61–70 of 221 posts
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 ?.
BSD is often just a little bit different. Hard to be unbiased. Some people prefer GNU make, some like bsdmake. - kqueue is a very powerful event loop similar to epoll [1] - the FreeBSD ports collection is very simple to use as far as compiling from source goes. I only really prefer Debian's apt-get and Gentoo's emerge - the FreeBSD Handbook is a very well-maintained text [2]. I freely admit OpenBSD has the best man p…
> Some people prefer GNU make, some like bsdmake. Is there really such a person that prefers bsdmake over GNU make?? I really don't mean this as a troll comment, but bsdmake has about 5% of the functionality of GNU make. It's perfectly adequate if you just want to give it a list of files to compile, but it's a nightmare to do things like write a recursive directory scanner to auto-generate Qt .moc files, to scan PATH…
For those of us that are more interested in FreeBSD due to the whole Systemd 'controversy', look at the other HN link about the 'FreeBSD: the next 10 years' presentation. They clearly state that FreeBSD is in the same position and it seems that they are not hostile towards the concept of Systemd. Personally I hope that FreeBSD will choose a solution that does not involve QR codes (not mandatory).
Further, rc.d really isn't anywhere near as bad as SysVinit. See an example of an rc.d script here: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/rc-scripting/rcng-ho... (and even with how tiny it is, most of those lines aren't necessary for your average script, either.)
I have few experience with Linux distros other than Ubuntu, so I'm only comparing FreeBSD with Ubuntu. Linux distros are so diverse I don't think you can just compare all of them with FreeBSD anyway. I have both FreeBSD servers and Ubuntu servers. Thing I like the most with FreeBSD is its further separation (compared with Ubuntu) of OS (kernel and world) from third-party software. In Ubuntu every package comes in mul…
Isn't that because ports are used compiled from source? You can do the same on Ubuntu with apt-get build-dep && apt-get source -b, which will install the build dependencies, download the source and compile it.
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 ?.
https://vultr.com/ is what I use. No complains.
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/
Given that fact and the fact that Tarsnap runs on AWS I think it's safe to assume it's pretty stable.
i use it mainly as a soho nas. the things i like about it are 1) userland and kernel owned by the same group. this lends consistency to the experience, that is absent in linux, where it's clear that it's an amalgamation of many different tools. 2) (largely) one way of doing things 3) package management system (pkg-ng) that is a cross between gentoo portage and debian apt-get 4) extremely good documentation for an ope…
So true. In my day job, I am a Windows admin, and I continue to be surprised that FreeBSD (the other BSD systems, too) comes with such good documentation while Microsoft is not ashamed to charge its customers thousands of bucks for software that comes without a ing manual...
I think an interesting question in this context is: If you wanted to create Ubuntu today, would you use GNU/Linux or FreeBSD as base?
This is not the right question to ask. Ubuntu is aimed at making Linux available to the masses on the desktop. FreeBSD has the aim to create a solid Unix environment. IMO FreeBSD is awesome as a server, and okay-ish for the desktop. PC-BSD makes it easier, but still: you need to know what you're doing, but if you do, it's pretty solid.
I've run FreeBSD on laptops, desktops and servers since 2.2.7. Laptops are not its strong suit. It works great for me as a desktop, but I've been tinkering with X desktop configurations for a long time, and don't mind doing some work to have a desktop that functions precisely the way I want it to. Also, it is not my only desktop. (/usr/ports/sysutils/synergy FTW!)
Servers and network appliances are where FreeBSD really shines. The ports tree can be updated independent from the base OS and the base OS can be updated independent of ports. No upgrading to a new OS just to get a security fix for your web server.
ZFS is brilliant. ~7 years of FreeBSD/ZFS and no issues.
PF makes every other firewall I've run (including every commercial option) look silly. PF is like the Python of firewalls: optimized for readability. Add in CARP and PFsync for easy fault tolerance.
The project is managed by a democratically elected core group. Like a real democracy, sometimes this means change happens slowly. But the deliberate approach to change is part of what makes FreeBSD great. It's stable, predictable, and reliable. It functions as a well-engineered, well-documented whole.
FreeBSD's biggest fault is how little attention it draws to itself. It is quietly brilliant. It just works. It doesn't try to do everything. It's just good, reliable infrastructure.