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

Post by byuu » Sat, Nov 22, 2014, 8:11 PM UTC

clarry wrote: post #94

byuu wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I absolutely love the bsd.*.mk system. It's not just that the tool is simple, but that the average makefile is very short and simple. Here, a few examples: (netcat) http://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/~checkout~/src/usr.... (inetd) http://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/~checkout~/src/usr.... (ntpd) http://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/~checkout~/src/usr.... (httpd) http://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb…

Post by firepacket » Sat, Nov 22, 2014, 8:17 PM UTC

spash wrote: post #76

mattzito wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The default shell in freebsd is probably still sh, which does not have tab completion. The Linuxes long ago moved to bash, which does. However, in the FreeBSD ports tree, I guarantee you there is a bash package you can install, and then you can just switch your shell to be bash instead of sh.

Few minor corrections as several posts in this thread suggest outright installing bash just to achieve tab completion in FreeBSD. The default root shell on FreeBSD is csh (tcsh) [1] and has been that way for at least 21 years (at least if I read the revision history [2] correctly, my own memories only go back about some 15 years). As per Wikipedia article, tcsh natively supports tab completion since about 1983 [3] (w…

Post by rgbrenner » Sat, Nov 22, 2014, 8:37 PM UTC

Wilya wrote: post #92

jocmeh wrote: post #31

I started using FreeBSD (version 4.8 at the time) in 2003 and I began a switch to Ubuntu in around 2011. Disclaimer: the following is all very opinionated and 8.1 is the last version of FreeBSD I actively used. Actually, it's still running without any problems on a colocated machine, but it's a bit a "don't touch it" situation, because upgrading even a single piece of software would probably cause a cataclysm of stru…

It's worth pointing out that since FreeBSD 10, there is a new binary package manager, "pkg", which works pretty well and makes package management much less painful. It makes the experience in this regard not much different from any apt-get based linux distribution. The old way of having to compile everything makes your system very configurable, but it gets brittle on systems where you have to make big upgrades.

Post by morganvachon » Sat, Nov 22, 2014, 8:39 PM UTC

laumars wrote: post #95

morganvachon wrote: post #17

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]…

> Runs most GNU/Linux apps via ports or jails, sometimes better than on Linux Jails is containers like Solaris Zone, or LXC and OpenVZ on Linux. So it doesn't have any relation to FreeBSD ports. FreeBSD does have binary repositories though (pkgng), so perhaps that's what you meant? Another interesting point worth noting is that FreeBSD also has "Linux compatibility" modes for supporting Linux ABIs and virtual file sy…

Post by morganvachon » Sat, Nov 22, 2014, 8:50 PM UTC

byuu wrote: post #100

tedunangst wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Firefox issue is because gtk is brain damaged and sends the image to the x server, then reads it back, but it gets broken up into tiny chunks and causes a billion syscalls. You can fix it by recompiling x with larger socket buffers.

Thank you , I've been trying to figure out what the actual problem was for a while and was not having any luck. For those who haven't experienced this: it's really painful. Your entire desktop becomes completely unresponsive for 5-10 full seconds while a picture very slowly loads.