Perhaps they have some security concerns. https://vez.mrsk.me/freebsd-defaults.txt - more admin time spent tweaking poor default security == more money being spent.
Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?
21–30 of 82 posts
Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?
#22Some reasons I could think: - It's easier and cheaper to find Linux sysadmins than BSD ones - There's more commercial software supported on Linux - There's more companies offering support for Linux - Linux is more portable than BSD - Linux is one of the standard server OS offered by providers, BSD isn't
How is Linux more portable than BSD?! NetBSD has been ported to nearly every platform known to man, even toasters. I'm surprised that more embedded devices don't run some sort of BSD because they wouldn't have to release code. The PS4's OS is FreeBSD, which they did release a lot of code in return, but they don't have to open source or release all their code (i.e. DRM and other "Security" based stuff) if they don't w…
There's platform, and then there's drivers. There's no point on having an OS on a net-enabled device if that OS can't talk to the network hardware, for example.
Linux has had a ridiculous amount of work from a variety of sources in it's drivers. I once used a git animation tool (forget the name of it, sorry) on the linux kernel source, and the area where the drivers were put was buzzing like a beehive, as people from all sorts of companies were making sure their stuff was supported on linux.
Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?
#23After 18 years of running FreeBSD on my servers, my $0.02:
Politics/marketing:
* Most "unix" admins only know linux and will advocate for it vigorously because it is so much better than.. "what do you use again? Fedora? Ah, FreeBSD, something with F, I knew it!"
* Management not always listens to reason but just wants a discussion go away, so they listen to the loudest advocates.
Knowledge/Community:
* It is easier to copy a solution to a linux problem from stack overflow than to read the FreeBSD handbook, understand the problem and fix it.
* FreeBSD only is fun when one has a higher level of expertise: Knowledge of sh and at least a basic understanding of make are required, being able to at least read c code makes life much easier.
* Reading docs is hard. FreeBSD forces one to understand the standard unix tools that come with it. That means one has to spend some time reading the docs (or at least skimming over them so one knows where to look when the need arises). If one does not understand the tools, even simple init scripts are black magic.
* No exposure to FreeBSD at all: most hosting companies won't even list FreeBSD as an option (though in most you'll find some unix geek who'll happily connect KVM or IPMI and insert the install-CD for you).
* The FreeBSD community is much less forgiving than the linux community: Ask a question that can be answered easily by reading the handbook or some man-page and the response will probably be silence (rarely flaming, just silence).
And finally also some points where one could argue that it makes sense not to use FreeBSD from an economic point of view:
* When using FreeBSD one is regularly forced to clean up linux-BS when venturing outside what /usr/ports provides: #!/bin/bash - or even worse #!/bin/sh that actually wants a bash - is one of the most common problems.
* When compiling software from source that does not come from /usr/ports one regularly has to do research what $leenox-distro-package XY provides because documentation just gives command lines for the most common linux distributions. "Soo.... what exactly does that software need to compile when the docs tell me to simply apt-get foo-23.5 and bar-42.666?"
Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?
#24Some reasons I could think: - It's easier and cheaper to find Linux sysadmins than BSD ones - There's more commercial software supported on Linux - There's more companies offering support for Linux - Linux is more portable than BSD - Linux is one of the standard server OS offered by providers, BSD isn't
How is Linux more portable than BSD?! NetBSD has been ported to nearly every platform known to man, even toasters. I'm surprised that more embedded devices don't run some sort of BSD because they wouldn't have to release code. The PS4's OS is FreeBSD, which they did release a lot of code in return, but they don't have to open source or release all their code (i.e. DRM and other "Security" based stuff) if they don't w…
Many embedded Linux vendors don't release their code. They get away with it because many are only around for a short period and enforcement resources are limited.
Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?
#25Some reasons I could think: - It's easier and cheaper to find Linux sysadmins than BSD ones - There's more commercial software supported on Linux - There's more companies offering support for Linux - Linux is more portable than BSD - Linux is one of the standard server OS offered by providers, BSD isn't
I'm confused by what you mean by "more portable." Do you mean that it runs on more CPU architectures and platforms? Or do you mean more driver support, etc.? BSD can run a rather diverse set of platforms: http://www.netbsd.org/ports/
I'm not confused, I assume they mean /more compatible/ (with hardware on the shelf).
Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is Linux more portable than BSD?! NetBSD has been ported to nearly every platform known to man, even toasters. I'm surprised that more embedded devices don't run some sort of BSD because they wouldn't have to release code. The PS4's OS is FreeBSD, which they did release a lot of code in return, but they don't have to open source or release all their code (i.e. DRM and other "Security" based stuff) if they don't w…
There's platform, and then there's drivers. There's no point on having an OS on a net-enabled device if that OS can't talk to the network hardware, for example. Linux has had a ridiculous amount of work from a variety of sources in it's drivers. I once used a git animation tool (forget the name of it, sorry) on the linux kernel source, and the area where the drivers were put was buzzing like a beehive, as people from…
>I once used a git animation tool (forget the name of it, sorry)
Probably Gource I would imagine http://gource.io/
Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?
#27After 18 years of running FreeBSD on my servers, my $0.02: Politics/marketing: * Most "unix" admins only know linux and will advocate for it vigorously because it is so much better than.. "what do you use again? Fedora? Ah, FreeBSD, something with F, I knew it!" * Management not always listens to reason but just wants a discussion go away, so they listen to the loudest advocates. Knowledge/Community: * It is easier t…
> most hosting companies won't even list FreeBSD as an option (though in most you'll find some unix geek who'll happily connect KVM or IPMI and insert the install-CD for you).
Some of my datacenter clients use freeBSD for various bits, and I have been that guy. In the end they're migrating away because it's incredibly hard to find experienced engineers. What you describe as "reading docs is hard" can be equated to "my team will be slower for negleglible gain." Dicking around with ports and make is fun, but at the end of the day, we seek lower latency services and faster outage response times.
EDIT: there's also a network effect in puppet / chef / ansible -- More work for your operations team when every community module for managing services doesn't support your platform of choice.
Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?
#28I used to run everything on FreeBSD. It's a great operating system and incredibly stable and I loved every minute of sysadminning a FreeBSD box. Honestly, what changed was Ubuntu. Being able to have a fairly robust server on the cheap and maintain it fairly well with just a few apt-get commands was a huge game changer. Admittedly I haven't tried running FBSD since 4/5 timeframe and I'm sure quite a bit has changed si…
> Honestly, what changed was Ubuntu. Being able to have a fairly robust server on the cheap and maintain it fairly well with just a few apt-get commands was a huge game changer.
That hurts to read. Debian (upon which Ubuntu is based) has been around for decades (literally: it's 22 years old), and has been providing an extremely stable server, for free, with just a few apt-get commands.
> What used to be hours each week of administration work has become minutes a month. It might be less secure, it might be slightly less robust, but overall I don't even think about systems administration anymore and (to me) that's such a huge savings in time that it's just not worth trying to go back.
Or you could switch to Debian and get the same ease-of-use with better security.
If you really wanted security, of course, you'd choose OpenBSD.
Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?
#29I used to run everything on FreeBSD. It's a great operating system and incredibly stable and I loved every minute of sysadminning a FreeBSD box. Honestly, what changed was Ubuntu. Being able to have a fairly robust server on the cheap and maintain it fairly well with just a few apt-get commands was a huge game changer. Admittedly I haven't tried running FBSD since 4/5 timeframe and I'm sure quite a bit has changed si…
My experience with FreeBSD seems to mirror yours exactly. The only difference was moving into big corp world, everybody ran Solaris and RHEL. Try as I might, there was no appetite for FBSD, and most vendor SW wasn't supported.
Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?
#30I'm not sure you're going to find one unifying answer, so I'll just contribute my own experience. - FreeBSD lost the desktop battle to Linux. All joking aside about Linux on the desktop, if you want a *nix environment (and not Mac), Linux distributions are just a lot easier to set up and have traditionally enjoyed better packaging of proprietary software (graphics card drivers, RAID card drivers, applications, etc.).…
I actually ran FreeBSD as a "desktop OS" on more than a few IBM Stinkpads for years. It worked well, driver support -- well, wifi was always fun, but if you knew enough, you could get them going (orinoco cards for the win).
That said, I never saw FreeBSD as anything other than a Server OS. So I wouldn't say the "desktop" comparison really ever fit in.