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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)

#281

Post by eimrine »

jrumbut wrote: post #256
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.

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 becam…

Mate gives me a warm feeling of being at home where all is totally understandable and nothing has changed since 10+ years ago when Gnome 2 was a king.

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

#282

Post by ece »

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…

We're far from the days of getting a free Redhat CD in a book, just popping it in a drive and restarting to have it start a Linux install. You're lucky now if you don't have to enable USB booting, register a hash/key, turn on a 3rd party cert or just turn turn off secure boot to get a USB drive to boot.

I think it was too easy.

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

#283

Post by blokey »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #163
ahepp wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Like hardware manufacturers? I thought getting commercial users to contribute to the kernel was desirable? Contribute to drivers, yes. Steer development of the kernel, no, IMO. The more they contribute, the more influence they gain. And a lot of the contributions are not hardware related at all. > Didn't Torvalds himself reject GPL-3? I don't know, I didn't follow this as I don't follow Linux news that closely anym…

I think you might be 100% incorrect with your supposition on businesses and BSD licensing!

Businesses love BSD licenses, because they can use the code for any purpose they need, whether internal use or building something and distributing it. No one can force them to share any part of their work, or even share anything.

Netflix, Juniper, Apple (and many others) all use BSD derived UNIX components, precisely for that. They contribute back what they want (and mainly what they do jot wish to maintain as a company secret).

GPL-3 is much more complex because it can /require/ you to share code. BSD licenses do not require you to share anything.

Businesses in general do not like ‘requirements’ like that even if only because they have to track them and ensure they do not break any licenses.

I work for a large financial services company, GPL-3 licensed software requires specific approval, AGPL is banned across the board (same as in Google). BSD and GPL-2 is fully permitted (as is MIT and all the other style licenses)

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

#284

Post by heinrichhartman »

nix23 wrote: post #278
heinrichhartman wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to be on the jails train, but the build/deployment story always felt inferior. I have never seen anyone build jail-images from CI and deploying them to fleets of FreeBSD hosts. This may be technically feasible with zfs send/recieve but in practice people I know distributed packages (not images) to 10s of FreeBSD jails/hosts. I want to deploy container images to a cluster - not install a package in a zone…

I want to deploy container images to a cluster: Here you go: https://bastillebsd.org/

#TIL Will check this out! Thanks!

- I can see the Dockerfile equivalent (Bastillefile). - Not sure about the image distribution (Docker repositories) and Cluster management parts (Mesos, K8S)

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

#285

Post by matheusmoreira »

raverbashing wrote: post #272
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…

I wouldn't say "instability" as much as lack of focus Especially as with some evolution it seems it's always a mix of people complaining new change means some X program made in the 70s will break and people who wants to redo something made in the last 6mo because it is "old" already and meet the newfangled thing which is 50% breaking changes 50% barely new things

I would say instability. Linux kernel will straight up revert improvements if it turns out they broke user space. Meanwhile in user space even glibc has broken binary compatibility before, GNOME breaks compatibility with user extensions...

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

#286

Post by Gordonjcp »

Koshkin wrote: post #130
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…

> distros need to be different gratuitously I, on the other hand, tend to think of distributions as operating systems in their own right, so the difference between them is something I welcome - otherwise what’s the point?

I don't understand why you'd think that.

All Linuxes right back to the 90s are basically the same. There are more obvious differences between them and other Unix-like OSes, like SunOS/Solaris, the BSDs, and so on.

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

#287

Post by mehdix »

frostwarrior wrote: post #246
matheusmoreira wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Linux userspace is considered unstable. It's not a cohesive system like the BSDs but lots of independent projects all doing their own thing. The Linux kernel is capable of running binaries compile…

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…

For many years I was using gnome shell. Every update meant broken extentions. The system would also crash occasionally after few days on a multi-head setup. Then I switched to a hybrid of Sway and KDE and have been never so happy.

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

#288

Post by tannhaeuser »

stingraycharles wrote: post #279
tannhaeuser wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ab…

Yeah, you’re right of course; my point was more that somehow we ended up with a “standard” format to store and distribute images, have plethora of tools that are able to run it, but they’re all using the same kernel fundamentals (cgroups). But all that would be a distraction from the point I was trying to make, so I simplified it a bit.

What you're meaning is that "we" have converged on tech dominated by big cloud vendors. A standard, OTOH, is something implemented by more than a single party. Unix (POSIX) used to be standardized in that way. Portability, sustainability, and avoiding dominance by a single party was always the point of Unix; as on OS, Unix wasn't particularly innovative but merely good enough and compact, even when it was new.

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

#289

Post by rawoke083600 »

nix23 wrote: post #280
atmosx wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing Linux to FreeBSD is like comparing a Mercedes to a custom-made trackday car. Docker, kubernetes et all was the nail in the coffin. BSDs are amazing for universities, OS classes and some outliers in the industry here and there. The one thing FreeBSD had was network stack performance. Linux supports higher throughput for a while now.. so even that ship sailed.

> Linux supports higher throughput for a while now Really that's new...because netflix thinks otherwise.

agreed ! Also i think throughput might be moving/dynamic values ?

i.e this year Lamborghini might be faster than a Ferrari... Next year they might swap. But no one will say Lamborghini or Ferrari are slow.

My humble point,unless absolute throughput (Then you looking at userland tcp-stack anyway) is your absolute goal. Things like tools,skillset, environment, community might play a bigger role. Yea i still love Freebsd but uses Linux on Desktop daily. Freebsd just kinda 'fits-in-your-head'

Linux: I miss the simple days when you could edit files like /etc/resolv.conf for nameservers :)

These days i see quite a few "don't edit this file manually it is auto-generated messages" :/

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