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

unixsheikh.com

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

#141

Post by kaba0 »

stiray wrote: post #62

I 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…

Docker is not a security sandbox technolgy, but a bundle all the dependency sandbox one.

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

#142

Post by reactordev »

unethical_ban wrote: post #89
djbusby wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on Linux and have to get a rtw8852 driver from some random-ish gitHub repo to get WiFi in a recent Lenovo. Does this mean WiFI is only for Win/Mac?

That's odd. My 2018 Lenovo Thinkpad had working Wifi out of the box from day 1. The last time I had wifi driver issues on Linux was 2008.

New chip for Wifi6 hasn’t made it upstream to the kernel yet and relies on patches.

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

#143

Post by lmas »

nulbyte wrote: post #61
avodonosov wrote: post #36

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: https://wiki.freebsd.org/Laptops

Yeah from that page I picked a refurbished Thinkpad x270 as my new daily drive and set up FreeBSD on it, works perfectly!

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

#144

Post by josephcsible »

jen20 wrote: post #138
jsiepkes wrote: post #38

Earlier 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…

> Keep in mind that Oracle is the copyright holder of ZFS. So you (and Ubuntu) are violating Oracle's license terms. If anything IS a problem here it is violating the terms of the GPL, not the CDDL. So no, no one is violating Oracles licensing terms - and if they were, they’d have been sued in 2016 when this shipped. Do you really think ORACLE of all people is just holding back out the goodness of their hearts? Compl…

> If anything IS a problem here it is violating the terms of the GPL, not the CDDL.

How so? Aren't the GPL and CDDL both copyleft?

> So no, no one is violating Oracles licensing terms - and if they were, they’d have been sued in 2016 when this shipped. Do you really think ORACLE of all people is just holding back out the goodness of their hearts?

No, Oracle is holding back because they want more money. If they sue a little guy now, then everyone else will immediately stop using ZFS-on-Linux. They're waiting until someone with really deep pockets starts to use it before they sue.

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

#145

Post by rubyist5eva »

cyberpunk wrote: post #124
rubyist5eva wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

what linux server distro are you using if not ubuntu lts? Im not a massive fan either but i run thousands of the bastards (k8s hosts) and cant imagine an other... just disable snap and you're good ;)

At $CURRENT_JOB we run our postgres database on a massive bare-metal dedicated server running FreeBSD, our container hosts are Alma Linux 8 and the base images are typically debian-slim, though some are alpine or even scratch.

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

#146

Post by mshroyer »

One application where FreeBSD especially shines is as a fileserver to Windows clients: Unlike on Linux, NFSv4 ACLs are supported natively!

The NT ACLs used in Windows and SMB are much more expressive than Linux's POSIX draft ACLs. When a Windows client writes a file to a Linux Samba server, it cannot necessarily express the file's ACL as a POSIX ACL losslessly. To work around this, Samba's vfs_acl_xattr saves the "real" ACL as an extended attribute: https://www.samba.org/samba/docs/current/man-html/vfs_acl_xa...

This means the ACLs set by clients won't be enforced for local users on the file server, and that you need special tools to view and edit those ACLs.

In contrast, FreeBSD supports NFSv4 ACLs on ZFS, and those are a superset of NT ACLs. Samba saves the NT ACL as an NFSv4 ACL, and this can be viewed or edited using getfacl and setfacl as with any other file on the server.

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

#147

Post by philistine »

nullify88 wrote: post #119
stingraycharles wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a technological perspective, everything you say is true, and FreeBSD is better in so many regards. But, compatibility and community support is just a deal breaker. The jails vs docker argument is a good example: while technically better, Docker (or rather, cgroups and image distribution) have been standardised and have tremendous community adoption. FreeBSD cannot tap into any of this at all. Yes, jails might be…

Perhaps VHS vs Betamax is a suitable equivalent to FreeBSD vs Linux.

Your comment implies the old trop that Beta was much better quality than VHS, but Betamax's reputation for better quality was marketing spin and conflation with Betacam, Sony's pro version.

In reality, Betamax was nearly indistinguishable from VHS.

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

#148

Post by pleb_nz »

I really like the idea and would live to give it a go, but as someone who develops across web, xamarin, .netcore, docker and wants good first support for these tools so I'm not wasting time/money it looks like I would be hard pressed to swap without dedicating a lot money to the effort. Also, does freebsd run on m1/m2 hardware yet?

Happy if I'm wrong and someone can point me in the right direction. But the few times I've looked into it it doesn't seem worth the expenditure.

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

#149

Post by ahepp »

_abox wrote: post #108

That link has been posted here many times already. I use FreeBSD as a daily driver on my desktop. Very happy with it. My reasons to choose it were more that I feel like Linux has become a toy of big tech. If you look at the kernel contributions, most of them are from people working for all the big names. Linux has become Big Business and each company is trying to safeguard their interests in it. Linus is still in cha…

> If you look at the kernel contributions, most of them are from people working for all the big names

Like hardware manufacturers? I thought getting commercial users to contribute to the kernel was desirable?

> For example, would these guys ever have approved the GPL-3?

Didn't Torvalds himself reject GPL-3?

> And in fact it's the very BSD license that makes big business shun FreeBSD

Now I'm really confused. Why would businesses not like the BSD license? And they don't like GPL-3 either? Is GPL-2 the goldilocks license for them?

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

#150

Post by [deleted] »

johnklos wrote: post #28

The article hits the nail on the head about Linux' "mismatches". When distros need to be different gratuitously, you can no longer get a book on Linux that meaningfully applies across multiple distros. Heck, even an Ubuntu book would be irrelevant after a few changes (16 -> 18, 18 -> 20). The same people who respond in the community to questions about changes often respond to defend the changes, but rarely respond wi…

[deleted]
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