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Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs

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Re: Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs

#141

Post by n2dasun »

ax0n wrote: post #133
bl4k wrote: post #58

I have been an OpenBSD and FreeBSD user, as well as minor contributor, since the mid-90s. All the answers here are good, and I would like to add: * FreeBSD is on the cutting edge of performance. Because it is a total OS (as opposed to just a kernel), performance improvements are made and integrated into the binary packages and ports build options of common packages. FreeBSD was one of the first operating systems to i…

This post is awesome, but I do have to argue your point on FreeBSD 5. The release might have been very structured, but for me it was a gigantic clustercoitus that caused me to turn my back on FreeBSD. Just one of the many annoyances: The package manager would attempt to use gunzip on the new packages which had been tar/bzipped and thus binary package installation was completely borked for a good while after release.…

I know this doesn't add to the discussion, but I wanted to thank you for the term "clustercoitus". I hope you hold no copyright on it.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs

#142

Post by spudlyo »

CyberFonic wrote: post #18

If you are using an Apple Mac, then you are using BSD (with bits of Mach and a sprinkling of Apple fairy dust) ! I'm over simplifying, but with Linux or BSD it's really only about the kernel. They both use the same collection of GNU tools and open sourced programs like FireFox, Python, etc. Package management is more a distro issue, than a Linux vs. BSD issue. If you want to customize your kernel for a specific serve…

They both use the same collection of GNU tools and open sourced programs like FireFox, Python, etc.

This is incorrect. BSD systems for the most part eschew GNU tools. You will find many annoying differences in programs you take for granted like find, xargs, ps, top, etc.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs

#143

Post by lsc »

a2tech wrote: post #32
lsc wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is this true? hot damn, I am behind the times. do you know if it's the paravirtualized kernel? last I checked it wasn't particularly stable... but damn. I don't see it in their 'distro manager' thing

I emailed them about it after 8 was released-they have a 'non supported install method' for OpenBSD that a forum member wrote. They told me it SHOULD work for FreeBSD, but they're currently not devoting any resources to figuring out how to make it go

huh. the paravirt OpenBSD stuff is pretty old and dead (Theo, uh, is obviously not a fan of virtualization) I'd be interested to hear if anyone has gotten FreeBSD running on linode or another paravirt xen host, though.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs

#144

Post by adbge »

dochtman wrote: post #71
cperciva wrote: post #12

(Speaking as a FreeBSDer here -- I'll let NetBSD and OpenBSD folks cover those, since I don't follow them closely enough to offer accurate comments.) 1. We don't let licenses get in the way of making good technical decisions. This means that, for example, we had no problem with importing DTrace and ZFS. 2. We have more of an emphasis on doing things right. This often means that it takes longer before we acquire new f…

FWIW, and I realize not everyone likes it, but Gentoo goes a long way towards making Linux package management more like BSD ports (AFAICT; haven't used *BSD much). I really like that Gentoo encourages me to build my own (lean) kernel and allows me to pick what configure flags each package gets (instead of giving me packages that include everything out there, like in the .deb distributions).

Arch Linux allows for ports-style package management with their Arch Build Service. It's more similar to the BSDs, in my experience, than Gentoo.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs

#145

Post by ax0n »

n2dasun wrote: post #141
ax0n wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post is awesome, but I do have to argue your point on FreeBSD 5. The release might have been very structured, but for me it was a gigantic clustercoitus that caused me to turn my back on FreeBSD. Just one of the many annoyances: The package manager would attempt to use gunzip on the new packages which had been tar/bzipped and thus binary package installation was completely borked for a good while after release.…

I know this doesn't add to the discussion, but I wanted to thank you for the term "clustercoitus". I hope you hold no copyright on it.

if you grep the internet, you'll find I'm nowhere near the first or only one to use it.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs

#146

Post by avar »

tzs wrote: post #132
avar wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit like complaining that when I use the BSDs they don't have documentation in Microsoft CHM format, or that they put stuff in /usr/local. Different systems simply have different conventions, and GNU picked GNU Info over man pages. That bastard GNU tar(1) man page was created because Debian has a policy that everything must have a manpage. I like Unix, but the GNU Info format solved some real issues with man…

> Different systems simply have different conventions, and GNU picked GNU Info over man pages. Sure, but that's no reason to be hostile to man pages. Ideally you have a man page, which provides a standard quick reference for those how know the command, and then other documents (such is Info) for people who need more detailed information, complete manuals, etc.. In fact, that's how it was way back in the Seventh Editi…

> Sure, but that's no reason to be hostile to man pages.

They're not being hostile to man pages. They just don't maintain them. They're no more hostile to man pages than FreeBSD is to info pages.

> Ideally you have a man page [...]

That doesn't sound very ideal. man pages and info pages are formatted differently and take a different approach to explaining things. Having both would mean that the maintainer of each package would need to expend effort on maintaining both.

As an example. Here's the FreeBSD strlen() manpage: http://www.gsp.com/cgi-bin/man.cgi?section=3&topic=strle...

And the equivalent section in the GNU libc manual: http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/String-Len...

On FreeBSD I'd do `man 3 strlen' at the nearest terminal. On GNU I'd do `info libc' followed by `m string' to find that node.

You can't easily turn that documentation into a man page. E.g. on FreeBSD you'd have one manual page for malloc(3), but in the libc manual the documentation for malloc and other allocation functions is part of an entire chapter on "Virtual Memory Allocation And Paging". You can't easily tear that out into a man page.

> They could at least not stand in the way of those who would like to provide them.

Well, would the FreeBSD project stand in my way if I started sending them patches to duplicate their documentation in some new format like GNU info or perldoc? Probably yes.

Documentation isn't a one-off thing. It incurs a long-term maintenance cost. So it's best to pick one system and stick to it.

And really, it's not too much to ask that you just familiarize yourself with the conventions of the OS or system you're using. To stick to just ways of reading documentation I use man, info, perldoc, rdoc, phpdoc, javadoc, online tutorials etc. regularly.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs

#147

Post by fjarlq »

bl4k wrote: post #84
fjarlq wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: "15. FreeBSD hasn't had a default install, STABLE security advisory in ~10 years." You make several good points here, but I'm not sure what you mean by that one. Consider the most recent advisory, FreeBSD-SA-10:07.mbuf, listed here: http://www.freebsd.org/security/advisories.html default install: yep, kernel mbuf code STABLE: yep, FreeBSD 7.1 and later security advisory: yep, privilege escalation in the past 10 y…

You are correct. It would be more accurate to say 'remote attack' with an up-to-date stable release. The point could be scaled back to say that FreeBSD has undergone extensive peer-review and security auditing to the point that the stable branches have not seen a remotely exploitable security vulnerability in a long time. That said, FreeBSD doesn't excuse sysadmins from not being vigilant with monitoring advisories a…

Okay, yeah, I can't remember the last time there was an advisory about a remote hole in a default FreeBSD build.

You credit FreeBSD's "extensive peer-review and security auditing" for this... do you have more information or links about that? I know the FreeBSD folks have been proactive about fixing security bugs, and conservative in their default build design, but I haven't heard about their peer-review and auditing.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs

#148

Post by bobdole2695 »

forkqueue wrote: post #75
bl4k wrote: post #58

I have been an OpenBSD and FreeBSD user, as well as minor contributor, since the mid-90s. All the answers here are good, and I would like to add: * FreeBSD is on the cutting edge of performance. Because it is a total OS (as opposed to just a kernel), performance improvements are made and integrated into the binary packages and ports build options of common packages. FreeBSD was one of the first operating systems to i…

A reasonable summary, but one that demonstrates some misunderstandings of the Linux world. To deal with the issues point by point: * FreeBSD has better performance than Linux? This is, as you almost concede, no longer true. * Lack of kernel modules an advantage? Hardly. Linux loadable kernel modules produce no extra performance overhead, but make life a lot simpler for everyone. The only extra 'bloat' is having ~100M…

I find that last line entertaining considering I feel the exact opposite way about linux and the utterly chaotic development model they employ.

I always feel like I'm building my castles on quicksand.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs

#149

Post by kd0amg »

nailer wrote: post #115
kd0amg wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need a desktop to have a web browser? ¬_¬

Window management would be required to align the web browser with the terminal windows. A text web browser wouldn't require window management but omits a lot of content.

A text web browser wouldn't require window management but omits a lot of content.

It does, but after using one for a while, most of it seems superfluous.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs

#150

Post by kunley »

rubashov wrote: post #130
kunley wrote: post #124

I work on both BSDs and Linux boxes and this fact struck me recently: for i in /bin /usr/bin /usr/local/bin; do ls $i|wc -l; done Linux: 124 2155 67 FreeBSD: 44 430 1067 On BSD, you clearly see which programs are essential for your system to be up & well, which are service additions and which are 3rd party stuff (yeah I missed sbin but you see the picture). On Linux there's a big bag of /usr/bin and a beginner can ha…

That's a distro thing. A slackware or debian setup will not have much superfluous stuff installed.

The Linux numbers were actually taken from Debian. On both families of systems you can decide what to rule out and this is healthy thing to do. But, you know, there's still a difference in thinking. On BSD I'm sure what constitutes a core system and what belongs to the ports -- and that's what I was writing about, not the sum of programs installed but splitting them into sub-hierarchies in a sane way. Such distinction provides a subtle kind of hygiene which occasionally can be a savior. But yeah well it can be appreciated when you just use it for a while.
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