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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)

#261

Post by therealunreal »

nsajko wrote: post #241
ooneeks wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having used BSD many years ago on desktop, I completely disagree. What are you using your computer for using BSD? I really don't spend 99% of my time just compiling lol The chaos thing is something I hear from BSD users quite a lot. I'm still not sure what it is means, maybe that's some sort of personal issue..? I suppose you don't like forking and variation, which is understandable coming from a user of an OS with a…

> I'm willing to bet that most people running Arch or Gentoo are still using quite a bit of 'Debian resources'/assets. More like the reverse, the Arch Wiki is the best so everyone uses it. Although for some topics it makes sense to take a look at Debian or Gentoo wikis, too. Not sure what other kind of 'Debian resources'/assets you had in mind.

I use Arch almost exclusively on the desktop but I gave up on running it on servers that I don't want to actively maintain (think of small, non-critical web servers). Ubuntu works fine there.

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

#262

Post by pjmlp »

trasz wrote: post #156
pjmlp wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said anything about z/OS? There are other mainframes to chose from. In any case, in what concerns "modern" Web development, z/OS has you covered, https://www.ibm.com/products/open-enterprise-sdk-go-zos https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/java-sdk-products-zos https://www.ibm.com/products/sdk-nodejs-compiler-zos

What mainframes are still alive, apart from z/Architecture? As for "modern Web development" - not really; it's a bit like running Apache and MySQL on Windows 98 - yes, you technically could, but you probably don't want to. Have you heard of anyone wilfully choosing to use mainframes instead of some Unix over the past two decades?

IBM i, Unisy ClearPath and OS/2200, related offerings, now you can feel pedantic and differentiate which of them are proper mainframes, which are mini, microcomputers or whatever.

We are discussing technicalities here, the whole point started about Linux isn't the only way to have access to such called "modern" Web tools.

Technically they exist in any UNIX environment, mainframes (or whatever you feel like calling them), and Windows.

Missing stuff like fork () doesn't even matter for most of those runtimes. https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/fall2016/atlidakis

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

#263

Post by 1500100900 »

kaashif wrote: post #199
werid wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can't believe that openbsd dude is still updating that page. he seems to be obsessed with an os he doesn't use.

I can't believe that either. At most I'd have written an angry blog post and never updated it. Don't know what keeps him going. A desire to see FreeBSD fix those defaults? Desire for OpenBSD to be recognised as having better defaults for security than FreeBSD? What would that even look like?

> Don't know what keeps him going. A desire to see FreeBSD fix those defaults?

And when they do fix any of those things, what is his reaction going to be? So far it's been "it took them so much time to fix this, let's keep that in mind".

The point of it is clearly to convince people to use OpenBSD instead of FreeBSD.

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

#264

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

nwilkens wrote: post #240
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for not calling me an idiot, at least. I'm not sure how relevant Microsoft is here given how much more different from Linux NT should be compared to FreeBSD. It's also kind of a different calculus for Microsoft in terms of it being worth the effort for what they wanted to do with it. Microsoft already has its own thriving ecosystem, the Linux support is just a bonus to attract people from a niche market. For F…

MNX acquired[1] SmartOS (and Triton DataCenter) earlier this year from Samsung. We're continuing development and have continued with a bi-weekly release cycle. [1]: https://www.mnxsolutions.com/triton-faq

Awesome! Joyent had some really neat tech, I was sad to see them gobbled by Samsung.

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

#265

Post by magicalhippo »

LanternLight83 wrote: post #52
ahepp wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe zfs fulfills all those requirements. I’m running freebsd on my NAS and it’s been great.

Not #3, but it's still the best option

I've run a mirror with non-identical disks on ZFS, worked just like any other mirror. I bought two pairs of disks from different vendors and ran them as mixed pairs in case the disks from one vendor would fail simultaneously.

Disk space is, as expected, limited to the smaller disk in each pair. However, if you replace the smaller disk with a larger one, ZFS will automatically grow to the new minimum. You fault one disk in a pair, swap it with a larger and bring it online, ZFS will repair (fill the new disk) and once finished the pool will be larger just like that.

I've used this approach to increase the size of my pool, which again meant having a pair of different disks in the mirror as I did the the swap process.

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

#266

Post by 0xedd »

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…

Your point about Jails vs Containers (popularized by Docker) is a naive rose-tinted glasses view. Jails is aimed at security and stops at that. To create something like docker-compose or Kubernetes with Jails is nigh impossible.

This "complete software stack" deliverables is what makes the difference today. You deliver software with greater ease. Jails isn't meant for that. Ignoring this point and claiming the same existed for 15 years is wrong.

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

#267

Post by scheme271 »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #227
galangalalgol wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that, mostly I use them for dsp for software defined radios. The drivers for those are probably hard to compile as well. Depedencies on libusb often. Or dpdk for the nice ones.

I'm still holding out hope that Intel will put out a decent dGPU with a strong ML story within a few gens, with gloriously open source drivers. Recent news coming out of Intel the last week or so haven't been encouraging though. But I will remain a dreamer.

AMD is probably a better bet with ROCm although it's still pretty spotty right now in regards to support.

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

#268

Post by hnlmorg »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #129
stormbrew wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Me too, at FreeBSD 6. ZFS was also pretty new and unstable in those days. I upgraded and could no longer read my pools. But I came back to it in the last few years and it's matured a lot.

ZFS wasn’t just new when FreeBSD 6 was released, ZFS wasn’t even released itself. :P

FreeBSD 7 was the first release to support ZFS and even in that it was marked as experimental support.

So if you were using ZFS before FreeBSD 8, and especially somehow on 6 and below, then you’re very much using ZFS at your own risk and can’t really complain if things go sideways.

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

#269

Post by hnlmorg »

ooneeks wrote: post #190
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…

Having used BSD many years ago on desktop, I completely disagree. What are you using your computer for using BSD? I really don't spend 99% of my time just compiling lol The chaos thing is something I hear from BSD users quite a lot. I'm still not sure what it is means, maybe that's some sort of personal issue..? I suppose you don't like forking and variation, which is understandable coming from a user of an OS with a…

I can’t speak for everyone, but one of the reasons I use Arch is precisely because Debian doesn’t have as many resources/assets as Arch.

AUR may not be perfect but there is very little software out there that someone hasn’t already packaged in it and it’s a great deal more convenient to use than faffing with custom repos.

The Arch Wiki is second to none too. I’ve even occasionally found myself using it when debugging other Linuxes.

I definitely wouldn’t use Arch on a server though. I mean, I have done, multiple times in fact, but they’ve always been personal systems. I much prefer FreeBSD for servers. Professionally it has usually been Debian, CentOS, or, much more recently, Ubuntu Server (but I really don’t like Ubuntu Server. Or Desktop for that matter).

Disclaimer: this is all my own opinion and I’m not trying to pass any of it off as fact.

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

#270

Post by alfiedotwtf »

nine_k wrote: post #187
old-gregg wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember, you're comparing Linux and FreeBSD in 2022 but BSD lost to Linux much earlier, many years ago. Back when I was looking into them (long time ago, excuse me for not remembering the details), BSD felt more pleasant and coherent. But at the same time it had limitations on scalability, performance and compatibility with hardware and also with userland software. In every benchmark, especially on multi-core, multi…

I remember why I chose linux in 1998 for my desktop, and would choose for my server. Hardware compatibility. I could install Linux on my shabby work desktop, and it just worked. Actually it worked more stably than NT 4. Binary distros. I could apt-get install stuff onto my box in minutes. I rarely had to build things from source. Speed of change. Linux was acquiring features at a breakneck speed. Large companies star…

> I remember why I chose linux in 1998 for my desktop, and would choose for my server. > > Features like SMP or journaling file systems were a bit late in FreeBSD

Yep, it was timing for me - the Asus BP6 allowed dual Celerons but only Windows 2000 and Linux 2.6 supported SMP. I was using FreeBSD at the time, but had to move because of hardware support.

But I wouldn't say it was hardware support alone - I think GNU/Linux won because of the licensing - FreeBSD not having a viral license would have turned people off contributing only to have their code distributed closed source by companies... that's my take anyway.

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