
FreeBSD is an amazing operating system - hggh
https://www.unixsheikh.com/articles/freebsd-is-an-amazing-operating-system.html
======
atomize
Nice to see some love for FreeBSD. My intro to +nix in the mid 90s started
with FreeBSD as well. Back then, I used to tag along with my dad in the summer
to work occasionally (two working parents, and dad ran/runs a small telecom
business). In the supply closet I saw a shelf with boxes lined up that all had
a cool-ass little devil on them. Being interested in computers from my fathers
influence, I asked him what the 'Devil Software' was in the storage closet,
and he explained that it was an operating system like Windows sort-of (which
at the time I was already well in to understanding how to re-install =), but
that it ran on Voicemail Servers - stuff with specific needs - because it was
very 'flexible in configuration', as he put it. He then gave me a voicemail
box and the manual, and said he would give me $20 if I could get the 'Devil
Software' installed on the machine from a blank HDD. This. was. huge. $20 to a
13 yr old was serious dough. Eventually I was successful (to his surprise? or
dismay? haha since he was out 20 bucks). He was proud, and that made me proud,
and that started the journey that is still ongoing to this day. Will note,
father exploited me for cheap labor throughout my teens as my
interest/experience with BSD, and eventually GNU/Linux increased =). Although
I am a GNU person these days, FreeBSD is always close to my heart, and helped
me understand the +nix ecosystem from an early age.

~~~
ChuckNorris89
Just out of curiosity, how did your dad exploit you for cheap labor with BSD?

I mean I also did a lot of chores around the house and was the responsible IT
repair guy of the house but I thought that's a pretty good deal for being
housed, fed and clothed for 20 years.

~~~
montenegrohugo
I think it was meant more in a tongue in cheek manner. Obviously his dad gave
him IT related tasks over the years, but I think both enjoyed it and I imagine
it oftentimes was a learning experience for both of them.

I think generally kids can benefit and grow a lot from being treated and
talked to like responsible adults sometimes, and not as if they were useless
small people that have to be constantly supervised.

------
iagovar
I always struggled with linux, because there's so many of everything. It's too
much choice. I don't really have many sysadmin skills and discovering FreeBSD
has been a blessing for me. When I have a problem the documentation is... IDK,
consistent? It's like I can follow it, and it's useful, same with forums and
the helpful community.

I'm so thankful, honestly. I finally can have my VPSs without feeling like I'm
dumb or I need to devote so much time and effort to sysadmin skills that I
don't have nor I enjoy.

I still use Xubuntu in my laptop and Windows in my desktop, because of the
lack of drivers and because they work out of the box (well, almost with
Xubuntu), but still, for some reason I really feel confortable with FreeBSD,
and this is coming from someone who just wants to spin DBs, sites, and cron
scripts, and I don't have enough knowledge to appreciate jails and so many
other things that other people likes about FreeBSD.

So guys, thank you.

~~~
stiray
I so much agree. I am using FreeBSD on home server (and few others) trying to
push it to the limits. I just love it. It seems like order in all the chaos of
operating systems (from windows kernel32 getting com objects to all the chaos
in linux, from systemd to docker,...).

Please if you are trying to use freebsd TRY jails (to shorten tldr, use
iocage). They are just great :)

And dont go desktop. Just isnt worth it. Not enough people troubling with gfx
support. Keep it as it is. Server.

~~~
inopinatus
There is a variant of FreeBSD with terrific graphics support, and although
limited to just one hardware vendor, there’s no doubting its popularity: it’s
in every PlayStation 4.

There’s FreeBSD in almost every data centre. But it’s at a level most
application developers just never see. Many infrastructure elements - from
storage heads, to core routers, to enterprise application and security
appliances - have chosen FreeBSD as the high quality, reliable, consistent,
and liberally licensed base for their control plane software.

The point being, this is where FreeBSD has the greatest influence and
adoption: as a platform, not the product, and not at all obvious even to those
that thereby rely upon it.

That being said, yes it works great as the instance OS in EC2 and as a die-
hard acolyte since 2.1-RELEASE you’ll pry my production application jails from
my cold dead hands

~~~
musicale
What about the Nintendo Switch?

~~~
thejsa
The Switch doesn't run on FreeBSD but rather a custom microkernel operating
system called Horizon, which is an evolution of the OS on the Nintendo 3DS.

Nintendo do use some code from the FreeBSD kernel in the network / sockets
stack though -
[https://switchbrew.org/wiki/Sockets_services](https://switchbrew.org/wiki/Sockets_services)

------
insulanian
Honestly I don't think FreeBSD should focus on desktop story at all.
Resources, as limited as they are, should be spent on making FreeBSD an
obvious and compelling choice for the servers.

Although FreeBSD looks cleaner and more consistent than Linux, it's not really
clear why should one use it over Linux.

I hope the team will define strategic goals and try to develop some
competitive advantage, even if it means focusing only on certain niches in the
beginning. E.g. encouraging development of the OS modules in a safe language
like Rust would probably lead to more stable system less vulnerable to
exploits, and make it a more attractive choice for mission-critical
deployments.

~~~
whalesalad
> Honestly I don't think FreeBSD should focus on desktop story at all.

I wish they didn't have to. I wish the open source community would rethink the
desktop experience from the ground up so that we can have truly portable
desktop environments that speak a common API. Everything is so tightly coupled
to the platform and a spaghetti mess of packages and tools that I don't think
it can be achieved any way else.

Apple has vertical integration of their OS, so they don't have to worry about
supporting the world. But the state of things in open source land right now is
a complete disaster. X vs Wayland, compositors? desktop environments? window
managers?

For instance, check out the Manjaro doc on switching desktop environments:
[https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Install_Desktop_Environme...](https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Install_Desktop_Environments)

Why is this such a nightmare? There is an entire section called "The Risks of
Using Multiple DEs".

There are 'two steps' for switching to XFCE:

1\. Install a basic XFCE environment,

    
    
        sudo pacman -S xfce4-gtk3 xfce4-goodies xfce4-terminal network-manager-applet xfce4-notifyd-gtk3 xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin-gtk3 tumbler engrampa
    

2\. Optional: Install and use LightDM, the recommended display manager for
XFCE (record comes screeching to a halt -- what is a display manager and why
is LightDM recommended?)

    
    
        sudo pacman -S lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings && sudo systemctl enable lightdm.service --force
    

This is relatively simple when you look at it here, but seeing this x 10 on
the linked page where every single experience has a vastly different install
and configuration process does not give me warm and fuzzy feelings.

Anyway I got no suggestions on how to improve this -- rant over. I just wish
that we'd settle on a really rock solid abstraction and then get back to work
rethinking and rebuilding UIs in Linux/BSD. Without vertical integration
and/or monetary incentives I do not see this ever happening.

~~~
heavyset_go
You're inflicting this upon yourself by using Manjaro. Installing a different
DE on Ubuntu is either a _Xubuntu-desktop_ metapackage, or a _tasksel_ menu-
item, away.

> _X vs Wayland, compositors? desktop environments? window managers?_

Nothing on this list, besides desktop environments, are things the user ever
has to think about, unless they go out of their way to.

~~~
acqq
> Nothing on this list, besides desktop environments, are things the user ever
> has to think about, unless they go out of their way to.

It seems you haven’t tried to use Ubuntu as a desktop, especially not outside
of command line. I didn’t care about anything on the list but had to make
decisions often because, from my point of view, the GUI applications providing
basic functionality just didn’t work. The answer was many times “it’s because
it’s Wayland” or compositor or whatever. Horrible experience, when I've used
(just an example) gpart for years, it worked, then install a new version of
Ubuntu and it doesn't. Then I investigate why, because Wayland. And I really
never wanted to care about Wayland and compositor. Then I want to record a
screen interaction. Should be easy. Again... doesn't work, investigate...
"it's because it doesn't on the new compositor whatever"... Etc.

I suspect that those who develop GUI on Linux don't use themselves what they
produce, as a lot of GUI is often unusable, or, even worse, was usable once
and then completely degrades, even with newer... compositors, or even some
other kind of "improvement."

~~~
vetinari
1) There's no Ubuntu LTS release with Wayland as default display server.

2) Gparted doesn't work, because it wants to run as root. You should use an
application, that runs only minimal, necessary parts as root, and the UI runs
with your user's capabilities.

3) Wayland compositors do not provide unrestricted access to to composed
display for very good reasons. They do provide an access through controlled
API. That controlled API didn't stabilize into unified one among different
compositors yet, so for screen recording you have to use compositor-specific
utility for now. In Gnome-Wayland/Ubuntu, you have one available by default.

So yes, when you clean up the capabilities over time, the old stuff will
break. But without breaking it, you cannot develop your system. Apple also
breaks compatibility will old apps, even more than most Linux distros.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
And yet I can still often run GUI programs written in 1995 on Windows 10
without recompilation. Hell, I can usually run GUI programs written for
Windows in 1995 _on Linux_ without recompilation. Don't pretend that
compatibility is some kind of impossible dream.

~~~
vetinari
> And yet I can still often run GUI programs written in 1995 on Windows 10
> without recompilation.

Did you try it? Often, you cannot run even programs built in 2009 on Windows
10.

> Well, I can usually run GUI programs written for Windows in 1995 on Linux
> without recompilation.

You can run 1995 Linux binaries in Linux, provided a) you have the libraries
they were linked against, b) they don't use direct hardware access ala svgalib
c) they are not in a.out format, which was recently removed, due to nobody
using it anymore.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> Did you try it? Often, you cannot run even programs built in 2009 on Windows
> 10.

Yeah, I actually do it all the time. There are some programs that don't work,
particularly games, but for the most part it works fine.

> You can run 1995 Linux binaries in Linux, provided a) you have the libraries
> they were linked against

Including glibc, and take care to jump through the appropriate hoops to ensure
the linker can find them because chances are they aren't in your repo.

------
loeg
This article makes several misstatements or factual errors, unfortunately.

> What I failed to realize back then was that FreeBSD was (and it still is)
> designed as a complete multi-purpose operating system meant to be setup and
> tuned according to specific use cases.

IMO, if it needs to be manually tuned, that's a bug, not a feature. (And I'm
speaking as a FreeBSD developer on that.)

> FreeBSD sets the kernel and the base system apart from third party packages.
> This is unique to FreeBSD and none of the other BSDs do that.

Um, nope, this is how all of the BSDs do it.

> FreeBSD is installed only with the features you enable and nothing is
> running that you don't know about.

sendmail, cron, and ntpd run out of the box, to name a few.

> The FreeBSD code is meticulously maintained and very well documented.

Not really (especially in random drivers) and usually not (in the code,
anyway). We have pretty decent manual pages.

> The FreeBSD rc system that reads this file understands dependencies between
> services and it can automatically launch them in parallel, or wait until one
> is finished before starting the things that it needs.

The parallelism part is not true.

> I believe it is important to understand that FreeBSD is not like a GNU/Linux
> distribution.

Not really true? In a lot of ways FreeBSD _is_ like a GNU/Linux distribution;
it just happens to bundle the equivalent of coreutils, binutils, gcc, etc with
the kernel.

> FreeBSD is an operating system made by developers who are also system
> administrators.

Definitely not true (or at least, in no respect different than the developers
of the broader Linux ecosystem).

> A Linux distribution is a collection of tools written by different groups of
> people, often with conflicting interests and priorities.

This is true! Especially for core bits of the system, like glibc and the
kernel.

> A Linux distribution needs ..., additional third party software, the X
> Window System, a window manager, and a desktop environment, and it then
> needs to combine these different components into the resulting distribution.

This is of course no different than FreeBSD's ports system; we face the same
integration challenges as Linux distributions.

> there are no conflicting interests in the [FreeBSD] project

Ha. ha. ha.

~~~
jpeeler
As a FreeBSD developer, perhaps you know what tunables are being talked about
for specific use cases?

Unrelated, I find it surprising that any major operating system these days
need rebooting because "every third day or so otherwise the performance
degraded a lot". Or maybe they just didn't increase the sysctl var
kern.full_performance_days high enough ;)

~~~
alacombe
I've been running Fedora for ~10 years (switching _away_ from {Net,Free}BSD, I
was fed-up to re-invent the wheel and the general poor design of the OS / high
inertia of the community), and never rebooted once for "performance reason".
My average uptime is in the couple of month, always for hardware / maintenance
reason. Even my Windows 10 machines is never rebooted because of performance
issue.

I don't think I've had much system failure / panics either.

------
jedberg
FreeBSD was the first Unix I ever worked on professionally.

I agree, it's amazing, and I love admining it.

The only reason reddit wasn't on BSD was because of lack of package support
and then when we moved to AWS, lack of BSD support in AWS. Although that's
since been fixed, thanks in large part to CPercival, creator of TarSnap, yay!

The way it is set up just makes so much more sense to me, and tweaking the
kernel is just so much easier.

Also the focus on stability over supporting the latest technologies is a big
plus for business servers.

------
naikrovek
One of the neat things about working at Yahoo! when I did (which was when it
still had the "!" as part of the branding) was knowing that we had a small
number of FreeBSD core maintainers on the payroll, and that those folks could
get hardware if they needed it for the FreeBSD project. Not to provide
infrastructure to the project, but to give those core maintainers hardware to
use and to add support for. We just provided them with the things they needed,
_almost_ no questions asked.

Those people didn't answer to anyone, they were just paid to work on the OS.
Yahoo! made heavy use of FreeBSD at the time (almost 20 years ago, now) so it
was decided that since we were using this free software so extensively that it
would be good to give back to that community.

I wish this notion that giving a small amount of resources to open source
projects that have saved your company millions of dollars per year was more
common than it is. I don't know of any large company that does what Yahoo! did
back then.

I work for a large company now, and as far as anyone I've asked can tell, we
give exactly nothing to any of the hundreds or possibly thousands of open
source projects we use daily, and it does not put a good feeling in my
stomach.

~~~
drewg123
At Netflix, in my larger work group, we have at least 7 FreeBSD committers,
and one core team member (and I'm sure I'm forgetting some folks and I'm
sorry!). We have employed (on specific contracts) many other committers and
core team members.

Unlike Yahoo, we are accountable to Netflix's business goals of increasing our
streaming customer's Quality of Experience while still maintaining or reducing
the cost to deliver content. Frequently those goals align nicely with
FreeBSD's goals, and we have contributed a great deal (async sendfile, kTLS,
unmapped mbufs, epoch stabilization, NUMA work, RACK TCP, BBR TCP, TCP pacing,
and tons of stuff I'm forgetting).

~~~
porker
> At Netflix, in my larger work group, we have at least 7 FreeBSD committers

Oh that's good to hear. Reading Brendan Gregg's blog [1] I got the impression
that Netflix had switched to Linux.

1\. [http://www.brendangregg.com/](http://www.brendangregg.com/)

~~~
emaste
Netflix has used Linux in EC2 for their C&C infrastructure and FreeBSD on
their OCA content serving appliances since the beginning.

------
deepspace
My experience with FreeBSD started more than 20 years ago when I built my
first home file server, managing a whopping 200G of storage (huge for the
time).

Since then I built several more generations of file server, all running
FreeBSD and all absolutely rock solid. They all typically had a 3-5 year
service life, with uptimes of 1-2 years at a time. Each of them were only
replaced for capacity reasons, with the previous generation server typically
serving as a backup target for the next one.

Around 2002, broadcast and cable TV was still a thing, and rudimentary PVRs
were becoming available but were pricey with few features. So I decided to
build my own.

I started with Linux, thinking that it would provide better hardware
compatibility, but stability issues soon drove me back to FreeBSD, and I
managed to create a very complete FreeBSD based PVR solution, complete with
remote control, automatic program scheduling, multiple simultaneous recording
and viewing streams, auto DVD ripping and very intuitive remote (web) and
onscreen user interfaces. That thing ran rock solid for 10 years, until
replaced by Netflix.

I guess the point I am trying to make is that I fully agree with the author.
FreeBSD is in a different league than many other operating systems in terms of
capability and stability, while being surprisingly compatible with a lot of
hardware.

~~~
boznz
Me too, built BSD/MySQL server from scratch following the on-line
documentation and everything just worked. Server is still running after 5
years with two outages for power problems. I think I chose FreeBSD at the time
for the ZFS file system which was its big selling point over linux.

------
whalesalad
I would probably daily drive FreeBSD or OpenBSD if the desktop situation was
better. I don't know how people survive open-source desktop environments.

I've spent the last couple of weeks trying to build a reasonable HiDPI desktop
environment on a variety of open source platforms and nothing has the level of
fit and finish I am looking for. So far I have been happiest with Elementary
OS and their treatments to Gnome... but it preturbs me that getting a new rig
setup is so fickle and unrepeatable. You can spend hours tweaking shit and
experimenting with no reasonable way to save your changes to be applied later
to a clean install or even a different platform. I wish I could check my
entire configuration into git.

Would love if the hackers here would share their FreeBSD (or any Nix) desktop
environment configuration (including window manager etc...)

~~~
platform
I use FreeBSD when developing non-mobile work (which is mostly java backends +
JavaScript react).

My environment is

\- Hyper-V on windows laptop

\- FreeBSD 12.1 as guest (zfs)

\- FreeBSD packages I use for devel (installed simply with its standard 'pkg
add') are: InteliJC, vscode, openjdk11, postgres12-server, node12, tmux

\- Desktop env is: xrdp (to allow remote desktop into the VM), wmaker (window
manager and wmakerconf to config it), qterminal or lilyterm

So I just use Remote Desktop from windows host, into FreeBSD VM using XRDP and
just run like that.

I connect using 24 or 32 bit depth (via RDP protocol) and tend to run
Darkish/pastel colors themes in Visual Code and IntelliJ.

\---

I know this is not an ideal setup, but lack of support for mobile dev (android
at least) prevents me from using FreeBSD directly on hardware...

When Running on native hardware, without VM, I tend to use Pop! Linux because
of how beautiful it looks, on HiDPI or regular screens, and it is relatively
easy for me to use, as somehow that window manager setup does not get in my
way

I also usually install emacs 27 or 28, but those require a binary package
download from

[https://freebsd.pkgs.org/12/freebsd-ports-
latest-i386/ghub-e...](https://freebsd.pkgs.org/12/freebsd-ports-
latest-i386/ghub-emacs28-3.2.0_3.txz.html)

Use Emacs rarely these days, because of its lackluster support for
JavaScript+Flow tooling.

I would much rather use Emacs for everything.. but right now I just use it to
write status reports (org mode)…

~~~
platform
Sorry, forgot to add the ever useful vermaden FreeBSD Desktop Series blog, to
answer the previous question

[https://vermaden.wordpress.com/freebsd-
desktop/](https://vermaden.wordpress.com/freebsd-desktop/)

------
gautamcgoel
I installed FreeBSD on my machine about a year ago, and went so far as to buy
a copy of Absolute FreeBSD (3rd ed) by Michael Lucas. Much as I admire the
FreeBSD ethos, I always end up coming back to Fedora for a very simple reason:
the desktop experience on the BSD's has always been painful for me. First,
FreeBSD didn't have the driver for my iGPU (Coffeelake), though Linux had
support at least six months prior. FreeBSD devs to their credit were very
helpful and welcoming when I tried troubleshooting my graphics situation, even
writing a small patch for me. Then, when I installed the patched version of
the driver and got video output, I had to be careful to maintain the patch.
One time I accidentally upgraded all packages, overwriting the patched file
and undoing the video support. Eventually I got fed up and just installed
Fedora, which always works perfectly, runs like butter, and looks great. I get
that the FreeBSD project is much smaller than GNU/Linux, and hardware vendors
like Intel and Nvidia are not nearly as supportive in terms of contributing
code/checking compatibility. I want to run FreeBSD, I really do. But at the
end of the day I just don't have enough hours in the week to be
troubleshooting my desktop, I'd rather spend those hours being productive (or
being unproductive in a manner of my choosing). It's a great project - with a
bit more love for newbies and the desktop experience I think FreeBSD could
really shine. One option I think FreeBSD should consider is to offer separate
server and workstation editions of each release, like Fedora does. This would
help bring resources/attention to the desktop situation and provide an on-ramp
for new users who want to try out FreeBSD without diving headfirst into config
files and device drivers.

~~~
Koshkin
I wonder if it would make sense for FreeBSD to switch to Linux as the kernel.

~~~
toast0
A large part of FreeBSD is the kernel, and another large part is userland
tools that support the kernel.

FreeBSD on the Linux kernel would be a lot of work and at the end of the day,
I'm not quite sure Linux needs a BSD licensed ifconfig, etc?

If FreeBSD wanted to use Linux video drivers, that _could_ be useful, but
there would need to be a stable interface between the kernel and the driver,
and that interface would need to make sense for FreeBSD. Stable kernel apis is
an anti-goal for Linux, so that's a non-starter; I wonder if Windows drivers
could be more amenable, ala NDISWrapper; but that would also be a lot of
effort, and if there were effort for FreeBSD video work, I'd imagine the intel
drivers would get ported faster.

~~~
JdeBP
Linux needs an ifconfig with the BSD command-line syntax and output style,
that can handle IPv6 stuff, but that already exists now.

* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/504084/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/504084/5132)

------
JeremyMorgan
My experience with FreeBSD mirrors the author's quite a bit.

I bought that same book, installed it on a system, struggled like hell and
went through it cover to cover. It was my "daily driver" for probably 5-6
years after that. The experience got me a job at an ISP running FreeBSD and
later I started a web hosting business with FreeBSD backing.

I love it and love how easy and simple it is, but I too had to stray into
Linux because that's where the crowd went. Hardware and software availability
are key factors. I also think they should drop the focus on Desktop and go
towards servers.

I've never administered servers that were as painless as those old BSD boxes.
There is so much value in things that "just work" and documentation that's
accurate. Yes there's a learning curve but it pays off exponentially.

Linux is being plagued by too many choices and too much change. RTFM doesn't
do you a lot of good when it's out of date. It's only my decades of experience
that help me figure things out when problems arise, I'd hate to be a beginner
with Linux now. While Linux on the server is pretty tame the desktop world is
out of control. I would like to see the FreeBSD folks just focus on making it
the server/container host of choice.

------
gregf
I been daily driving FreeBSD for the last 3 or 4 years. I was frustrated by a
lot of things in Linux at the time, no this wasn't just because of systemd. I
don't actually mind systemd on my desktop.

Everything was very easy much like Debian maybe to get going. There's over
10,000 ports most are in package form at any time. Sometimes the build process
fails and a package goes away for a short time, but you can always install it
via ports.

My biggest gripe is and always will be the fact I can't use my spotify account
on my FreeBSD desktop. I don't see this ever changing though. What I have done
is gone back to relying on my local music collection a bit more again. I also
bluetooth stream spotify from my phone to my receiver, but I'm lazy, hate
phones, and don't generally like to do this.

It also has easiest operating system upgrade path out there that I have
experienced. Just freebsd-update, reboot, done.

Jails are great, but they need work to be a bit more modern at this point.
Docker has kinda showed some type of image repository is a nice feature. I'm
not sure we'll see this right away, but BastilleBSD is working on some nice
jails based solutions. Based off of FreeBSD, i'm pretty excited to possibly
use this in the future.

~~~
throw0101a
> _There 's over 10,000 ports_ ...

For the record it is currently over 38,000:

* [https://www.freshports.org](https://www.freshports.org)

------
newnewpdro
I've been using Linux since the days of hand crafting Modeline entries for an
unstable XFree86 running as root, and installed FreeBSD a number of times over
the years but never really enjoyed the userspace as much as GNU. I simply
preferred the ergonomics of GNU, it's what was more familiar since I was
introduced to UNIX via GNU/Linux in my teens.

Having said that however, I absolutely _loved_ the FreeBSD books by Marshall
Kirk McKusick. The red hardcover Design and Implementation of FreeBSD book was
my go-to bathroom reading for well over a year. I also was lucky enough to
attend viewings of VHS recordings from his operating systems class featuring
FreeBSD. Those tapes were something like $1k/tape if memory serves, a friend's
employer bought the entire set and would host group viewings on weekends. Such
great memories from those times, McKusick was humorous and never missed an
opportunity to take jabs at emacs while explaining how paging and swap worked,
poor little vi being paged out because someone started emacs, etc.

There's a lot to love about FreeBSD, I hope it continues to exist and can
attract enough new talent to thrive in the future.

------
AndrewUnmuted
To me, FreeBSD represents the OS that gave me a realistic path I could travel
to achieve my computing dreams.

I knew that to really achieve my ambitions, I'd need a way to store 50-100TB
of data with high resilience and well-managed replication. Until I discovered
FreeBSD and ZFS, I simply considered that kind of thing outside the realm of
affordability and practicality.

But please know, fellow readers - it is affordable and it is practical.
FreeBSD makes it so.

~~~
dkarras
What were your ambitions that required such resilient storage if I may ask?
Not being snarky or anything, genuinely curious.

------
cinnamonheart
As a long time fan of Gentoo, I felt very at home on FreeBSD, and quite liked
how everything in it worked. I remember my frustration was more around
software and hardware issues. In the end, it wasn't Linux; I felt left in the
cold if I ever wanted to use something that wasn't made for FreeBSD.

FreeBSD itself was a pleasure and I wish I could use it more. I've not found a
linux distribution I've found quite as nice.

------
linguae
I've been using FreeBSD as my Unix of choice for desktop PCs, Unix development
inside VMs, and for servers since 2004 when a community college CS instructor
told me about it and gave me an install disc. I love the documentation that
ships with FreeBSD, including the high-quality man pages, the excellent
handbook that explains how to perform many administrative tasks, and the
collection of historical Unix documents that come from Bell Labs. I am also a
fan of the book "The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating
System." I have the second edition of this book and it's one of the most well-
written operating systems textbooks available. I also like the quality of the
source code.

With that being said, on laptops Linux and macOS are my Unix-based operating
systems of choice because of increased hardware support, although on older
laptops I do have success with FreeBSD. But if I need a Unix-based operating
system for a desktop, a server, or a VM, my first choice is FreeBSD unless the
software I need specifically requires Linux.

------
3xblah
I have been trying Ubuntu for about a year now, taking a break from BSD. This
is the longest I have ever used Linux continuously for personal use.

I always work entirely in RAM. Everything is mounted tmpfs. Occasionally I
accidentally exceed the amount of RAM I have available. Some file grows too
large.

One of the things I always liked about BSD was how well it handled this
situation.^1 It had no lasting effect on the operation of the OS. The only
things affected were running applications that needed write space. Thus all I
had to worry about were the running daemons I use that are continuously
writing to logs. The OS would otherwise continue to function.

Whereas when I run out of space in a tmpfs-mounted directory in Ubuntu, I get
filesystem errors. I cannot simply remove the excessively large file, and
expect to continue to work indefinitely. I get I/O errors. I am eventually
forced to reboot. Obviously I am not well-versed on Linux but as far as I can
tell so far, this is a known problem.

1\. This was NetBSD but I assume that FreeBSD and OpenBSD would be no
different.

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
Hm yeah, i recall NetBSD to be 'unbreakable' in that, and some other ways from
personal experiences in the past. __*

Anyways, there _are_ Linux distros who specialize in this use case, and have
sane and proven defaults tuned for that. Sometimes they seem a little bit
'ghettoish', but one can remove anything which is unnecessary, add needed
stuff, even remaster in RAM and then rewrite that to another boot media. Or
being lazy and just using an overlay to the stock image.

[1] [https://antixlinux.com/](https://antixlinux.com/) for instance works very
well.

[2] [http://grml.org/](http://grml.org/) is another Debian based one, altough
a little bit lagging behind nowadays.

But many others also. [3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions_that_run_from_RAM)

Ubuntu is not a good starting point for that use case.

* Like carefully unplugging the SCSI controller from the running system, while it had no other available mass storage, watching the console being flooded with messages akin to 'Arrgh! I'm dying! Where is my...?', carefully reinserting the controller into the PCI-slot without causing shorts, console turning back to normal. And switching back to the running X as if nothing had happened. (And no file system damage in spite of having soft updates on UFS active, and running tasks with many open files)

Amazing.

------
_sbrk
One "make world" and your world is changed.

Not to mention the absence of systemd and its overly-complex solution to non-
problems.

FBSD-er since '98.

------
city41
Anyone here using FreeBSD for JavaScript/Node/PHP dev? Curious if there are
any common tools that don't work or any unexpected gotchas. I currently am
using Ubuntu, but would be curious to give FreeBSD a try. I used to run it
about a decade ago and always liked it.

~~~
nuccy
VS Code can be installed via ports
[https://www.freshports.org/editors/vscode/](https://www.freshports.org/editors/vscode/)

------
jbverschoor
I hope FreeBSD we’ll get more love in the future. Just like Postgres vs MySQL.

------
myrandomcomment
NetFlix CDN HW that they drop at the local ISP level is a FreeBSD box that
they have tuned to be able to fill 100G NICs no issue. There you go.

------
giancarlostoro
How well is it on a Macbook Pro? I just cant run FreeBSD for the same reason I
cant be bothered to use Slackware Linux anymore. I love Slackware but too much
manual labor when there are plenty of useful UI utilities to achieve more with
less. I prefer user oriented KISS not just developer oriented KISS.

~~~
huh_lost_email
Isn't Mac based upon freebsd? I've never used freebsd itself, so I'm not sure
what the actual difference is besides ux.

~~~
otterley
Not really. The roots of OS X/MacOS are in NeXTSTEP. It uses a Mach
microkernel that originated at CMU, as opposed to the FreeBSD kernel (or
anything like it, really).

That said, a bunch of FreeBSD userland code and utilities were ported over to
make the OS POSIX-ish.

It's probably easiest to think of a Mac as an amalgam of many different
influences and operating behaviors, as opposed to a direct descendant of any
one particular lineage.

~~~
sardon
The Darwin kernel in OSX has more than userland code taken from FreeBSD. "The
kernel of Darwin is XNU, a hybrid kernel which uses OSFMK (Open Software
Foundation Mach Kernel) from the OSF, various elements of FreeBSD (including
the process model, network stack, and virtual file system)" [0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_%28operating_system%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_%28operating_system%29)

~~~
pjmlp
That was more true in the past.

[https://www.amazon.com/Mac-OS-Internals-Approach-
paperback/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Mac-OS-Internals-Approach-
paperback/dp/0134426541)

[https://www.amazon.com/Mac-OS-iOS-Internals-
Apples/dp/111805...](https://www.amazon.com/Mac-OS-iOS-Internals-
Apples/dp/1118057651)

~~~
danieldk
Could you explain this in more detail? It seems that the network stack, VFS,
etc. from BSD are still heavily used?

[https://github.com/apple/darwin-
xnu/tree/master/bsd](https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/tree/master/bsd)

Also, more recently they imported pf from OpenBSD:

[https://github.com/apple/darwin-
xnu/blob/master/bsd/net/pf.c](https://github.com/apple/darwin-
xnu/blob/master/bsd/net/pf.c)

Or do you mean that they have recently taken more code from other BSDs than
FreeBSD?

~~~
pjmlp
I mean that they have been moving away into more macOS specific code.

The POSIX network stack for example, is now deprecated, and one must use
Network.framework for the more up to date features,

"Introducing Network.framework: A modern alternative to Sockets"

[https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/715/](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/715/)

"Optimizing Your App for Today’s Internet"

[https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/714/](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/714/)

Likewise the long term roadmap introduced in Catalina plans to turn macOS into
a micro-kernel, by moving all kernel extensions into userspace drivers.

------
pfortran
I remember that book fondly - I'd dabbled with BSD/OS at one company, then at
the next gig set up their production servers on a couple of FreeBSD boxes
running Apache. The book was a constant companion at my desk. For running
servers, FreeBSD was hard to beat back then!

------
lifeisstillgood
A long time ago I toyed with the idea of a kickstarter campaign that would
design and build a range of freebsd laptops - they would just work. fixed
components and still having all the nice features like a /etc/resolv.conf you
can edit

------
bauerd
If only one of the BSDs had a container runtime, it's the only real
showstopper for me

~~~
dijit
Docker was working[0]. But it depends what you want from containers I guess.
Layers?

Most of the container use-cases that aren’t layers work fine under jails. But
it’s a more primitive tool, definitely not as user friendly.

[0]: [https://wiki.freebsd.org/Docker](https://wiki.freebsd.org/Docker)

~~~
mr__y
>Most of the container use-cases that aren’t layers work fine under jails

I'm pretty sure that with unionfs you could get layer-ish equivalent for most
use cases. Not going to question that it wouldn't be user friendly though

------
miguelmota
FreeBSD is awesome on the server and the ports package manager is amazing but
wouldn't recommend it on desktop if you need driver software for new hardware
since it won't be readily available.

------
jacobush
[https://www.dragonflybsd.org/](https://www.dragonflybsd.org/) gotta mention
it too, that it just exists is both surprising and great.

------
girvo
So, I adore the _idea_ of FreeBSD. Anyone had much luck running it as a mostly
exclusive VM on top of a more standard desktop OS as the hypervisor? Hyper-V,
Xhyve, etc.

~~~
toast0
The FreeBSD release process includes producing virtual machine images if you
want to get started they're linked from the download page:
[https://www.freebsd.org/where.html](https://www.freebsd.org/where.html)

------
roboman
I think OpenBSD is still more secure than FreeBSD

~~~
dijit
FreeBSD does not have a focus on security[0]. Indeed, the defaults are
notoriously insecure. There was a textfile floating around on how to bring it
up to some standard but it eludes me. So it’s a low bar, but freebsd is great
under low memory conditions, it has a rock solid filesystem baked in that is
gold-supported, one of the best tracing tools known to mankind and very clear
documentation.

That’s the power of freebsd. Not security.

[0]: [https://vez.mrsk.me/freebsd-defaults.html](https://vez.mrsk.me/freebsd-
defaults.html)

~~~
loeg
(The referenced document is authored by an OpenBSD developer with points to
score and an axe to grind; probably best to learn what lessons you can from
it, but don't take it as some objective truth about the world.)

------
bluedino
What a silly article. He mentions he ran a home FTP server on FreeBSD,
switches it out for a Linux ftp server, because it needed a reboot every third
day.

Meanwhile Walnut Creek cd-rom was setting bandwidth and uptime records with a
P6-200 running FreeBSD as their ftp server

------
indigodaddy
I love the simple and minimal site design of this website. Kudos!

------
pyuser583
Can you install the latest version of Java on it?

~~~
olavgg
Yes, at the time for this writing OpenJDK 13.02 and 11.0.6 is available in
ports

------
idclip
Yes, yes it is.

------
known
Porting FreeBSD to GPL can promote its user base;

~~~
pmlnr
Hell no.

I used to be all-in for GPL, but GPL is an ideology. Just like with
philosophies/ideologies, one exclusively is never true enough for reality.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with the BSD licensing: it allows multiple
views on the world to co-exist, unlike GPL.

------
bureaucrat
If I want lot of work and an amazing operating system, I'd' ve built an
operating system myself.

Since I'm a person with a job, run serious things and has a deadline, I use
linux.

------
blunte
I like what works.

On servers, Linux seems to work. Maybe it's not as good as _bsd in some cases,
but I don 't know those cases; and Linux has thus far worked.

Where _bsd has worked for me is on macOS. I think that's a bit less about bsd
and more about desktop/UI decisions dating back to the Steve Jobs days
(idiosyncrasies aside). But I have doubts about how much the underlying OS had
to do with the experience at the UI level.

Whether a bsd or linux, the desktop story is terrible compared to macOS. Even
Windows has some advantage if certain app dependencies are considered. As a
developer (who must still also perform some business tasks), macOS is the best
option. Linux desktops are almost as good, with some big exceptions. BSD
desktops might perhaps be on par with Linux, but they will fail on some of the
development requirements.

I know competition is good for innovation, but at some point I would like to
see the highly fragmented OSS desktop efforts consolidate. At this point, long
after Jobs's death, macOS has fallen greatly in terms of quality and
usability; so surpassing it isn't _that_ hard. Windows still doesn't, but I
doubt it ever will. In fact, Windows has increased significantly as a
development platform while still remaining horrible from a desktop user
perspective. macOS has slipped. Linux has gained only slightly. BSD, who
knows... but it cannot have improved more than Linux. Whether Linux or BSD,
there's plenty of achievable gains to make if motivated OSS folks would
consolidate more.

~~~
lmm
> Linux has gained only slightly. BSD, who knows... but it cannot have
> improved more than Linux.

Why is that so impossible? Konqueror had a tiny fraction of the contributors
that Mozilla had, but since it was better designed it was still able to get
ahead, and now almost everyone is using a Konqueror-derived rendering engine.
If they had "consolidated" with Mozilla we would have missed out on that.

Right now, FreeBSD does a lot of things better than Linux. ZFS is better than
anything Linux can offer. Jails are still ahead of Linux containers. OSSv4 is
still nicer than ALSA. FreeBSD ifconfig is still nicer than whatever you have
to use to configure your wifi this week. I'm not going to switch to a worse
OS, and I'm not sure why you'd expect anyone else to.

~~~
cosmiccatnap
I hear this all the time but see no proof.

Why are jails better and if so why did they lose to containers?

Why is OSS better when alsa could probably interface with one of those talking
fish on the wall if you ask it nicely.

Why is ZFS any better than the Linux implementation if freeBSD is backporting
the Linux version now.

Why is ifconfig better than network manager when there are no drivers for half
the chipsets anyway.

Linux is practical, and I think hate for it comes from BSD users frustrated
that they dont want to learn how another kernel works but I share none of the
problems BSD users often claim. Your hangup is on a distro or a filesystem but
never the actual Linux kernel which it seems to me nobody bothers to learn
before trashing anyway.

~~~
lmm
> Why are jails better and if so why did they lose to containers?

They're better because they have actual security/isolation engineering. They
lost because all people care about is having some kind of backend for
orchestration systems that's capable of running Python. Even on Linux you can
find all sorts of technical arguments about one form of container being better
than another, but no-one actually cares beyond "does kubernetes use it as a
backend? y/n".

> Why is OSS better when alsa could probably interface with one of those
> talking fish on the wall if you ask it nicely.

It offers a proper unixy API where you just have bytestream interfaces that
you write to. You can use ordinary command line tools rather than needing a
bunch of specialised programs.

> Why is ZFS any better than the Linux implementation if freeBSD is
> backporting the Linux version now.

There are more maintainers for ZFS on Linux - which should tell you something
about how much better ZFS is than any Linux-native filesystem. The ZfsOnLinux
codebase is fine, and if the licensing issues were ever resolved then one of
the biggest reasons to use FreeBSD would go away.

> Why is ifconfig better than network manager when there are no drivers for
> half the chipsets anyway.

Because it works the way you'd expect, and stuff that works continues to work.
E.g. fun story: Linux can't connect to my work VPN, because there's no way to
pass a one time passcode through to a VPN login. Even though I've got the same
version of OpenVPN installed on both FreeBSD and Linux, which has support for
one time passcodes, on Linux that gets lost somewhere in the tightly-coupled
layers in between that are necessary to have a network connection there.

> Linux is practical, and I think hate for it comes from BSD users frustrated
> that they dont want to learn how another kernel works but I share none of
> the problems BSD users often claim. Your hangup is on a distro or a
> filesystem but never the actual Linux kernel which it seems to me nobody
> bothers to learn before trashing anyway.

ZFS support is a kernel licensing issue. Jails are something that would
require kernel-level support. Beyond that "Linux" is a pretty standard
synecdoche for the whole OS; if there were reputable non-
systemd/networkmanager/wayland distributions that would solve some of my
problems, sure, but there aren't (I looked at installing Devuan but it seems
to have already collapsed).

~~~
vetinari
> Linux can't connect to my work VPN, because there's no way to pass a one
> time passcode through to a VPN login. Even though I've got the same version
> of OpenVPN installed on both FreeBSD and Linux, which has support for one
> time passcodes, on Linux that gets lost somewhere in the tightly-coupled
> layers in between that are necessary to have a network connection there.

I suspect that you are missing whatever the gui ovpn plugin uses for askpass
(should be in the log, complaining). Try starting the vpn from cli ('nmcli
connection up $conname'); nmcli is pretty good at asking for info it needs,
without the 'tightly-coupled layers' getting into its way.

~~~
lmm
Nope - just tried it, "Error: Connection activation failed: Unknown reason".
There's a bug in the Ubuntu bug tracker that's been there for a year or two
with no solution.

