6 ms·

Moving to FreeBSD

90 points by vezzy-fnord 11y ago

dynomight 11y ago
The next cheap ssd I get, I'm going to install pcbsd and give it a go.
- infradig 11y ago
  Just moved to PCBSD 10.2 with Lumina desktop. No regrets.
  - dynomight 11y ago
    That's encouraging!
- grubles 11y ago
  Why isn't FreeBSD suitable for a personal computer / desktop? I'm curious why you choose PC-BSD.
  - jzd 11y ago
    it's too mainstream
  - Sanddancer 11y ago
    PC-BSD is essentially a sibling of FreeBSD that is designed to be much more friendly for a desktop install. It's what a lot of FreeBSD devs even recommend for someone starting to look into the BSDs for the first time, as it has graphical installers and other friendly, useful bits that the more server-oriented FreeBSD doesn't have.
  - thelibrarian 11y ago
    Just to expand a little on Sanddancer's reply, PC-BSD is FreeBSD, but with a friendlier installer, and comes with X11 and a window manager installed and set up for you. It is designed to get FreeBSD installed as a desktop system quicker and more easily than installing straight FreeBSD and then installing everything else on top of that. So, it is similar to how Ubuntu was to Debian back when Ubuntu first came out.
  - infradig 11y ago
    As explained below by others. I used headless FreeBSD for years with servers, but for the desktop move I chose PCBSD because it wraps it up neatly. My desktop needs are pretty simple though.
  - schwarze_pest 11y ago
    Besides the facts that Sanddancer and thelibrarian already mentioned, I as a FreeBSD desktop user would like to answer the question in a different way. > Why isn't FreeBSD suitable for a personal computer / desktop? Next time you are visiting a BSDCon have a look around. What are the Systems FreeBSD devs are working with and what are the Systems OpenBSD devs are working with? It is not my intention to be polemic, but I think you will see that many FreeBSD devs (in contrast to many OpenBSD devs) are too pragmatic to use their own OS on their desktop and just use OS X. At least that is my theory, why OpenBSD make a nicer desktop than FreeBSD -- as long as you don't need any FreeBSD features.
kayman 11y ago
I run FreeBSD 10 on my servers. Coming from a linux background it felt a bit odd at first. - Like why am I not defaulted to a bash shell. - Never did a cornshell activation before :) [virtuanenv/bin/activate.csh] Within a few weeks of using bsd, I felt comfortable enough to guess where configuration files are kept based on BSD logic. From an engineering point of view, it feels well thought out. With "pkg" similar to "apt-get" it is easy for beginners to transition into maintaining a bsd server. Managing Jails with ez-admin simplifies jails quite a bit. I keep some notes for myself here bsd for those who might be looking to try out freebsd > 10. http://notes.busilogic.com/freebsd.html http://notes.busilogic.com/freebsd.html To get immediate value for a linux user, I recommend trying jails and compare that to using Docker. It'd be interesting to hear other people's experiences.
- Sanddancer 11y ago
  Minor note: csh isn't cornshell, it's C Shell, because its syntax is somewhat c-like. Korn Shell is ksh, named after its creator, David Korn. A variant of ksh is what openbsd uses as their default user shell.
  - kayman 11y ago
    Thanks for that correction. Coming from bash background, migrated to zsh on mac, I assumed c is for corn.
  - ams6110 11y ago
    Does anyone actually use csh as a login shell anymore? Does Mac OS still use tcsh as the default?
    - selectodude 11y ago
      Mac OS X has used an old version of bash for awhile now.
      - gsnedders 11y ago
        They forked the last GPLv2 release.
ZoFreX 11y ago
Welcome to FreeBSD! I'm glad you like it! By the way, you might regret mixing packages and ports unless you know what you're doing. If you're new to FreeBSD I'd recommend picking one or the other and not mixing.
- dijit 11y ago
  I was told ports and pkg used the same database since FreeBSD 10? I could be wrong, it was just an off-hand comment on the freenode irc channel.
  - ketralnis 11y ago
    They do, so one can meet the prereqs of another. But there are still issues that pop up. For instance, if you install a port with custom compile flags and then use pkg to upgrade it, you'll lose them. There are lots of little stuff like this that can pop up
  - gopowerranger 11y ago
    The database isn't the problem but packages trail ports, cause they need to be tested first, so their dependencies may differ and cause issues. So mixing the two can cause an issue until you're experienced enough to know what to watch out for. If you're machine can handle it, I'd just stay with ports.
  - zackelan 11y ago
    Correct. More specifically, pkg-ng uses the same database as ports, and pkg-ng was made the default starting in 10. It was available in prior versions, but only opt-in and with a conversion process from the legacy package database to the newer one. https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/pkgng-intro.html https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/pkgng-intro.html For anyone who's tried FreeBSD in the past (before pkg-ng) but ended up going back to Linux or OS X, I would highly recommend giving FreeBSD 10.x another shot. pkg(7) is a very well-designed and modern package management system, on par with Arch's pacman and superior to apt-get, in my opinion.
tshtf 11y ago
The security section should mention that as of 2015, FreeBSD still does not have ASLR.
- iheartmemcache 11y ago
  I am far from a blackhat/malware expert, but I've used enough ASLR exploits with ROP toys to win a few CTF's. I'm way too old to have any allegiance to BSD vs Linux vs POSIX{foo}. I say this to clarify my point - in the 90s I was a teenage-FreeBSD bigot; now, I don't give a hoot. To successfully manipulate the lack of memory address randomization (i.e., attack via ASLR), one either either has a target running BIND circa 1999 that will let you smash the stack and 'sploit da EIP remotely, or the malicious attacker has a local, non-jailed shell. At which point you have far more to worry about than ASLR. DEP and ASLR are effective (especially with doing interesting things more advanced than just swapping on a ROP gadget - JIT stream exploits are _very clever_) but I'd take the out-of-the-box FreeBSD over any distro of Linux out-of-the-box for security.
- betaby 11y ago
  To be honest, FreeBSD lack so many other modern features that barely makes it usable. (Properly working)NUMA? Virtualization? Yes, I'm fully aware about work in progress.
  - gopowerranger 11y ago
    And yet Netflix chose FreeBSD over Linux to serve about 40% of all internet traffic, as does WhatsApp.
    - betaby 11y ago
      Since when Netflix accounts for 40% of internet traffic?
      - gopowerranger 11y ago
        Netflix video accounts for over 40% of all internet traffic, yes.
armitron 11y ago
FreeBSD is fine for a single-user system with no expectations of security. Given the number of trivially exploitable kernel issues it has, it's absolutely terrible for a server, shared hosting or any kind of multi-user environment. Moreover, unlike Linux, there is no grsecurity patch to harden it.
- haroldp 11y ago
  What?
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    > FreeBSD is fine for a single-user system with no expectations of security. Given the number of trivially exploitable kernel issues it has, it's absolutely terrible for a server, shared hosting or any kind of multi-user environment. Moreover, unlike Linux, there is no grsecurity patch to harden it. Quoted for troollth.
teddyh 11y ago
“Then came the systemd controversy. I'm sick of talking about it, so let's skip that part. I decided to look into other operating systems. Linux isn't the only UNIX-like OS out there, after all.” I would like to read what he actually has against systemd, but could only find a complaint from two months ago that he was forced to learn /bin/ip when ifconfig was unavailable. This, to me, seems like someone simply unilling to move with the times.
uxcn 11y ago
FreeBSD (4.7) was actually the first *nix I used. As a user operating system, I honestly might have been better served with a Linux distribution, but in retrospect FreeBSD still managed a lot of the end user aspects surprisingly well (Linux binary compatibility, NDIS driver wrappers, etc...). I installed a FreeBSD (10) virtual machine this weekend to test a personal project, and a lot actually seems to have improved. I'm surprised they've already switched to Clang as a default compiler. Although, I think there are still some areas where FreeBSD might be a bit behind Linux. I think what I still like about FreeBSD is that there seems to be a focus on simplicity and nothing seems to be added on a whim. Progress does seem to be a bit slower for certain things (kernel features, filesystem features, etc...), but as a whole a lot of the design decisions seem to be extremely well thought out.
suprjami 11y ago
I'd want to switch if I used Gentoo as well. Sounds like this guy is sick of rolling his own Linux, not sick of Linux.
pgib 11y ago
Really nice summary! If you really want to make your life with ports easier, I highly recommend Poudriere (https://github.com/freebsd/poudriere https://github.com/freebsd/poudriere). Poudriere can build your ports collection for one or more machines running any version of FreeBSD that's <= of the Poudriere hosts. After you configure your ports, you can easily archive all of the options you've set (e.g. should want/need to move your Poudriere setup elsewhere). I run Poudriere on my home server, and then I point pkg to a local Nginx server. Every night, it builds the latest versions of all of the ports I use, and I can simply type "pkg upgrade" any time I want. For work, I run a Poudriere server on an EC2 instance to build packages for a variety of configurations. Depending on your needs, you could pretty easily have an EC2 instance that remains shutdown most of the time, and then on some sort of schedule you spin it up, build the latest, publish your packages, and shut down again.

Moving to FreeBSD

90 points by vezzy-fnord 11y ago

dynomight 11y ago

The next cheap ssd I get, I'm going to install pcbsd and give it a go.

infradig 11y ago
Just moved to PCBSD 10.2 with Lumina desktop. No regrets.
- dynomight 11y ago
  That's encouraging!
grubles 11y ago
Why isn't FreeBSD suitable for a personal computer / desktop? I'm curious why you choose PC-BSD.
- jzd 11y ago
  it's too mainstream
- Sanddancer 11y ago
  PC-BSD is essentially a sibling of FreeBSD that is designed to be much more friendly for a desktop install. It's what a lot of FreeBSD devs even recommend for someone starting to look into the BSDs for the first time, as it has graphical installers and other friendly, useful bits that the more server-oriented FreeBSD doesn't have.
- thelibrarian 11y ago
  Just to expand a little on Sanddancer's reply, PC-BSD is FreeBSD, but with a friendlier installer, and comes with X11 and a window manager installed and set up for you. It is designed to get FreeBSD installed as a desktop system quicker and more easily than installing straight FreeBSD and then installing everything else on top of that. So, it is similar to how Ubuntu was to Debian back when Ubuntu first came out.
- infradig 11y ago
  As explained below by others. I used headless FreeBSD for years with servers, but for the desktop move I chose PCBSD because it wraps it up neatly. My desktop needs are pretty simple though.
- schwarze_pest 11y ago
  Besides the facts that Sanddancer and thelibrarian already mentioned, I as a FreeBSD desktop user would like to answer the question in a different way. > Why isn't FreeBSD suitable for a personal computer / desktop? Next time you are visiting a BSDCon have a look around. What are the Systems FreeBSD devs are working with and what are the Systems OpenBSD devs are working with? It is not my intention to be polemic, but I think you will see that many FreeBSD devs (in contrast to many OpenBSD devs) are too pragmatic to use their own OS on their desktop and just use OS X. At least that is my theory, why OpenBSD make a nicer desktop than FreeBSD -- as long as you don't need any FreeBSD features.

kayman 11y ago

I run FreeBSD 10 on my servers. Coming from a linux background it felt a bit odd at first. - Like why am I not defaulted to a bash shell. - Never did a cornshell activation before :) [virtuanenv/bin/activate.csh] Within a few weeks of using bsd, I felt comfortable enough to guess where configuration files are kept based on BSD logic. From an engineering point of view, it feels well thought out. With "pkg" similar to "apt-get" it is easy for beginners to transition into maintaining a bsd server. Managing Jails with ez-admin simplifies jails quite a bit. I keep some notes for myself here bsd for those who might be looking to try out freebsd > 10. http://notes.busilogic.com/freebsd.html http://notes.busilogic.com/freebsd.html To get immediate value for a linux user, I recommend trying jails and compare that to using Docker. It'd be interesting to hear other people's experiences.

Sanddancer 11y ago
Minor note: csh isn't cornshell, it's C Shell, because its syntax is somewhat c-like. Korn Shell is ksh, named after its creator, David Korn. A variant of ksh is what openbsd uses as their default user shell.
- kayman 11y ago
  Thanks for that correction. Coming from bash background, migrated to zsh on mac, I assumed c is for corn.
- ams6110 11y ago
  Does anyone actually use csh as a login shell anymore? Does Mac OS still use tcsh as the default?
  - selectodude 11y ago
    Mac OS X has used an old version of bash for awhile now.
    - gsnedders 11y ago
      They forked the last GPLv2 release.

ZoFreX 11y ago

Welcome to FreeBSD! I'm glad you like it! By the way, you might regret mixing packages and ports unless you know what you're doing. If you're new to FreeBSD I'd recommend picking one or the other and not mixing.

dijit 11y ago
I was told ports and pkg used the same database since FreeBSD 10? I could be wrong, it was just an off-hand comment on the freenode irc channel.
- ketralnis 11y ago
  They do, so one can meet the prereqs of another. But there are still issues that pop up. For instance, if you install a port with custom compile flags and then use pkg to upgrade it, you'll lose them. There are lots of little stuff like this that can pop up
- gopowerranger 11y ago
  The database isn't the problem but packages trail ports, cause they need to be tested first, so their dependencies may differ and cause issues. So mixing the two can cause an issue until you're experienced enough to know what to watch out for. If you're machine can handle it, I'd just stay with ports.
- zackelan 11y ago
  Correct. More specifically, pkg-ng uses the same database as ports, and pkg-ng was made the default starting in 10. It was available in prior versions, but only opt-in and with a conversion process from the legacy package database to the newer one. https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/pkgng-intro.html https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/pkgng-intro.html For anyone who's tried FreeBSD in the past (before pkg-ng) but ended up going back to Linux or OS X, I would highly recommend giving FreeBSD 10.x another shot. pkg(7) is a very well-designed and modern package management system, on par with Arch's pacman and superior to apt-get, in my opinion.

tshtf 11y ago

The security section should mention that as of 2015, FreeBSD still does not have ASLR.

iheartmemcache 11y ago
I am far from a blackhat/malware expert, but I've used enough ASLR exploits with ROP toys to win a few CTF's. I'm way too old to have any allegiance to BSD vs Linux vs POSIX{foo}. I say this to clarify my point - in the 90s I was a teenage-FreeBSD bigot; now, I don't give a hoot. To successfully manipulate the lack of memory address randomization (i.e., attack via ASLR), one either either has a target running BIND circa 1999 that will let you smash the stack and 'sploit da EIP remotely, or the malicious attacker has a local, non-jailed shell. At which point you have far more to worry about than ASLR. DEP and ASLR are effective (especially with doing interesting things more advanced than just swapping on a ROP gadget - JIT stream exploits are _very clever_) but I'd take the out-of-the-box FreeBSD over any distro of Linux out-of-the-box for security.
betaby 11y ago
To be honest, FreeBSD lack so many other modern features that barely makes it usable. (Properly working)NUMA? Virtualization? Yes, I'm fully aware about work in progress.
- gopowerranger 11y ago
  And yet Netflix chose FreeBSD over Linux to serve about 40% of all internet traffic, as does WhatsApp.
  - betaby 11y ago
    Since when Netflix accounts for 40% of internet traffic?
    - gopowerranger 11y ago
      Netflix video accounts for over 40% of all internet traffic, yes.

armitron 11y ago

FreeBSD is fine for a single-user system with no expectations of security. Given the number of trivially exploitable kernel issues it has, it's absolutely terrible for a server, shared hosting or any kind of multi-user environment. Moreover, unlike Linux, there is no grsecurity patch to harden it.

haroldp 11y ago
What?
- agumonkey 11y ago
  > FreeBSD is fine for a single-user system with no expectations of security. Given the number of trivially exploitable kernel issues it has, it's absolutely terrible for a server, shared hosting or any kind of multi-user environment. Moreover, unlike Linux, there is no grsecurity patch to harden it. Quoted for troollth.

teddyh 11y ago

“Then came the systemd controversy. I'm sick of talking about it, so let's skip that part. I decided to look into other operating systems. Linux isn't the only UNIX-like OS out there, after all.” I would like to read what he actually has against systemd, but could only find a complaint from two months ago that he was forced to learn /bin/ip when ifconfig was unavailable. This, to me, seems like someone simply unilling to move with the times.

uxcn 11y ago

FreeBSD (4.7) was actually the first *nix I used. As a user operating system, I honestly might have been better served with a Linux distribution, but in retrospect FreeBSD still managed a lot of the end user aspects surprisingly well (Linux binary compatibility, NDIS driver wrappers, etc...). I installed a FreeBSD (10) virtual machine this weekend to test a personal project, and a lot actually seems to have improved. I'm surprised they've already switched to Clang as a default compiler. Although, I think there are still some areas where FreeBSD might be a bit behind Linux. I think what I still like about FreeBSD is that there seems to be a focus on simplicity and nothing seems to be added on a whim. Progress does seem to be a bit slower for certain things (kernel features, filesystem features, etc...), but as a whole a lot of the design decisions seem to be extremely well thought out.

suprjami 11y ago

I'd want to switch if I used Gentoo as well. Sounds like this guy is sick of rolling his own Linux, not sick of Linux.

pgib 11y ago

Really nice summary! If you really want to make your life with ports easier, I highly recommend Poudriere (https://github.com/freebsd/poudriere https://github.com/freebsd/poudriere). Poudriere can build your ports collection for one or more machines running any version of FreeBSD that's <= of the Poudriere hosts. After you configure your ports, you can easily archive all of the options you've set (e.g. should want/need to move your Poudriere setup elsewhere). I run Poudriere on my home server, and then I point pkg to a local Nginx server. Every night, it builds the latest versions of all of the ports I use, and I can simply type "pkg upgrade" any time I want. For work, I run a Poudriere server on an EC2 instance to build packages for a variety of configurations. Depending on your needs, you could pretty easily have an EC2 instance that remains shutdown most of the time, and then on some sort of schedule you spin it up, build the latest, publish your packages, and shut down again.