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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?

#131

Post by Mordak »

rgbrenner wrote: post #125
Wilya wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Freebsd already had binary packages.. they (finally) developed a new binary package manager, which is great, but it doesn't change much. The problem with binary packages on freebsd was that they are frozen at release. So when you use the package manager to install everything you need... then a large package has a security hole (or it already has a hole.. since the packages might be months out of date), and the only w…

I don't think you are correct here - pkg upgrade most certainly pulls down updated versions of packages, complete with security patches. In fact, the default freebsd daily job will send you an email listing which packages have security vulnerabilities, so you can go update them.

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

#132

Post by ClashTheBunny »

vidoc wrote: post #124
barrkel wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zfs, to take one example, does do approximately what you want - the file system (or rather, the underlying block storage) has a tree structure, and changes to files are propagated via copy-on-write rewrites up the tree, so that earlier snapshots still get to see the original file. This does make rolling things back trivial. It doesn't give you dedupe for free, though. Think about what would have to happen: every modi…

I haven't used freebsd for 5-6 years, so I've never tried to use it with root on ZFS. Wondering if it suffers the same problems as btrfs when used as root: last time I tried that on Ubuntu, the fsync() performance made a lot of stuff just horribly slow (e.g: dpkg operations two orders of magnitude slower).

I don't know when this was fixed, but I have no longer had any problems with btrfs on root with ubuntu. I don't remember when it started working well, but I do remember those bad old days. I don't know if dpkg changed or if btrfs changed.

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

#133

Post by tedunangst »

morganvachon wrote: post #129
byuu wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

FYI, this issue exists in PC-BSD too. I tend to use Chromium anyway and Firefox as a backup, so it doesn't bite me as much when I'm in that OS. But it's definitely a big one.

This is why OpenBSD is the superior desktop operating system. Fixed months ago. :)

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

#134

Post by justincormack »

jordigh wrote: post #130
justincormack wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 straigh…

Debian does have some support for GNU/kFreeBSD. It was an official port of the last stable release. There are also good reasons to want to use it: https://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD_why

The reasons listed to use it over FreeBSD are:

1. If you like the Debian package system (or its package set) more than FreeBSD ports (just a matter of preference).

2. If you like GNU userland more than BSDish one (again, just a matter of preference).

3. If you don't have anything against GPL or other copylefted free software licenses, you'll appreciate that useful kernel modules like ext2fs driver, the upcoming reiserfs and xfs, or the upcoming ethernet driver for Xbox are (or will be) compiled in on the default kernel.

4. If you're concerned about running a 100% free system, our commitment to the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) guarantees that Debian GNU/kFreeBSD doesn't contain any non-free software. In fact, we have removed some non-free binary-only drivers that are contained in the upstream FreeBSD tree (see 903_disable_non-free_drivers.diff in kernel sources for a list).

Of which 1, 2 are just "you prefer it", 3 you can compile those drivers into FreeBSD if you want them. 4 is reasonable, but overall the reasons to use it over the better supported FreeBSD are weak.

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

#135

Post by Lammy »

Freaky wrote: post #73
near wrote: post #27

Like others have said, being unbiased is difficult, but I'll try. First, Linux v FreeBSD is really tough, so I will instead approach this from Debian v FreeBSD. I really like how easy Debian on the desktop is: install it, apt-get install xfce, and I have a nice desktop. It's very easy to add Adobe Flash, Steam, Skype, etc. The FreeBSD desktop isn't as nice. You can add things like Flash and Skype on FreeBSD, but you…

> I have to make this org.freedesktop.consolekit.pkla file and add entries to it in order to get the restart and shutdown buttons in Xfce to work These Just Worked for me. My only real annoyance with Xfce is that it's unresponsive to mouse clicks for the first few seconds after starting. > I really, really appreciate Debian's branches. If you install Wheezy, you can get security updates for packages, but not get vers…

> I just wish [pf] were more actively maintained and kept at least vaguely in-sync with upstream.

As much as I would love to have the newest OpenBSD pf config syntax available in FreeBSD I do appreciate them not breaking my firewall config as part of an OS update.

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

#136

Post by Freaky »

byuu wrote: post #105
Freaky wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have to make this org.freedesktop.consolekit.pkla file and add entries to it in order to get the restart and shutdown buttons in Xfce to work These Just Worked for me. My only real annoyance with Xfce is that it's unresponsive to mouse clicks for the first few seconds after starting. > I really, really appreciate Debian's branches. If you install Wheezy, you can get security updates for packages, but not get vers…

> These Just Worked for me. My only real annoyance with Xfce is that it's unresponsive to mouse clicks for the first few seconds after starting. Under a regular user account? I even added my user to wheel and operator, and no go. I've helped a few people on forums.freebsd.org set up this pkla file, too. > There are quarterly port branches now to give people more of a choice The quarterly branches are definitely a ste…

> Under a regular user account?

Yep. Only special factors I can think of are VirtualBox guest additions and passphraseless sudo - though I don't recall any similar problems when I last had it on my laptop which had neither.

Also starting from console and not a display manager, because they're vile things that are almost as bad as splash/boot screens.

> I know their team is much smaller so it's just not feasible, but it's definitely something that would be greatly appreciated.

Very much so - the biggest thing I miss from the Debian world is unattended-upgrades. Maybe with some more commercial support..

> Is OpenBSD's MP-safe yet? I believe that's partly related to why FreeBSD's has ALTQ disabled

It's still under a big giant lock as far as I'm aware. They're also removing ALTQ in favour of a simpler framework: http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20140419151959

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

#137

Post by byuu »

morganvachon wrote: post #129
byuu wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

FYI, this issue exists in PC-BSD too. I tend to use Chromium anyway and Firefox as a backup, so it doesn't bite me as much when I'm in that OS. But it's definitely a big one.

Well, you can work around it (with no known downsides) by adding:

    export MOZ_DISABLE_IMAGE_OPTIMIZE=1
To the top of your ~/.xinitrc file. Kind of surprised PC-BSD doesn't do that for you. Probably should ask them to.

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

#138

Post by tedunangst »

byuu wrote: post #137
morganvachon wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, this issue exists in PC-BSD too. I tend to use Chromium anyway and Firefox as a backup, so it doesn't bite me as much when I'm in that OS. But it's definitely a big one.

Well, you can work around it (with no known downsides) by adding: export MOZ_DISABLE_IMAGE_OPTIMIZE=1 To the top of your ~/.xinitrc file. Kind of surprised PC-BSD doesn't do that for you. Probably should ask them to.

IIRC that would sometimes lead to weird glitches like images with repeating static patterns, though perhaps those bugs have been fixed as well.

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

#139

Post by jimktrains2 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #120
jimktrains2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't anything wrong with the systemd concept. However, what many of the people I've discussed this have an issue with are: * Becoming the default init in stable even though it's fairly new (and untested) * Strong break from how common tasks are done (e.g. logging) * Applications are very tied together and cannot easily be replaced or left out. * NIH syndrome (e.g. their DNS resolver that just had a major cachi…

There is plenty wrong with the systemd concept. Apart from your own list of things wrong with it, it is also monolithic, which goes directly against the Unix Philosophy,[1] which when concisely expressed is: Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface. Systemd is an application that more properly belongs…

You don't need to convince me systemd is doing it wrong! I'm in the process of switching to FreeBSD because I don't want the default system to contain something that hasn't been well tested. (Yes, it's a stupid thing, but I've been toying with switching for other reasons and this kind of made me do it :) I've also drunk the jails kool-aid for my next project.)

The "systemd concept", from what I understand (and is by no means specific to systemd), is to have a smarter init system for starting processes in order and better process management. Additionally, all the IPC "stuff" that's been happening and being touted reminds me a lot of microkernels where you could write small, simple services that do a single thing over a common, programmatic interface. Systemd however feels much too integrated and makes no effort to make it easy to swap components.

I'm also sort-of shocked that almost all the major distros just switched within a year or two of each other. Especially distros like RH and Debian (yes I know systemd is deved at RH) who bill themselves as "stable."

So there is nothing wrong with wanting a better init system and a common IPC platform, but that doesn't mean systemd is the best we can do.

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

#140

Post by rgbrenner »

Mordak wrote: post #131
rgbrenner wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freebsd already had binary packages.. they (finally) developed a new binary package manager, which is great, but it doesn't change much. The problem with binary packages on freebsd was that they are frozen at release. So when you use the package manager to install everything you need... then a large package has a security hole (or it already has a hole.. since the packages might be months out of date), and the only w…

I don't think you are correct here - pkg upgrade most certainly pulls down updated versions of packages, complete with security patches. In fact, the default freebsd daily job will send you an email listing which packages have security vulnerabilities, so you can go update them.

You are right.. I'm wrong.

I used it from 3.4-8.. nice to see that they addressed my problem with the new package manager.

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