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FreeBSD at 30: Its secrets to success

issue.freebsdfoundation.org

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Re: FreeBSD at 30: Its secrets to success

#4

Post by readingnews »

Not to be mean, but I started using Linux in 1992 (yes that early on, from the usenet posting), and I seem to recall hearing a lot more about FreeBSD or the *BSDs about 30 years ago than I do now.

In my UNIX circles that I run around in, no one talks about FreeBSD. Honestly asking (yes, I guess I did not read the article) is most of its success on the commercial side? I think it is used in NAS boxes and routers/switches a lot, right?

Re: FreeBSD at 30: Its secrets to success

#5

Post by unmole »

readingnews wrote: post #4

Not to be mean, but I started using Linux in 1992 (yes that early on, from the usenet posting), and I seem to recall hearing a lot more about FreeBSD or the *BSDs about 30 years ago than I do now. In my UNIX circles that I run around in, no one talks about FreeBSD. Honestly asking (yes, I guess I did not read the article) is most of its success on the commercial side? I think it is used in NAS boxes and routers/switc…

> and routers/switches a lot, right?

Juniper's boxes all used to run a FreeBSD derivative. But even they have introduced Linux based products.

Re: FreeBSD at 30: Its secrets to success

#6

Post by textread »

readingnews wrote: post #4

Not to be mean, but I started using Linux in 1992 (yes that early on, from the usenet posting), and I seem to recall hearing a lot more about FreeBSD or the *BSDs about 30 years ago than I do now. In my UNIX circles that I run around in, no one talks about FreeBSD. Honestly asking (yes, I guess I did not read the article) is most of its success on the commercial side? I think it is used in NAS boxes and routers/switc…

Its secret to 'survival' is more appropriate. This article has a lot of fluff.

eg:

  Specifically, companies needing redundancy
  require more than one operating system, since any single operating system may fall 
  victim to a failure that could take out the
  entire company’s infrastructure
What sort of argument is this. We need multiple political parties. Therefore, our existence is important even if we secure insignificant votes?

Or does he mean BSD license vs GPL? In which case, I agree with his idea of diversified choices.

Re: FreeBSD at 30: Its secrets to success

#7

Post by glassfish »

I have been using FreeBSD for the last 2 years on a 2015 Intel MacBook Pro, and I have been a long-time Linux user.

Things I appreciate about FreeBSD:

- init system (with real PIDs).

- FreeBSD documentation.

- installation experience (fast and hassle-free).

- stability, consistency and low memory usage.

- DWM / XFCE works great.

- ease of configuring PF

However, there are some main impediments that prevents me from using it as my daily driver:

- WiFi drivers don't work unless it's a ThinkPad I think (specifically Broadcom 4360 on old Macbooks), I bought a Realtek USB WiFi adapter, which works but with reduced performance.

- There are sketchy sound driver issues with the laptop speakers, resulting in tinny sound.

- Bluetooth doesn't work at all, although my BOSS system shows up on hcinquiry.

Re: FreeBSD at 30: Its secrets to success

#8

Post by tw04 »

readingnews wrote: post #4

Not to be mean, but I started using Linux in 1992 (yes that early on, from the usenet posting), and I seem to recall hearing a lot more about FreeBSD or the *BSDs about 30 years ago than I do now. In my UNIX circles that I run around in, no one talks about FreeBSD. Honestly asking (yes, I guess I did not read the article) is most of its success on the commercial side? I think it is used in NAS boxes and routers/switc…

Netflix runs a massive fleet of FreeBSD servers. NetApp and Dell/EMC isilon are built on it. The previous Compellent product was based on NetBSD.

You can infer others if you look at the historical sponsor pages: https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-donors/donors/

There are plenty of companies that may not use the full BSD stack but pull bits and pieces of code as needed. Microsoft is known to have built off BSD networking code for Windows.

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