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Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)

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Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)

#41

Post by npodbielski »

Thought I agree with points of an author saying that it is wasteful to run 10 SQLs to run ten applications, I am not SYS admin and I do not want to spend few hours every week upgrading my software. With docker you do 'docker compose pull; docker compose up' and you done. You can do that via cron in every dir with your compose file and you are done.

In fact I think even that thing is still to complicated. We need one-click deploys, automatic updaters for Linux or FreeBsd or similar for regular people to be able to self host and own their data.

Having local pizzeria hosting its menu on Facebook is not a good thing. Having an online only calendar app as an only way to schedule haircut locally is not good thing. Having all your files stored on OneDrive or GoogleDrive is not a good thing.

If author thinks FreeBsd is better - cool. Then work on a solution for ordinary people to host file storage server using FreeBsd in a simple way.

Create simple wizard to install Nextcloud or Owncloud or mail sever on FreeBsd.

This post is true but it is just a rant that do not solves any real problems. One if them is that people do not want to manage servers. For better or worse - is beside the point.

Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)

#42

Post by cf100clunk »

lillecarl wrote: post #40

I started reading but stopped as soon as it was a systemd rant. systemd, while not for everyone is a good for most people .

I kept on reading because I use OSes that have different init systems, one of which is systemd. Choice is great. Of course, your comment could be accused of being a rant too.

Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)

#43

Post by mekster »

asveikau wrote: post #9

ZFS is probably the biggest reason for me. I have a machine with a zfs pool running samba and nfsd. Philosophically I tend to prefer *BSDs over Linux. I have a few FreeBSD machines, one OpenBSD, and one Linux.

Ubuntu can have zfs with an install of a package.

BSD’s inability to utilize docker ecosystem had me decided to stick with Ubuntu for a decade, unless things change and BSD gets clear advantages over Linux.

Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)

#44

Post by hylaride »

csdvrx wrote: post #13

The main complain of the author seems to be that linux use systemd. In my experience, systemd is far better and more reliable than anything else, especially if you need complex logic (ex: when this and that happen, start doing this, except when such and such are present) Most of the problems I've seen come from trying to duplicate systemd functions: in the author example, why bother with rsyslog or network-manager? I…

99% of my issues with systemd are that it is a kitchen sink mentality. If it just dealt with process and service management, it'd mostly be minor quibbles - it was time to replace init with something.

But instead it also does NTP, DHCP/networking, logging, etc. There were some very annoying teething issues with a lot of these components. It became more difficult to isolate problems buried within the systemd stack. It also became a pain to do some common, basic tasks. When the first distros starting supporting it, getting the systemd/journald logs for all the services into a central logging service was extremely painful. With (r)syslog it is just one line in a config. Heck, even the config files for systemd are littered all over the place.

It didn't help that the systemd head (Lennart Poettering) was extremely intransigent with any complaints, often outright refusing to deal with various historical edge cases for long-established norms.

And yes, by doing all this it the broke the long-held UNIX philosophy of "do one thing really well" and that continues to ruffle a lot of feathers. I've mainly accepted the fact that it won out, but it's helped by the fact that I'm now mostly using it to start a docker orchestrator and that all the networking is now handled by cloud-computing resources.

Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)

#45

Post by doublerabbit »

Linus is too in-bed with Microsoft.

RedHat the main powerhouse behind Linux ans is now owned by IBM. And Ubuntu is just corporate Debian who pushes their own proprietary (Flatpak) software which is cobbled together and just generally sucks.

Systemd is bloated in wanting to do everything at once. I have never had a linux systemd distribution that just shutdowns without prompting me "waiting x/2minutes - x/y retries".

FreeBSD is my daily driver and will always be my primary. Once you get over the "eww it's bsd" linux snobbery you start to realise how solid it actually is.

Wifi works, graphics work. Wine and Proton works. Ports is fantastic and kernel compiling is easy. It even works on my MSI 2024 laptop. [1]

Linux is lost in a communistic maze of leap frog.

[1] https://bsd-hardware.info/?probe=b7f27b9528

Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)

#46

Post by quesera »

lunarlull wrote: post #31

Alpine, Void, Devuan or Artix all would have allowed author to use Linux while addressing his points of concern. I don't think the BSD's have real advantages anymore since so much core performance stuff is in Linux first. When most of the software is available on all these platforms, it mostly comes down to user preference.

I run Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, and SmartOS/illumos in various capacities personal and professional.

Each has its own strengths, but I choose FreeBSD for home servers (shared file/media server. and network gateway), for a few specific reasons:

  - ZFS (on root, fully integrated tooling for jails, etc)
  - More consistency/less churn in base system (great for set-and-forget systems)
  - Ports/pkg (still better than any Linux pkg manager)

Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)

#47

Post by mekster »

rollcat wrote: post #24

I have mixed feelings about FreeBSD. Some stuff is genuinely good: major/minor release branches, the best ZFS experience you can get OOB, actual man pages, overall a lot "cleaner" than most Linux distros. OTOH when you compare it to e.g. OpenBSD (or in many instances, even Linux), it's an actual mess. The default install leaves you browsing thru the handbook to get simple things to work; it has three ( three !) disti…

I have had BSD as my router for a few years in the past and used Linux for a few decades but I never got this “BSD is cleaner” argument. Linux has man pages and Google gives you plenty more practical resources when in doubt and nothing felt unstable compared to “BSD is more tightly integrated” statement.

Lack of community resource such as documents, blogs, StackOverflow answers and docker ecosystem just drove me away from BSD as I lose nothing by using Linux. The only thing I miss could be OpenBSD’s pf.

Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)

#48

Post by rollcat »

briandear wrote: post #2

Curious what “home servers” are really for. I’ve gone decades without needing a home server — what am I missing out on?

I've thrown "home server workloads" at my Mac mini. It stays on 24/7 anyway, because idle power draw is negligible.

Syncthing is a great use case. Wherever I take my laptop, the files stay in sync between the two devices; I don't need a third device to act as a server, or iCloud, or any other cloud.

Miniflux. I read my RSS feeds from three devices, so I want to track read status and save bookmarks. It provides a Google Reader-compatible API (yes it lives on), so I can plug NetNewsWire into it.

It's an exit node for Tailscale. Did I mention Tailscale? It's like still being on the same LAN anywhere you go. It doesn't matter if your home server doesn't have a public IP.

Grafana is cool for anything you can plot, as long as you can mash it into something vaguely resembling a time series. Sensor readings, data pulled from some API, CSV export from your bank, your chess ELO, etc. It's often combined with Prometheus. So you can also scrape anything that speaks enough HTTP (which is... many things, these days).

I want to explore something like Navidrome or Jellyfin; for now I use Syncthing for my music library, but even if I could run it on iPhone, the whole collection wouldn't fit. Unfortunately it seems there are no decent apps.

You're also free to explore uncharted territory. Rubenerd is hosting a "house-wide" SQL database: https://rubenerd.com/our-personal-database/>

Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)

#49

Post by mekster »

badgersnake wrote: post #34
znpy wrote: post #25

> ZFS is more efficient on FreeBSD (Insert Source) FreeBSD and Linux share the same ZFS codebase, openzfs. FreeBSD had its own zfs implementation but they had to drop it becayse they couldn't keep up with openzfs.

But Linux makes it a faff because the license is incompatible so you have to run it as a 3rd party module and the kernel devs regularly break it. With FreeBSD it’s already there and you know it will work.

My zfs never broke under Ubuntu and installation is easy by installing 1 package.

Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)

#50

Post by csdvrx »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #29
csdvrx wrote: post #13

The main complain of the author seems to be that linux use systemd. In my experience, systemd is far better and more reliable than anything else, especially if you need complex logic (ex: when this and that happen, start doing this, except when such and such are present) Most of the problems I've seen come from trying to duplicate systemd functions: in the author example, why bother with rsyslog or network-manager? I…

> I like the various BSD and distributions like postmarket OS, but I wish they had access to modern tools instead of having to "roll my own" with scripts or make do with what they depend on It sounds like you wish they used systemd. "Modern" is rarely a good description, and at 15 years old I don't think systemd qualifies as such anyways.

> It sounds like you wish they used systemd

I do.

> "Modern" is rarely a good description

Then call it reliable and dependable.

Modern doesn't always win for me: I prefer vim to neovim, or bash to zsh. Having a solid set of features and a good integration does.

If you are curious, see https://marcelofern.com/posts/linux/goodbye_zsh/index.html which mirrors my reasons to prefer bash

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