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Why I love FreeBSD

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Re: Why I love FreeBSD

#241

Post by jandrewrogers »

lproven wrote: post #225
jandrewrogers wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are narrow things for which FreeBSD is just lovely but it hasn’t been as powerful as Linux for decades. It was one of the best server OS back in the 1990s though. Just a very clean implementation. I used it a lot back in the day and am very fond of it. But I can no longer recommend it.

> as powerful as Linux Can you explain what you mean by that? Can you give some examples?

Linux added differentiated support for high-scale and high-performance systems pretty early on. Good support for very high core counts, kernel bypass mechanisms, XFS, and more recently things like io_uring. This opened Linux up to a class of high-end applications that FreeBSD wasn't designed for.

FreeBSD was excellent for ordinary UNIX-y server things. If you were designing a high-end database engine though, where you mostly just need the OS to get out of the way, it was much easier to target Linux.

Re: Why I love FreeBSD

#242

Post by bombcar »

lproven wrote: post #227
wang_pp8 wrote: post #197

These days I prefer to run small systems and basic services. I don't want webguis or docker images anymore.

FWIW, agreed. It is very odd to me that I often read people asking about alternative OSes -- Linux compared to Windows, or FreeBSD compared to Linux, or OpenBSD compared to FreeBSD -- and they say that they want to move except that they desperately need to keep {something arcane}... And often that arcane thing is why I am interested in getting off the original system under discussion.

The appeal of the BSDs has always been an incredibly stable entire system that means you don't need Docker to run fifteen variations of the various libraries necessary to (Stallman) build a GNU/Linux.

Re: Why I love FreeBSD

#243

Post by tsoukase »

As an amateur my need is to use the same OS in all the devices from the GUI desktop, to servers, down to Raspberry Pi, having simultaneously very good documentation. And the only one that fulfills this is Arch Linux. Being excellent in device drivers, package maintenance and simplicity is also deal breaker.

Re: Why I love FreeBSD

#244

Post by guenthert »

pfp wrote: post #141

Ok, where are the companies using FreeBSD? How do you get hired if you do happen to have proper FreeBSD skills? It's notably absent from all the job listings.

> Ok, where are the companies using FreeBSD?

Not quite twenty years ago Yahoo! was using (also, I suspect) FreeBSD.

> How do you get hired if you do happen to have proper FreeBSD skills?

By advertising your other skills?

Re: Why I love FreeBSD

#246

Post by passthejoe »

krylon wrote: post #18

My home server has been running FreeBSD for ten years now, and it has never let me down. Except for one time I got fresh with /dev/speaker and triggered a spontaneous reboot (I don't know if it's FreeBSD's fault or the hardware, though). I delayed upgrading to 15.0 after it was released, but last weekend I finally did it, and it left me wondering why I hadn't done it sooner, because it went quickly and smoothly. Is t…

Having ZFS baked into the installer and fully supported by the project is a huge motivator for using FreeBSD.

I know that Linux distros can accommodate ZFS, but it's a fair-weather situation due to licensing and most distros' preference for BTRFS.

Re: Why I love FreeBSD

#247

Post by fluoridation »

passthejoe wrote: post #246
krylon wrote: post #18

My home server has been running FreeBSD for ten years now, and it has never let me down. Except for one time I got fresh with /dev/speaker and triggered a spontaneous reboot (I don't know if it's FreeBSD's fault or the hardware, though). I delayed upgrading to 15.0 after it was released, but last weekend I finally did it, and it left me wondering why I hadn't done it sooner, because it went quickly and smoothly. Is t…

Having ZFS baked into the installer and fully supported by the project is a huge motivator for using FreeBSD. I know that Linux distros can accommodate ZFS, but it's a fair-weather situation due to licensing and most distros' preference for BTRFS.

Licensing is totally irrelevant for the end user. It just means you can't distribute the fully configured system.

Re: Why I love FreeBSD

#250

Post by anthk »

andxor wrote: post #198
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Documentation certainly is not gold standard. I'm a former doc tree committer, familiar with many of the bugs … As "a former doc tree committer", I am sure you are aware that no set of documentation artifacts are without error of some sort. To be exact, you provided two examples of your identifying what you believe to be same. I stand by my statement that the cited FreeBSD resources are "a gold standard" while ackn…

Arch Linux wiki is the gold standard and better than FreeBSD.

Arch Wiki can't never cover a userland+kernel documentation by design. FreeBSD does. Arch it's utterly lacking in tons of areas. Forget proper sysctl documentation. Say goodbye to tons of device settings' documentation. Forget iptables/NFT's documentatiton on par of PF.
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