You should try FreeBSD (2014)

(Tedious disclaimer: not speaking for anybody else, my opinion only, etc. I'm an SRE at Google.)

> Many major companies like Google or Netflix use FreeBSD in production.

Erm. Well, the company's so huge that I'm sure there's something with some freebsd in it somewhere, but... not really.

I've worked with freebsd extensively in a past job, where it was used for licensing reasons. I don't agree with this article.

I definitely think people should give FreeBSD a try. I also think they should give different flavors or linux a try (e.g. Arch Linux). What I don't agree with is using FreeBSD or a non-mainstream OS in production unless you really know what you're doing.

There are many reasons for this, but the most important one is what the article alluded to; there is a plethora of resources for troubleshooting an issue. If you can't install a package like `gfortran` on something like ubuntu, then you can head over to askubuntu and will likely get the solution to your problem.

What I think FreeBSD (or any less widely used OS for that matter) should do is create the right kind of easily searchable support structure that people coming from Ubuntu and CentOS take for granted.

If you read the article closely, it does not point to a canonical support structure. This does not mean there isn't one or for that matter, many. But, what I can decipher is that there isn't a de-facto site that you can get help from.

I used FreeBSD for a couple of years but now use Arch (after a fling with Ubuntu in between). Reasons I switched (some of which may have been addressed since):

* building everything from source got old

* lack of support for hardware (Linux has gotten really good at having drivers for hardware)

* ports of desktop applications were not always available, and the POSIX shim to use Linux applications didnt always work without some hacking

* On the server side, Linux pretty much caught up on performance

* As the Linux community has grown, the resources available to Linux users are amazing. FreeBSD feels like Linux used to - always having to hack around and try to research how to make it work and nothing quite working smoothly (on the desktop - less of an issue for servers, where FreeBSD has always shined). Linux has reached a point where I use Linux as my primary desktop OS, and it works great. FreeBSD for the desktop feels like a step backwards.

These posts should never be allowed on Fridays. I should be out drinking (or doing what normal people do) on Friday nights, not at home installing another OS.

I'm sure many people will tell you that the FreeBSD man pages [0] are an incredible resource and some of the best written man pages out there. From experience, the official handbook [1] was incredibly helpful as well.

That said, the forums are not the most helpful place because there are /so/ many configurations out there and so many "right" ways to do things that it makes finding a working solution incredibly difficult.

[0] https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi

[1] https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/