
Tutorial sites treating FreeBSD like a Linux distro - todsacerdoti
https://rubenerd.com/tutorial-sites-treating-freebsd-like-a-linux-distro/
======
iagovar
FreeBSD is my go-to OS when I need a VM. I have poor sysadmin skills and I
find it easier than Linux in general. I still use Xubuntu for my laptop, and
Windows for my desktop.

For me, as a low level power user, I just find that searching "how to do
something in FreeBSD" feels like always leads me to something easy to follow
through and consistent. In Linux many times I find that tutorials don't apply
to my version, or this distro has this files somewhere else and a long list of
etc. It's fine, I get what's about Linux, It's just that I don't really have
the motivation to learn all that quirks + the quirks of the stuff I'm trying
to use.

FreeBSD community has always been nice to me too, everytime I needed to ask
stuff.

So I just want to thank the FreeBSD devs and community because without them I
wouldn't be doing a lot of stuff, or maybe just using Windows VMs.

~~~
panpanna
Have you tried the arch wiki?

~~~
microcolonel
Will second this, Arch Linux is _by far_ the most user-friendly distribution.
It lacks a lot of the kludges and oddities that are especially common to
Debian distributions, and the rolling release more often than not prevents you
from needing to install a third party repository just to use the _current_
stable release of a package. The documentation is actually helpful, and if you
do have an actual novel problem, the community will be there for you (though,
like any healthy community, it has defenses against lazy people who won't read
the documentation).

~~~
simias
I use Arch Linux and FreeBSD quite a lot and I agree that the Arch Wiki is
great but it's not really comparable to the FreeBSD handbook.

The handbook feels... like a proper handbook. It's got structure and is very
comprehensive. The first time I installed a non-Windows OS was FreeBSD as a
teenager using only the handbook (I had no internet connection). In hindsight
it was an amazing learning experience.

The Arch wiki is more like a compendium of arcane knowledge regarding Arch
Linux and a lot of Linux software. It's a lot broader in scope but it can be a
bit overwhelming when you don't know exactly what you're looking for.

Compare for instance the entry for OpenSSH in the handbook vs. the Arch wiki:

[https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/openssh.html](https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/openssh.html)

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/OpenSSH](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/OpenSSH)

The FreeBSD page is a lot shorter but it's also more beginner friendly IMO. It
ignores the more advanced features and niche use cases to get the user
started. If you want to go deeper than that you're supposed to go look for the
full documentations elsewhere (man pages, info pages or... the Arch Wiki for
instance). It's short and focused. The Arch Wiki page on the other hand
tackles many other advanced features of OpenSSH but I fear that a complete
beginner might find it a bit overwhelming.

The Arch Wiki is priceless though, it's become my de-facto resource for
projects that don't offer good quality first party documentation.

~~~
microcolonel
> _I use Arch Linux and FreeBSD quite a lot and I agree that the Arch Wiki is
> great but it 's not really comparable to the FreeBSD handbook._

I think it's a depth vs. breadth thing. The Arch Wiki covers significantly
more topics, and a vast number of these topics are _deep enough to solve your
problem or get the job done._

I think the FreeBSD handbook often tries to be "complete" in some sense.

------
david_draco
This is an example where distinguishing Linux from GNU/Linux is useful.

Yes, you can install GNU userland on FreeBSD, then you have GNU/FreeBSD. Maybe
people want that instead of Linux (the kernel). There is also Gentoo and
Debian on BSD kernels.

------
atemerev
I have used FreeBSD 12 as the main desktop OS for some time. In general,
everything works fine (including NVIDIA drivers, Java, full screen video,
sound, and KDE5 Plasma desktop). The only problem was that FreeBSD is not
officially supported by Jetbrains for their IDEs (so I can’t report bugs), and
there are e.g. problems with their Python and Javascript debuggers which I
constantly use. So, sadly, I had to switch back to Linux. Other than that, it
is an excellent modern OS with e.g. ZFS is fully supported as one of the
default installation options (root on ZFS in Ubuntu is still experimental and
barely usable).

~~~
non-entity
I would gladly go back to using FreeBSD as a desktop OS if the software
support was better. I'm not particularly skilled with either FreeBSD or Linux,
but I never can seem to figure out what the hell is going on when Linux
breaks, whereas with FreeBSD and NetBSD I've been able to deduce and even drop
down and read the kernel source if I have to.

------
m0xte
Completely agree with this. I think the last 2 or 3 FreeBSD installs I did
didn't actually use any tools other than the base system.

Then again we're a couple of years off "step 1: install powershell on your
Ubuntu box" so the Linux guys don't get the last laugh.

Platform creep is nasty. Trying not to knacker my macOS desktop at the moment
by installing brew on it and doing the same.

~~~
qwerty456127
> Platform creep is nasty.

Why? Why not just consider the kernel, the rest of the OS core, the userland
and the GUI completely distinct products?

GNU seems the best userland to the date (because BSD is more antique and
Windows had rudimentary until recently). The new Windows userland (PowerShell
and .Net Core) are growing awesome. Both are OS-independent, as well as BSD.
Why even associate them with a particular OS? How choosing a userland differs
from choosing a programming language?

~~~
m0xte
Why? Because portability, standardisation, documentation and quality.

Something GNU manages to screw up pretty well.

~~~
qwerty456127
Why not standardize and document every layer of the system separately? E.g. I
prefer a userland as advanced as possible and a kernel to be lightweight and
stable so I can choose GNU userland on BSD and I'm even looking forward to
actually switch to PowerShell (on BSD or Linux). You favor long-term
standardization and stability so you might prefer BSD userland on a Linux o
whatever a kernel (which you can be forced to choose because of hardware or
some other requirements).

You probably are ok with competing vendors offering alternative apps solving
same tasks on the same OS. You hardly believe everybody should use the same
OS-specific programming language. Why should there be the same kernel+userland
combination for everyone?

------
open-source-ux
There are suprisingly few beginner tutorials for FreeBSD (or any BSD). Compare
that with the gazillion tutorials for Linux. The official FreeBSD Handbook is
rightly praised for it's thoroughness and its detail. But it is also a bit
intimidating and dense for beginners who may need a simpler guided tour of the
essentials.

Of course, there is a lot of cross-over knowledge between Linux and BSD.
Nevertheless, the difference between the number of Linux guides, books, and
courses and the number for BSD is striking.

There is just _one_ book on FreeBSD published in 2018 (Absolute FreeBSD). But
nothing else recently. What about BSD on Udemy, Pluralsight, LinkedIn Learning
(Lynda)? Nothing. Why is there so little for an OS that is well-regarded and
widely respected? (Not a criticism of the situation, merely an observation.)

~~~
lllr_finger
I've found the same. One of my favorite blog posts on getting FreeBSD working
well on laptop is: [https://www.c0ffee.net/blog/freebsd-on-a-
laptop/](https://www.c0ffee.net/blog/freebsd-on-a-laptop/)

------
Ericson2314
I really need to get back to
[https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/82131](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/82131)
so we can build on Linux or BSD, for Linux or BSD, in all 4 combinations.
Eventually I want equivalent, NixOS userland, choose kernel on boot.

Nevermind the merits of Linux vs BSD, what we really need is kernel diversity
to fight the stagnation of these multi-million-line tarpits of complexity.

~~~
jcahill
Worth noting here that WSL has some special cursed package installer problems
that can often be worked around with nix-based installs.

~~~
Ericson2314
Oh, nice!

------
peterwwillis
I really miss BSD (I'm a Slacker so at least I get to be _nostalgic_ about it,
even if Slack and Linux in general is annoyingly "modern").

I would like to use it again, but I'm a afraid I'd miss out on the latest
developments that happen only in Linux-land (I'm still pissed that containers
are such a Linux-centric piece of tech when they in no way need to be).

------
cesarb
> Invariably they advise updating the base system and pkgng, then immediately
> installing bash, nano, htop, lsof, coreutils, proc, and more.

Isn't this what was commonly done on proprietary Unix, even before Linux
existed? From what I have read about that era (I started with Linux so I
didn't live through these times), the GNU tools were better than what came
with these Unix systems. The authors of these guides probably have a similar
opinion about the BSD tools.

~~~
smabie
In my opinion, the BSD userland is much nicer than GNU: the documentation is
better, no long name arguments, and simpler. Browsing the source is also good
fun, the implementations are straightforward and look like how I imagine K&R
would write code. This is in contrast to the GNU userland, which is just so
crazy.

It's evident that the GNU people don't really like C and refuse to accept the
language's simplicity, instead struggling all the way.

Maybe I'm weird, but I like using systems in which I can feel good about the
code, even if I never contribute a patch. And though I use Arch Linux instead
of OpenBSD nowadays, I don't feel good about really anything to do with Linux.
The ecosystem is gross and has turned into Frankenstein's monster.

------
erk__
I recently began running it as the os on my laptop. Did not really follow any
tutorial other than the handbook. I did end up installing Bash, probably more
because that is what I am used to than anything else. I may go back and give
tcsh another try, but I just remember it as there was small things that
annoyed me.

------
patrec
> What also gets lost in the fray is FreeBSD, even with all those Linux-
> focused tools, is still a compelling and useful operating system

Is FreeBSD compelling and useful at this point beyond as an inferior but more
liberally licensed Linux substitute? This is basically what Sony (after their
PS2 woes), Nintendo and Netflix (as far as I'm aware; maybe there are
technical reasons too) have been using it for. The last clearly competent
company I can remember picking FreeBSD for some technical benefits was
WhatsApp many many years ago, and as far as I am aware that decision would not
make sense today anymore.

~~~
dijit
I used freebsd for my last project, I can’t deny that support for BSD is
spotty on cloud providers; but as far as performance and so forth it’s not far
behind if at all.

The compelling argument for FreeBSD has always been: zfs, pf and dtrace.

There’s also kqueues which are a much better interface to high throughput I/O
than epoll.

The problem is that every time this kind of question is asked the ecosystem in
Linux is different. Right now Linux has bpftrace, ZFS (kinda) and IO_Uring; so
the gap has closed considerably.

~~~
lllr_finger
It's historically been a very similar proposition to Solaris: zfs, dtrace,
containers, and higher performance.

For as much as I like both FreeBSD and Solaris, Brendan Gregg (mentioned
elsewhere in the comments) has a very convincing argument as to why the scales
have tipped in favor of Linux in the last few years:

[http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-09-05/solaris-to-
linux...](http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-09-05/solaris-to-
linux-2017.html)

~~~
jaekash
ZFS integration was worse in Solaris 10 than in FreeBSD. In Solaris the page
cache and ARC was not properly integrated and when using mmap data would be
cached twice in both page cache and arc cache and there was weird issues with
these contending with each other. I think this was still the case in Solaris
11 also but hard to say since it is closed source and their marketing material
was fraudulent. As for the higher performance, I would like to see evidence
that Solaris has better performance than Linux.

The one saving grace of Solaris was that it gave you amazing debugging
capabilities but the practical outcome of that was just giving you the ability
to gain deep insight to see see exactly how bad Solaris was as an operating
system. In all my years of using it (10+) I never experienced it as being more
performant than Linux and in most cases it was way slower if you did not tune
it significantly.

There were some very good ideas that went into Solaris but they were almost
invariably poorly implemented.

~~~
Annatar
Solaris regularly beats Linux in performance on the same hardware, and the
subsystems which are "slower" aren't really: they just don't lie and trade
safety for performance, like Linux does. Linux is fake performance at the cost
of correctness of operation.

~~~
jaekash
I would like to see some evidence to back this claim.

~~~
Annatar
The burden of proof is on you, since you're the one clearly advocating for
Linux here.

~~~
jaekash
> The burden of proof is on you, since you're the one clearly advocating for
> Linux here.

Ehh... if you want proof for a specific claim then ask for it. I am asking you
for proof of the specific positive claim you made, which is:

> Solaris regularly beats Linux in performance on the same hardware, and the
> subsystems which are "slower" aren't really: they just don't lie and trade
> safety for performance, like Linux does. Linux is fake performance at the
> cost of correctness of operation.

The claims I did make is that in my experience Solaris had to be tuned to be
reasonably performant. One example where tuning was needed by default was
malloc. The default malloc from Solaris had horrible multi threaded
performance . IIRC ZFS also had quite horrible performance by default if not
tuned and I recall there were multiple tuning we had to do on new
installations specifically relating to mmap to somewhat mitigate the poor
integration of ZFS ARC cache and page cache which are documented here:
[https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/225](https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/225)
and [https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
hackers/2016-Jul...](https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
hackers/2016-July/049665.html) there was also a whole wiki on ZFS tuning for
various applications including MySQL.

~~~
Annatar
The Github issue is for (then) ZFS on Linux, not ZFS on Solaris: _whoever can
read is at a distinct advantage_.

The second link is an opinion from some researcher at Pasteur institute in
France.

Both are bogus, but thank you for playing.

------
jcahill
Most computer users of the first world are barely even peripherally aware of
the existence of linux. Within FOSS, BSD holds more weight as a software
license than as an OS family at this point. Try searching BSD just about
anywhere, including here[1]. And the most significant BSD-as-in-OS features
are, invariably, whichever ones apple ends up sniping for macOS.

So: hardly anyone knows what BSD is, and nearly all of those who have used a
BSD-like have done so in the form of macOS. It takes a certain kind of
preening arrogance, mixed with total detachment from reality, to stamp and
shout over distro confusion between linux and FreeBSD. It should go without
saying that proponents of the latter have good reason to be grateful for any
reason that new outsiders might even remember it exists.

I mean, the biggest in-joke the BSDs have is a ritual negging of bad news
about BSD market share ("Is *BSD dying?"[2]). This is in line with a general
level of sneery, navelgazing nonsense pervading much of the BSDverse that
makes it altogether unpleasant to engage.

It's an OS, not Hilbert's Program. I'll use it if it fits my use case. I won't
if it doesn't. I don't have the spare lifespan necessary to listen to BSD
people whine about linux. Whatever gatekeeping needs to happen to make that
stop, have at it.

[1]:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=bsd&sort=byPopularity&type=story)

[2]:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=bsd+dying](https://www.google.com/search?q=bsd+dying)

~~~
linksnapzz
_So: hardly anyone knows what BSD is, and nearly all of those who have used a
BSD-like have done so in the form of macOS._

A giant saltation from most first world computer users being aware of Linux,
to hardly anyone knowing what BSD is.

I recall the original netcraft survey being posted on Slashdot aeons ago; the
joke to me always seemed to be a good-hearted chuckle at their own obscurity,
much like the late Abe Vigoda spent the last 30 years of his life and career
reminding people that he was still alive, even working!

Schade's few paragraphs here come across as equally gentle and humorous-he's
not really aggrieved that FreeBSD is treated like a Linux distro; he would
like avoid the confusion that might cause to users who end up liking it.

What, exactly, BSD users ever did to you remains a mystery; alas, I haven't
the spare lifespan to want to figure that out.

~~~
jcahill
> A giant saltation from most first world computer users being aware of Linux,
> to hardly anyone knowing what BSD is.

You seem to have misread my first sentence.

> Schade's few paragraphs here come across as equally gentle and humorous-he's
> not really aggrieved that FreeBSD is treated like a Linux distro; he would
> like avoid the confusion that might cause to users who end up liking it.

My commentary was in agreement with the blogpost.

Me:

>> It should go without saying that proponents of the latter have good reason
to be grateful for any reason that new outsiders might even remember it
exists.

But it doesn't go without saying, thus the need for Schade's blogpost. The
elitism and intra nix resentment of BSD culture give rise to this problem. My
comment aimed to address that.

> What, exactly, BSD users ever did to you remains a mystery;

They did nothing in particular to me. It's just a descriptive consensus that
BSD culture has outsized hostility toward all things linux and toward being
mistaken for linux. It's narcissism of small differences[1] and nerd blindness
in action.

> alas, I haven't the spare lifespan to want to figure that out.

My comment contained a stringent critique of a community's corrosive norms,
emphasizing how counterproductive those norms are for getting on with building
useful things.

Your comment just aims to repackage the phrasing as a personal attack.

If you have time to work 'saltation' into a sentence, you have time to reply
in good faith on HN. Flubbing a quip by trying to spit your interlocutor's
words back at them in a sideswipe is not the way to go about that, especially
when you've misunderstood the upthrust of the comment to which you're
replying.

I'm perfectly willing to explain my position, so you achieve nothing by this
odd posturing. [I even made a point to get around to it when I realized I was
near the reply expiration time.]

I'll explain my position now:

    
    
        1. BSD community hostility toward linux: unreasonable
        2. BSD community hostility toward being mistaken for linux: unreasonable
        3. BSD community illusion of transparency: also unreasonable!
    

Some basic reasoning about the distribution of computer skills and world
knowledge shows that two hostilities I mentioned above, especially the latter
— hostility toward being mistaken for linux — are empirically unreasonable.

90% of computer users couldn't find text in a document as of 2011. There
haven't been precipitous shifts in digital skills research results since then.
Linux dominates server market share, but is only a blip in desktop market
share. BSD doesn't even register.

It follows from any realistic assessment of computer users as a demographic
that expecting a nontrivial proportion of people to know what the hell BSD is,
let alone understand how it differs from linux in anything beyond branding, is
indefensible.

 _Getting huffy about the matter_ on top of that, rather than
opportunistically using that distinction-without-a-difference perception among
novices as the submission suggests, requires a reality distortion field of
monumental proportions.

Even within *nix, there's this intermittent HN/forum nonsense time and again
that always goes the same way:

    
    
        [BSD DISCOURSE ENTERS THE AETHER SOMEHOW]
        
        Alice, linux user: What's BSD about? What does it do?
        Bob, BSD user:     It's like linux, but better ;)
        Alice:             Oh? What makes it better?
        Bob:               <list of things that linux does too>
        Alice:             But linux has <equivalents of the BSD things>
        Bob:               Better license?
        Alice:             I don't really care about that
        Bob:               No bloat! Also, it's an OS, not just a kernel.
        Alice:             what
        Bob:               No breaking changes! Your old scripts will still work.
        Alice:             I've never really noticed problems with that.
        Bob:               Look, ever heard of macOS?
        Alice:             yup, can't stand it
        Bob:               ...
    

In other words, even most linux people don't really know what BSD is in exact
terms, and BSD proponents typically either can't or won't convincingly state
the case for BSD among people more familiar with linux. In some ways, this is
natural for a few obvious reasons:

1\. Few people have strong working knowledge of BSD and linux kernel
development. Kernel and distro development circles are fairly distinct, so
even fewer will be able to speak to holistic comparisons from top-down and
bottom-up views.

2\. BSD development is regimented and conservative, resulting in relative
predictability and lack of change over time. These things are commonly cited
motivations for BSD adoption. We can assume people who desire this in their OS
aren't doing a ton of gratuitous exploration on the side. So lack of knowledge
about the state of the art in linux world on the part of BSD fans is probably
to be expected.

3\. Long-satisfied BSD users have exited the conversation. There are no grand,
holy war-level stakes for BSD vs. other OSes anymore, so there's not a lot to
stick around for.

4\. BSD proponents tacitly reject worse-is-better in their arguments, but fail
to explicate this or present compelling counter-narratives. This might seem
like a small point, but it's tantamount to something like "I reject the tech
equivalent of Whig history of the past 20+ years. Anyway, here's why you
should switch to a new system. It actively works against advantages gained by
your system under the assumptions of that historiographic model I've
rejected."

5\. BSD proponents spend countless hours overdeveloping criticisms of the
most-disliked aspects of linux, like systemd. This is useless in any
conversation with most prospective linux-to-bsd converts — preaching to the
choir.

Example of 2 in action: "Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over
GNU/Linux"[2] is currently the best single-page case for FreeBSD easily found
from obvious search queries. If you didn't know much about the last decade or
so of linux development, it would be far more convincing. But as it stands,
it's just met with a lot of confusion[3] on HN.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences)

[2]: [https://unixsheikh.com/articles/technical-reasons-to-
choose-...](https://unixsheikh.com/articles/technical-reasons-to-choose-
freebsd-over-linux.html)

[3]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22852316](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22852316)

