit better and easier to use than FreeBSD.
> Linux on the desktop is actually quite a bit better and easier to use than FreeBSD.
As someone who actually started learning *NIX on BSDs and later switched to Linux, I think "quite a bit better and easier" is an understatement. I tried the latest FreeBSD last year on a not so recent Lenovo laptop and it was a horrible experience.
Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)
#98Not shown: the bewildering choices made for various tools. sed * The `-i` flag - In the absence of a file extension given, I should not have to specify with `''` that I want the original file over-written. The flag is called in-place for a reason. * BSD sed doesn't support ANSI-C escape sequences, so you have to fall back to your shell quoting them for you. xargs * Why is there no `-d` flag for BSD? There are others…
> The flag is called in-place for a reason.
What's the reason? Surprisingly, the file is never edited in place.
Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
To add another anecdote: I use ZFS on NixOS for all of my partitions, including an encrypted boot partition. It has been rock solid for me.
Re: Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It runs circles around the docker in everything except how much it was adapted by community. ...except? Meh. People who want to engage in this argument are generally trying to argue about jails vs. the collection of linux container technologies. That's not Docker. Docker won because of Dockerfiles. Docker isn't, at its core, an interesting container technology. Docker is a simple metaphor and programming environmen…
I love FreeBSD and i love Jails, but you're right. Docker won because of simplicity. Dockerfiles make it super simple. There is similar stuff for jails but you need a jails frontend that use it. A few years ago i wanted to build the Jailfile equivalent, call it Warden, and have Warden manage the jails. But honestly i doubt it would get traction outside a small community.
Build it and they will come..