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Ask HN: Can we talk about FreeBSD vs. Linux?

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Re: Ask HN: Can we talk about FreeBSD vs. Linux?

#11

Post by obviouslygreen »

As a Debian user who started on Gentoo, I think the linked article was very interesting in terms of at least getting an idea of what the differences in design are.

I've never used a BSD or even looked into it... given what I read there, it seems like it'd be a lot nicer in at least one sense, since Debian releases die off and release-upgrade can be either perfect or very painful.

On the other hand, I do love how small and unassuming a basic Linux installation is, and -- as the author repeatedly and correctly stresses -- I'm used to doing things the way I currently do them. That's not good or bad, it's just momentum.

I do hope I'll get the chance to work with a BSD at some point, but much like my attempts to really get into Clojure... well, unlike the Stones, most of us do not have time on our side.

Re: Ask HN: Can we talk about FreeBSD vs. Linux?

#12

Post by trvrprkr »

reidacdc wrote: post #9

I think this would be a useful conversation. The userlands are pretty similar, I think, they both support the GNU tools, as is attested to by the existence of Debian/kFreeBSD. I don't know what the OP's motivation is, but I'm an enterprise server admin, with lots of Debian experience, but no real FreeBSD knowledge at all. I've been looking at Debian/kFreeBSD off and on for a while as a way to get at ZFS, and possibly…

Unfortunately kfreebsd will not be an official Debian 8 release architecture: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/11/msg00...

Re: Ask HN: Can we talk about FreeBSD vs. Linux?

#13

Post by justincormack »

reidacdc wrote: post #9

I think this would be a useful conversation. The userlands are pretty similar, I think, they both support the GNU tools, as is attested to by the existence of Debian/kFreeBSD. I don't know what the OP's motivation is, but I'm an enterprise server admin, with lots of Debian experience, but no real FreeBSD knowledge at all. I've been looking at Debian/kFreeBSD off and on for a while as a way to get at ZFS, and possibly…

You can install GNU tools, but the base system is not very GNU, eg now has clang not gcc, BSD Make not Gnu make and so on.

The Gnu tools are of course portable, so you can install them from ports - you will need them for compiling software that assumes Gnu options for example.

Debian/kFreeBSD is a weird idea for me, you will have no support either form the FreeBSD community or the Debian community. I would go straight for FreeBSD proper, it is very well documented.

Re: Ask HN: Can we talk about FreeBSD vs. Linux?

#14

Post by atmosx »

keithpeter wrote: post #4

It might help to know your main interest: bare metal server in a coloco? Virtualised servers? embedded? desktops? Do you manage thousands/hundreds/a handful of machines? Or is your interest entirely academic and structural? I agree that most of the obvious Google searches return superficial comparisons of the installation process or explanations of the packaging and upgrade processes.

For virtual servers, I've found Ruby API calls to be excruciatingly slow on FreeBSD VM compared to Linux. I'm using TransIP as a VPS provider and although expensive I'm happy with them.

I used FreeBSD out of curiosity. So far, I'm using my VPS to run services (mail, vpn, etc.) and found FreeBSD to be stable, easy to admin and fairly secure. Another interesting thing are the tools. BSD tools seem to be easier to configure: e.g. PF syntax > IPTABLES syntax, or OpenSMTPD (OpenBSD's smtp server) vs virtually-everything-else.

For reference see discussions here:

Ruby ML Discussion: https://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/5673725

See the gist for results: https://gist.github.com/atmosx/14efea27eb2c1e38af09

Re: Ask HN: Can we talk about FreeBSD vs. Linux?

#15

Post by ezequiel-garzon »

wslh wrote: post #6

Facebook Seeks Devs To Make Linux Network Stack As Good As FreeBSD's: http://bsd-beta.slashdot.org/story/14/08/06/1731218/facebook... (I don't want to start a flamewar, just add more stuff for a good discussion)

Thanks for the link! The comments there are very interesting, and therefore relevant to this thread. It is of course also interesting the way Facebook worded that open position.

Re: Ask HN: Can we talk about FreeBSD vs. Linux?

#16

Post by ilolu »

I wanted to know about hosting solutions if I want to use FreeBSD. Linode, Digital Ocean don't support it.

AWS and GCE have support, but it seems the kernel is provided by a FreeBSD maintainer rather than AWS or GCE. How stable is FreeBSD on AWS or GCE ?. And are there any companies using FreeBSD on AWS / GCE ?.

Re: Ask HN: Can we talk about FreeBSD vs. Linux?

#17

Post by morganvachon »

My personal (limited) experience with FreeBSD vs my (extensive) experience with GNU/Linux:

FreeBSD pros:

Very stable

Excellent network support

Friendly, knowledgeable devs and tightly knit community

Runs most GNU/Linux apps via ports or jails, sometimes better than on Linux

Easy to learn given prior 'nix experience

FreeBSD cons:

Difficult to learn if you're new to the 'nix world

Smaller pool of compatible hardware[1]

The above has been my personal experience and obviously won't be the same for everyone. Also, I'm most comfortable with Slackware Linux, which is very BSD-like compared to other Linuxes, so that probably influences my point of view. Generally speaking, I like FreeBSD but I don't run it as a production machine (yet) since I'm happy with Slackware. Should that ever change (and there's only one reason it would, and that doesn't need to be rehashed here) I'd be able to switch to FreeBSD relatively easily.

Something else you might want to explore, as an easy introduction to FreeBSD, is PC-BSD. It takes FreeBSD and makes it much more user friendly, with a focus on being a GUI based desktop OS (though they do offer an alternate server installation as well).

[1] While the official list of compatible hardware is extensive, I've found in practice that certain COTS hardware simply doesn't work well with FreeBSD. I've even had professional workstations like a Lenovo ThinkCentre refuse to boot the installation media, throwing a kernel panic instead. I've also had poor luck with cheap motherboards. Generally, my best experiences with installing and running FreeBSD have been on Dell and HP workstations, and on quality motherboards from companies like Gigabyte and ECS.

Re: Ask HN: Can we talk about FreeBSD vs. Linux?

#18

Post by imanaccount247 »

obviouslygreen wrote: post #11

As a Debian user who started on Gentoo, I think the linked article was very interesting in terms of at least getting an idea of what the differences in design are. I've never used a BSD or even looked into it... given what I read there, it seems like it'd be a lot nicer in at least one sense, since Debian releases die off and release-upgrade can be either perfect or very painful. On the other hand, I do love how smal…

>On the other hand, I do love how small and unassuming a basic Linux installation is

There is no "basic linux installation". Every distro is its own thing. Size seems like a really odd thing to bring up since every mainstream linux distro's "basic" installation is larger than the full OS of any of the four BSDs.

Re: Ask HN: Can we talk about FreeBSD vs. Linux?

#19

Post by imanaccount247 »

ilolu wrote: post #16

I wanted to know about hosting solutions if I want to use FreeBSD. Linode, Digital Ocean don't support it. AWS and GCE have support, but it seems the kernel is provided by a FreeBSD maintainer rather than AWS or GCE. How stable is FreeBSD on AWS or GCE ?. And are there any companies using FreeBSD on AWS / GCE ?.

I can't speak to AWS and GCE since I don't use them (or freebsd for that matter), but the DO for BSDs is vultr.

Re: Ask HN: Can we talk about FreeBSD vs. Linux?

#20

Post by morganvachon »

ilolu wrote: post #16

I wanted to know about hosting solutions if I want to use FreeBSD. Linode, Digital Ocean don't support it. AWS and GCE have support, but it seems the kernel is provided by a FreeBSD maintainer rather than AWS or GCE. How stable is FreeBSD on AWS or GCE ?. And are there any companies using FreeBSD on AWS / GCE ?.

Here's a couple:

https://www.cloudsigma.com/landing/freebsd-cloud-hosting/

https://www.rootbsd.net/

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