Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020) • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by ornornor » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 9:51 AM UTC

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…

I use Linux as my main OS. I’d love to switch to FreeBSD but I can’t.

Most software that run on Linux may or may not run on FreeBSD. And when it doesn’t, it’s typically hard or impossible to get instructions or community support.

Looking at the download page, Firefox doesn’t even seem to have a FreeBSD version or instructions.

I can understand for servers although you lose community support for most software and can’t use ready to deploy docker images, as much as I loathe docker.

FreeBSD is vastly superior to Linux IMHO (the handbook is a great read), but it’s unfortunately not practical for most usages.

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

#292

Post by trasz » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 9:58 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #262

trasz wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

>IBM i, Unisys ClearPath and OS/2200

Once again, have you seen anyone technical wilfully choosing any of those for web stuff over the past two decades?

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

#293

Post by alrlroipsp » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 9:59 AM UTC

mkl wrote: post #213

dixie_land wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GNU ls adding quotes and you have to actually opt out

Do you mean displaying quotes in the output? That has been around for years (by default on many distributions) and doesn't answer my question at all. Please name a widely used program that changed its switches completely in a sub-version .

I too find this critique a bit odd.

Tho, switching between BSD and gnu versions of some tools, there is a mismatch of command line arguments.

IIRC I had to look up docs using tar and sed on BSD.

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

#294

Post by trasz » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 10:27 AM UTC

ornornor wrote: post #291

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…

I use Linux as my main OS. I’d love to switch to FreeBSD but I can’t. Most software that run on Linux may or may not run on FreeBSD. And when it doesn’t, it’s typically hard or impossible to get instructions or community support. Looking at the download page, Firefox doesn’t even seem to have a FreeBSD version or instructions. I can understand for servers although you lose community support for most software and can’…

>Firefox doesn’t even seem to have a FreeBSD version or instructions.

Erm, what? It's not Windows, that's what packages are for. Just "pkg install firefox".

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

#295

Post by eatbitseveryday » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 10:38 AM UTC

nightfly wrote: post #178

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…

I've run into fun issues like FreeBSDs slab allocator not playing nicely with the ZFS/NFS workload on one specific server and having to drop down to having ZFS allocate memory in a different way that used about twices as much CPU to avoid random multi-second pauses on the whole system. Also had issues where kerberized NFS would get confused and something would crash so had to have random cron jobs to restart dying co…

I’ve noticed this myself but didn’t dig into the delays I’ve seen. Interesting to learn it appears for others.

How did you have ZFS change how it allocates memory?

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

#296

Post by Matl » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 10:42 AM UTC

For me, it comes down to what's usable to do my work.

Today, I can pick a regular Windows laptop and have a decent experience with it on Linux, whereas with FreeBSD it is likely that WiFi/BT won't work, GPU acceleration might not work, software is likely to be out of date compared to rolling release Linux distros, then there's the whole WireGuard fiasco[1] and an apparent disregard for code quality, no Docker, no k8s, slow boot times, no ability to play AAA games, non-declarative init etc. etc.

If I were to run a BSD on a server or a router, it would most likely be OpenBSD as that at least has the security aspect going for it.

FreeBSD seems like Linux, but from 2006.

1 - https://lwn.net/Articles/850098

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

#297

Post by hestefisk » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 10:48 AM UTC

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…

Jails was actually committed to the source tree in 1999… so almost 25 years. You should read phk’s article - Jails: Confining the omnipotent root. It’s very good.

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

#298

Post by intothemild » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 11:09 AM UTC

GekkePrutser wrote: post #131

intothemild wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Dockerfiles make it super simple. There is similar stuff for jails but you need a jails frontend that use it. But docker is just a frontend for linux containers :) You're not comparing the right things here: Linux containers with a popular frontend and all the trimmings, to barebones FreeBSD jails.

Very true. I did mention that there are similar things with jail frontends, specifically iocage.

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

#299

Post by netheril96 » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 11:14 AM UTC

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…

> Businesses hate the BSD license because any code derived does not have to be open at all.

That's the opposite of truth.

For example, Apple ships many BSD software on macOS, explicitly shuns updates for GPL software, and endorses the LLVM project from very early time exactly to avoid the GPL license of GCC.

Or take Google. Android, Kubernetes and Tensorflow are licensed under Apache. Chromium, V8 and GoLang are licensed under BSD.

Or take Microsoft. Typescript is licensed under Apache. VSCode is licensed under MIT. .Net Core are licensed under both Apache and MIT.

Companies choose Linux despite its GPL license, not because of it.

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

#300

Post by pantalaimon » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 11:21 AM UTC

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…

The sad part is that Gnome 2 had a whole ecosystem of third party software that integrated with it. Just a few of that got ported over to Mate (usually just s/GNOME/MATE/g) but it never gained the same traction.