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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)

#251

Post by pfranz »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #249
frostwarrior wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I even say that instability of the Linux desktop was a considerable contributor to the decline of Linux powered workstations. People were getting used to the old reliable Gnome2 and the Windows-esque KDE desktop. But there's always some team of developers thinking they are Apple and completely throw years of progress out the window by breaking compatibility because of some usability "feature" their own selfish concep…

But why does the world always go along with it? In an alternate universe, the community just said "yeah, no thanks, I'll keep using Gnome 2", which they continued maintaining under the name Elf or whatever.

I think that's where the fracturing comes in. For whatever reason, distros will ship with the new thing. The past 2 or 3 places I've worked adopted MATE (a continuation of GNOME 2). And, of course, there was instability at these places in figuring out which direction to go.

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

#252

Post by sicp-enjoyer »

SoftTalker wrote: post #54
shaw00000 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've used OpenBSD as my desktop OS for the last 10 years or so. I agree it's probably not the ideal desktop OS for everyone, but I think your dismissal may be a bit too strong. You do need to be sure your desktop machine is well-suited for OpenBSD. This means supported Intel or AMD graphics (Nvidia won't work well if at all, and not all AMD will either) and network/wifi card.

Do you do a lot of customization, or use a special desktop environment, or do you stick with the base stuff?

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

#253

Post by Wowfunhappy »

pfranz wrote: post #251
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why does the world always go along with it? In an alternate universe, the community just said "yeah, no thanks, I'll keep using Gnome 2", which they continued maintaining under the name Elf or whatever.

I think that's where the fracturing comes in. For whatever reason, distros will ship with the new thing. The past 2 or 3 places I've worked adopted MATE (a continuation of GNOME 2). And, of course, there was instability at these places in figuring out which direction to go.

> The past 2 or 3 places I've worked adopted MATE (a continuation of GNOME 2).

Oh, so it did happen, I’m not currently a Linux user and had no idea!

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

#254

Post by frostwarrior »

pfranz wrote: post #251
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why does the world always go along with it? In an alternate universe, the community just said "yeah, no thanks, I'll keep using Gnome 2", which they continued maintaining under the name Elf or whatever.

I think that's where the fracturing comes in. For whatever reason, distros will ship with the new thing. The past 2 or 3 places I've worked adopted MATE (a continuation of GNOME 2). And, of course, there was instability at these places in figuring out which direction to go.

> For whatever reason, distros will ship with the new thing.

Chicken and egg problem: Popular distros will follow popular DE's, because they have the most people making their way out of bugs and problems.

MATE, on the other hand, is kinda barren compared to more popular options. Even if it's the same old Gnome2 desktop of yore

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

#255

Post by depressedpanda »

trelane wrote: post #229
School-Cotton wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you’re saying is probably valid for a desktop (especially if it doesn’t use Nvidia), but laptops (especially Nvidia ones) are still far from perfect. Personal experience with Ubuntu on a recent Thinkpad: * When using Wayland, until VERY recently (latest nvidia drivers), the entire system would freeze when hooking up an external monitor. Okay, no problem I’ll use X. * Hygrid graphics just completely doesn’t work,…

> Personal experience with Ubuntu on a recent Thinkpad: Well, that's your first problem. How does FreeBSD or OSX do on it? Maybe you should buy a Linux laptop to run Linux instead of slapping Linux on a Windows laptop and expecting it to work correctly.

No, I'm pretty sure all his problems are due to Nvidia.

Try Intel or AMD; they are a lot more stable in my experience.

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

#256

Post by jrumbut »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #249
frostwarrior wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I even say that instability of the Linux desktop was a considerable contributor to the decline of Linux powered workstations. People were getting used to the old reliable Gnome2 and the Windows-esque KDE desktop. But there's always some team of developers thinking they are Apple and completely throw years of progress out the window by breaking compatibility because of some usability "feature" their own selfish concep…

But why does the world always go along with it? In an alternate universe, the community just said "yeah, no thanks, I'll keep using Gnome 2", which they continued maintaining under the name Elf or whatever.

They did! MATE is fairly popular, but as to why it happens I think it's about people.

There are only so many people willing (and able) to do the often difficult and unglamorous programming work that goes into maintaining something like Gnome.

If you're working on a major distro you have a certain level of trust in Gnome 3 because the same people delivered and supported Gnome 2. I'm sure when Gnome 3's direction became clear dozens or hundreds said "no way! I'm going to start my own fork which will never change!"

But how do you know which one to pick?

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

#257

Post by tannhaeuser »

stingraycharles wrote: post #90
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…

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…

> Docker (or rather, cgroups and image distribution) have been standardised

Cgroups, namespaces have been implemented once, in Linux, by Google for their own needs. Not standardized in any meaningful interpretation of that word, just like "web standards" aren't. With now a generation of developers raised by big media and fake grassroots and staged march of progress stories, I'm wondering if that generation will be able to tell the difference, or are invested too much already.

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

#260

Post by cyberpunk »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #193
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…

I think one of the biggest mistakes the FreeBSD team made(in terms of more widestream adoption) was abandoning the Linux syscall table layer. It's still there, but it's stuck on 2.6.x last time I looked. It's a lot to maintain, yes, but it would help secure a lot more users like me, who are highly technical, potential contributors, who like a lot of the features(jails, better ZFS integration, easy to set up dtrace su…

I mean, it does work… I use it to run stuff like istioctl and rke on my fbsd workstation no problems…
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