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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

#11

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

glassfish wrote: post #7

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 u…

> init system (with real PIDs).

I like FreeBSD's init system too, but what do you mean about PIDs?

> WiFi drivers don't work unless it's a ThinkPad I think

That's not it; FreeBSD works fine with the wifi in my Dell. I grant that the driver coverage is probably more spotty than Linux, but it's just on a per-device (card/chipset) basis.

Re: FreeBSD at 30: Its secrets to success

#12

Post by forinti »

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…

I did some experiments to find out what is the bare minimum I would need for remote work (VPN+RDP). It turns out it would be possible, albeit a bit slow, on a Pi B (512MB of RAM) using OpenBSD or FreeBSD. The latter was a bit faster.

With Raspbian, I would need more memory (1GB did the job).

On the negative side, there aren't as many packages for the BSDs on ARM.

Anyway, it got me interested enough to buy an x86 laptop just to run FreeBSD.

Re: FreeBSD at 30: Its secrets to success

#15

Post by pjmlp »

CodeCompost wrote: post #10

> success Can somebody elaborate on FreeBSD's "success"?

Being used as foundation for PlayStation OS, Netflix and others.

Being available alongside Linux distributions as official supported OS on major cloud vendors.

Maybe the contributions to upstream could be better, but that is the choice they decided to make.

Re: FreeBSD at 30: Its secrets to success

#16

Post by codetrotter »

CodeCompost wrote: post #10

> success Can somebody elaborate on FreeBSD's "success"?

Sony based the OSes for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 on FreeBSD.

Netflix uses FreeBSD in production on parts of its infrastructure.

Those two alone are pretty nice success stories.

And in addition to those are countless other companies quietly running FreeBSD on their servers.

Re: FreeBSD at 30: Its secrets to success

#17

Post by pjmlp »

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…

Anyone playing PlayStation uses a FreeBSD based OS.

PlayStation OS is basically the FreeBSD kernel and a custom userspace tailored to the console.

Re: FreeBSD at 30: Its secrets to success

#19

Post by kjellsbells »

textread wrote: post #6
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 insignifican…

I think the statement is poorly worded. Perhaps a better formulation is that a monoculture carries a special kind of risk (it also holds benefits to a business of course). Same is true in politics where having a strong ruling party and an enfeebled opposition is not healthy. You need some external energy into the system to keep it on its toes.
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