Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Switching customers from Linux to BSD because boring is good

theregister.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 91 posts

Re: Switching customers from Linux to BSD because boring is good

#51

Post by viraptor »

OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #33
appendix-rock wrote: post #24

I don’t buy this article. > Clients are often influenced by hype. A few years ago, it was "Linux is a toy." Now, it's "Why bhyve and not Proxmox?" They ask, "How can they sell FreeBSD? There's no AI, there's no Cloud, there's no Kubernetes, there's no blockchain – there's nothing!" I am very confident that this is more ‘fan fiction’ than the author would like to admit. The sort of hypothetical that someone cooks up o…

You sure? I made a semi-successful blockchain based product 5 years ago. At two, separate employers, I was urged to make a blockchain based solution to.. well actually the problem was not described in either case, only the use of blockchain.

If the described people understand so little about tech, it doesn't even matter what they say. You can try to educate them or say something even more BS for them to agree with (blockchain 2 on kubershmetes).

Re: Switching customers from Linux to BSD because boring is good

#52

Post by timc3 »

kstenerud wrote: post #37

I've also read the original blog that this article spawns from. The gist of it is: "I switched to BSD during Linux's bad period, and now I'm comfortable with it so I'll stick with it". And hey, more power to you. But the thing is, the world has moved on. Linux is stable now. Linux containerization and VM tech is good now. The storage technologies are cross-platform now (I've had zero data loss since using zfs). The m…

I have run Linux, BSD and other unix for a long time (since the 90s and the very first Slackware) and continue to this day.

I prefer BSD because to me it’s more logical, it rarely changes, the documentation is first class and it’s very stable (yes more so than Linux). Plus I like its networking stack and PF

I prefer Linux when I need to run something popular and want a community.

I prefer Solaris clones for storage.

I prefer macOS for doing music, graphics and every day work and for laptops.

It’s no problem jumping between them. BSD is my favorite though.

Re: Switching customers from Linux to BSD because boring is good

#53

Post by BSDobelix »

nxicvyvy wrote: post #29
Ygg2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever topic of FS arises, I always hear anecdata that btrfs/ext4 lost data and ZFS was smooth sailing.

Yes and not a single one of them can quote someone from this decade because it's a shitty internet myth that won't die.

fill your btrfs with "dd if=/dev/urandom of=./testfile" as a normal user then "rm ./testfile && sync" then reboot. 6 month ago i could brick btrfs with that "trick".

Re: Switching customers from Linux to BSD because boring is good

#54

Post by viraptor »

jiggunjer wrote: post #34
kleiba wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do updates necessarily require reboots though?

I suppose it's about kernel and driver packages mostly.

If you pay enough, you can also get live patches which don't require a restart. This some to other software too - I've done some upstart live-patching in the past to save a cluster. But yeah, if you can afford to just restart part of your service like a normal person, your restarts will come from the kernel update.

Re: Switching customers from Linux to BSD because boring is good

#55

Post by nonrandomstring »

BSDobelix wrote: post #28
HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the article links another post which talks about a machine with a 9 year uptime as if it's a good thing. 9 years without a NetBSD release update (or kernel upgrade) is not something to be proud of.

>9 years without a NetBSD release update (or kernel upgrade) is not something to be proud of. Not every system has to be connected to the internet....imagine that ;)

Whether something is connected to the internet or not wouldn't be my objection to the parents personal notion of "pride".

I believe they're saying it would be irresponsible - in the current climate - to leave a system without upgrades and attention for so long. We can agree on that.

That really only reflects the "current climate"; which is one of colossal dereliction and reckless engineering amounting to a total abandonment of cybersecurity. Cybersecurity is presently such a circus because of endemic poor software engineering, a worship of expedience, convenience, efficiency and plain old greed. These are all the reasons that good engineering and big business do not intersect in modern times.

A couple of weeks ago Jen Easterly called out current industry practices as enabling cybercrime and harming society [0].

So not all unattended code is equal. I think there is a great deal of pride to be taken in building and using stable and reliable systems. That shows up in smaller groups, non-profits, and volunteer networks that are strongly focused on a smaller set of goals and who eschew giddy neophyte values in favour of a more sedate and responsible stance. But those are rather different flavours of "pride". I would characterise what the parent said as more an "absence of shame" for leaving what are evidently cheap-ass vulnerable systems that are "pwned out of the box" in a hostile environment.

[0] https://www.cisa.gov/about/leadership/jen-easterly

Re: Switching customers from Linux to BSD because boring is good

#56

Post by viraptor »

BSDobelix wrote: post #28
HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the article links another post which talks about a machine with a 9 year uptime as if it's a good thing. 9 years without a NetBSD release update (or kernel upgrade) is not something to be proud of.

>9 years without a NetBSD release update (or kernel upgrade) is not something to be proud of. Not every system has to be connected to the internet....imagine that ;)

In the post describing that server:

> They required a dhcp, an internal DNS, an Apache + PHP server for some internal (and a couple of external) websites, a file server accessible via both NFS and Samba (as Windows PCs needed access), an internal SMTP connecting to an external relay to ensure faster email dispatches for employees given their unstable connectivity, and a few other nuances.

It's running basically everything. But even if it was exposed only internally, that's usually only one other issue or misconfiguration away from being fully exposed again.

Re: Switching customers from Linux to BSD because boring is good

#57

Post by timc3 »

boricj wrote: post #21

I'm currently building my homelab and I'm seriously considering SmartOS as a hypervisor. I've never used Solaris or illumos before, but I'm looking for something bullet-proof, idiot-proof and maintenance-free. The mainstream solution would probably be Proxmox and while I know how to administrate a Debian system, I don't trust myself as a sysadmin while acting in a personal capacity. Proxmox intrinsically just doesn't…

I’ve run SmartOS, but mainly use OmniOS. As with all these, they are very good but make sure to run them on supported hardware. They have good documentation, very small community, and if you run into problems then debugging them is very possible - but not for the technically challenged.

OmniOS I basically run as an appliance and has been trouble free since the start.

Re: Switching customers from Linux to BSD because boring is good

#58

Post by timc3 »

andrewstuart wrote: post #32

I just don’t buy the story that Linux is unreliable. It’s kind of a ridiculous thing to claim without very substantial proof. I think it’s made up to justify installing BSD.

It’s not inherently unreliable, but can be a bit depending in what you are doing. Debian stable on very mainstream server hardware is fine. Newer filesystems, cutting edge kernels, interesting hardware and your results may vary.

Re: Switching customers from Linux to BSD because boring is good

#59

Post by BSDobelix »

parkcedar wrote: post #50
kstenerud wrote: post #37

I've also read the original blog that this article spawns from. The gist of it is: "I switched to BSD during Linux's bad period, and now I'm comfortable with it so I'll stick with it". And hey, more power to you. But the thing is, the world has moved on. Linux is stable now. Linux containerization and VM tech is good now. The storage technologies are cross-platform now (I've had zero data loss since using zfs). The m…

Mac isn’t really BSD, it’s a common misconception. It shares some of the userland code, but it’s a vastly different kernel (derived from the Mach microkernel). The userland has diverged quite significantly now too. Though, I guess it probably is closer to BSD than Linux

>but it’s a vastly different kernel (derived from the Mach microkernel).

XNU is a combination of a FreeBSD-Kernel (Networking, Filesystem, etc) and a Mach-Kernel (scheduling, ipc, virtual-memory etc):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7GMHB3Plc8

Re: Switching customers from Linux to BSD because boring is good

#60

Post by sph »

parkcedar wrote: post #50
kstenerud wrote: post #37

I've also read the original blog that this article spawns from. The gist of it is: "I switched to BSD during Linux's bad period, and now I'm comfortable with it so I'll stick with it". And hey, more power to you. But the thing is, the world has moved on. Linux is stable now. Linux containerization and VM tech is good now. The storage technologies are cross-platform now (I've had zero data loss since using zfs). The m…

Mac isn’t really BSD, it’s a common misconception. It shares some of the userland code, but it’s a vastly different kernel (derived from the Mach microkernel). The userland has diverged quite significantly now too. Though, I guess it probably is closer to BSD than Linux

No one really cares about the kernel internals, its origin or the license of it. What is prominent is the user-space components (i.e. shell and other binaries). macOS is closer to other BSDs than Linux is, as Linux usually ships with GNU libs and utilities.
Post reply on HN