Earlier quoted context omitted.
Linux has ZFS too. FreeBSD actually switched over to using the Linux implementation a few years ago.
Linux is just a kernel and ZFS isn't in there.
There is a Linux driver for ZFS.
Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)
231–240 of 251 posts
Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the split between /usr/local/etc and /etc constantly leaves you guessing where to find a particular config file I started with FreeBSD and it never was a problem to me until I started to use Linux too. Now I just make symlinks from /usr/local/etc to /etc for software I use both on Linux and FreeBSD. The rule is simple - if an app is from the base system it is in /etc and if you installed some software from packages…
FreeBSD is more of an admin's system than a user's system and this perfectly illustrates one of the reasons why. Outside of this forum, in regular consumer land, OS users don't want to know or care about the distinction between base and ports, and nothing anyone says about it is going to change that. So I run lots of BSD at home but I recommend Mint to family.
In regular consumer land, nobody is going to care that some config files are in /etc and others are in /usr/local/etc because a regular consumer has no idea what either one is, anyway.
Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)
#233I have tried several times to run FreeBSD on my home servers and every single time it fails to boot let alone run. Each happily runs Linux (with ZFS) all day long with no issues. I know the project is smaller in scope and has less funding than Linux (distros and subprojects included) but it's kind of ridiculous. It's incredibly frustrating to set aside the time to set up a machine only to have the kernel panic half w…
I have a machine which cannot boot neither Ubuntu nor Fedora, and nobody online seems to know why. Hardware support can be like that.
Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
But where does the init system end and the kitchen-sink begin? For instance do you consider networking to be part of init or is it something else. For me, I bring network up in initramfs, so it's definitely part of my init. The only truly bad systemd-* I've worked with is systemd-journald. Which often fails to contain log entries that should be present or simply just corrupts itself.
> But where does the init system end and the kitchen-sink begin? resolved, timesyncd, homed, journald, networkd (was very happy with Debian's interfaces(5) ). Never thought of mounting file systems as process control, so also add mounting and taking over fstab . Given the ever-growing number of 'sub-systems', I'm sure new ones have been created that I'm not aware of. (I'm personally most regularly annoyed by resolved…
Just one example of what I like about systemd, and maybe you can call me new school, but I've really grown to like journald/journalctl.
Having systemd units automatically categorized and queryable has been very nice (the -u flag). The tag flag has also been great for me.
The --since and --until flags are godsends, I don't really care to waste time converting timestamps in my brain when all I want to do is do something like journalctl -u my_service --since yesterday --until today.
To me a way to centralize logs and have a tool like this to query them in a relatively advanced way is a major benefit.
I find that the complaints about systemd are mainly about UNIX philosphy and not about the actual functionality and benefits of those design choices. It seems like even mentioning that it's good brings back all these 2014 arguments about it.
You brought up mounting, the second paragraph of the systemd-mount manual quite clearly explains the benefit and what makes it different than the lower level mount command. And really it's not like systemd is ripping away your old tools especially in that particular case.
Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)
#235Just another “I don’t like systemd and refuse to understand it” rant. I can’t think of any change that has improved my Linux sysadmin experience more than the move to systemd. Is it complicated? Perhaps it is. But this FUD about it being resource intensive or unreliable or difficult to use is complete nonsense. And on top of that systemd isn’t even “Linux.” Plenty of popular production-ready distros like Alpine Linux…
FUD? No. There are plenty of people on plenty of sites asking, "How do I do this very simple thing using systemd?", along with plenty of answers which depend on which distro it is, how recent it is, et cetera. For instance, DNS handling and NTP keep coming up over and over, and it's almost becoming a meme. Why? Because it's the Microsoft mentality - we (the systemd people) know better than you (you're just the machin…
1. Plenty of sites ask all kinds of questions that depend on which distro is it, how recent is it, etc. This doesn't mean that systemd is bad because the answers change over time.
2. DNS handling and NTP comes up over and over...for who exactly? I work with Linux as a full-time job and this has never come up as a pain point.
3. This "Microsoft mentality" thing is such a 2014 argument about systemd. Basically because systemd didn't perfectly conform to "the UNIX philosophy," we are assuming that they are evil bastards like Microsoft. E.g., journalctl had the gall to make a queryable logging system, and because that concept has some passing similarties the Windows Event Viewer it must be bad. If Linux Torvalds has a strong opinionated design on something and refuses a contribution to the Linux kernel, that's cool because he's Enlightened Tech Jesus, but if systemd's maintainers dare to have opinionated design they are draconian Microsoft employees. And again no significant controversial event has happened since that 2014/2015 era of systemd when, really, the software was much older and less mature at that time so disagreements were understandable.
4. Again you claim there are no reasonable answers for how to do "something," when really there are. If nobody knew the answers it wouldn't be the init system for pretty much every big name Linux distro out there (Ubuntu...Red Hat...Fedora...Amazon Linux...Oracle...Arch...SteamOS...)
Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)
#236> Complicated stuff = high probably of failure This is a myth. The 787 has about 60 million miles of wiring in it. It is vastly more complicated than an airliner from the 1940s, and it also much, much safer. Poorly engineered technology fails, not necessarily complex technology > secondary problem is the stacking of abstraction layers docker / kubersomething Then don't use Kubernetes or Docker? They aren't mandatory
Is any open source software or Linux distribution engineered to the level of the 787?
Yes. Boeing Onboard Network System (ONS) running on the Network File Server (NFS)?
It and its 787 sibling are highly customized Linux distros.
Aircraft include the 747-8, 787, some 737, ...
http://www.b737.org.uk/flightinstsmax-maint.htm
https://www.teledynecontrols.com/en-us/Product%20Brochures/T...
Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't have to belive me , you know... Just look at what happend with Microsoft users over time as the OSs became more and more unconfigurable. On the other side, Linux users, from the beginning until recently, were very competent. They stayed competent because they had to . School is compulsory for everybody a reason - extremely few people learn, unless they're forced to. "Mindless drones" is probably a little ha…
You're turning "these systems work so incredibly shit that we must know everything about it to work it" into something positive while dismissing the state we had before systemd. And regarding learning, it seems people are still willing to use and work in the Linux ecosystem even after systemd and Kubernetes and other high level abstractions that makes utilizing computers easier. I think using the description "mindles…
I still don't use systemd and this year I stopped using openrc too. Now I'm using only sysvinit. It was very very educational and I even reported bugs in sysvinit, some of them were there for over 20 years.
The people you are attracting to Linux are not the kind of people that will improve it in any way. As Linux is free (well, most distros), you won't even see any extra money. Only idiotic bug reports will increse. "Interent isn't working!!!111 FIX IT NOWWW!!!111"
You're not even attracting competent sysadmins. You'll have more security breaches, more automated hacking (because without manually-written scripts, all systems behave predictably the same), more costly fixes (because consultants that still know the job are expensive).
Mobile users that feel offended users may vote me down, I don't mind, but you know the type of users I was referring to.
Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me arch linux is the middle ground between a too-much-complexity "fat" distribution like ubuntu or debian and a-minimal-but-eclectic-freebsd. the arch wiki is VERY comprehensive, linux has a huge community, and arch forced you to understand much just by stepping through the installation process.
arch (or any rolling release) on a home server doesn't sound like a good idea?
Once you try a rolling-release distro you realize it's actually a very good idea
Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)
#239Switched to FreeBSD at home as well and it was such a wonderful decision.
As a long time Linux user, what was unexpected and eye-opening was seeing how FreeBSD does things. Somethings better and somethings worse. The better things are WAAYY better. And, for many of those things that felt better, in summary it's really the culmination of the entire ecosystem. The whole package is just better to me. The cohesive system is really a killer app. Oh, and pf is great too.
I havn't given up on linux; it's just running as a VM in bhyve now.
I also run Freebsd on a Thinkpad T490 laptop. Works great.
Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's start with: there is no such thing as "Linux" man pages. There's https://docs.kernel.org > but that only concerns the kernel itself. How does a particular distribution handle its man pages is up to that distribution. You can browse what is generally considered to be the "standard" set of man pages online: https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/ > or https://linux.die.net/man/ >, but this is a third-party community ef…
> Let's start with: there is no such thing as "Linux" man pages. There's https://docs.kernel.org > but that only concerns the kernel itself. Actually, there is. https://web.git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.... It's included with many default distro installs.
This is technically true, but this pretty much exactly illustrates my point. The SCM URL you've provided, you have to dig it up. It refers you to https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/index.html>, which again, is a personal website of a member of the community. Then e.g. the fnctl(2) page comes from the 6.10 kernel release - AFAICT I can't browse the past releases or track HEAD. Compare with https://man.openbsd.org> or https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi>, you can find both straight from the landing pages.
Meanwhile if you can't find man7.org (Google search results are only getting worse) and start browsing https://docs.kernel.org>, it refers you to https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/> which refers you to https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/maintaining.html>, https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/missing_pages.html>, and Wikipedia - none of which seem to be relevant, can't tell because it's a wall of text rather than a man page browser.
Now imagine you have to fix a b0rked system that can't display its own man pages. You're now stuck with this mess.