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I think the best thing about FreeBSD is the incredibly high quality of its users; I don't know how that would fit into a "myths" page, but it's worth knowing. M

I think the best thing about FreeBSD is the incredibly high quality of its users; I don't know how that would fit into a "myths" page, but it's worth knowing. Maybe in a section covering how much less popular FreeBSD is than Linux and other operating systems. It could point at that while there are (many) fewer users, they are, on average, extremely well-educated about their system. I'm nearly always impressed by the quality of bug reports we get from FreeBSD users. They're more likely to include a patch, more likely to include specific details about how to reproduce the problem and reasonable theories about why the problem is happening. I don't know if this is correlation or causation (or which direction the cause/effect goes; i.e. are FreeBSD users better educated and that's why they choose FreeBSD, or are they better educated because they have to be in order to survive on a more challenging platform...thus it could be survival bias, rather than any real cause/effect) and I don't know if it is self-reinforcing (i.e. smart users breed more smart users because they're better able to guide new users in smart directions). All that said, lest I begin to sound too positive about FreeBSD, I still use Linux exclusively for my production servers and desktop/laptop. It's a great system with great users, but the sheer inertia of the Linux ecosystem is overwhelming. The Linux kernel alone has more contributors in each release than the entirety of the 400 commit bit havers on the whole of FreeBSD. Luckily, of course, FreeBSD gets to leverage lots of things that are mostly driven by the Linux ecosystem (Gnome, KDE, etc. all sorts of things that are predominantly funded by Red Hat, Canonical, SuSE, IBM, etc. for their Linux products).

smsm42 10y ago
> I think the best thing about FreeBSD is the incredibly high quality of its users; I suspect survivor bias in action here. At least I would consider a possibility that these users are so well-educated about their system because they have no choice. And that's not always what one wants. I don't really want to be extremely well-educated about the details of my car. I just want to operate a couple of buttons, levers and other gadgets and get quickly and safely from point A to point B. I couldn't care less how the car does it, for all I care it could have magical pixies inside. Now, I'm not saying BSD users doing it wrong. On the contrary, if it works for them that's great, and becoming the master of your tools is both personally rewarding and enriching. But - if you're preaching to outside audience, one has to mention that "BSD users are very knowledgeable about the details of their system" might also mean "you can't use this system unless you become an expert in it, if you're just interested in being a casual consumer you're in trouble".
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  I suspect self-selection: Right now, Linux is the most popular Unix. If you're going to another system, there's probably a reason, either technical or ideological. But to know enough to know why you might want to move already requires a lot of technical knowlege. And the will to actually do it, stick it out, and learn the different ways the system works requires a certain willingness to learn (although the excellent docs DO help). It's not so much that you can't use the system if you're a casual consumer, it's that if you're a casual consumer, you won't bother. Also, it's not a bias: We're trying to root-cause why the freeBSD community is so knowledgable. if it's because only the most knowlegable are capable of using it, that isn't a bias, it's just a result. /nitpick
  - smsm42 10y ago
    It's bias in a meaning that the cause is not BSD making their users somehow knowledgeable, but only users having enough motivation and knowledge to become power-users continue to use BSD. So if you approach it as a new user evaluating whether to use BSD, saying "BSD users are very knowledgeable" may mislead you as to the reason why.
  - toomanythings4 10y ago
    Linux is not Unix. Never has been and moving further away from it. (Ignoring the very recent version in January which got certified somehow)
- toomanythings4 10y ago
  FreeBSD is a professional operating system for professionals. It bothers me none if a 15-year old redditor can't handle getting his games to work on it.
- astrange 10y ago
  It's difficult to use FreeBSD without becoming a 90s-style expert sysadmin, and the handbook doesn't really help even if it's possible to do better. Setting up a server should be as secure and fast as possible with no work, you should get backups, and you shouldn't need a C compiler installed, let alone /usr/src. But the docs still act like you need to be checking out the whole OS and recompiling it for every machine, and then recompile again for jails. And once you get traffic to your web server there's a few pages of sysctl numbers to increase because it won't autotune anything. On the power user topics, is there a way to get a changelog of port/pkg updates or OS beta releases? It's hard to know when you should bother testing something.
grkvlt 10y ago
Something about this seems slightly wrong to me. Perhaps it's the assumption that users are a thing that is a property of the software? I guess it isn't clear what way the causation goes, or even if it exists - just as the GP points out above. Would you say Windows had _low_ quality users? Or just _more_ users? I think early or niche adopters by their nature have to have a lot invested, and this manifests itself in commitment to producing documentation, bug reports, evangelising and so on. Essentially you are sampling from the far end of the long tail, whereas with commodity software the gaussian distribution comes into play and pretty much everything is normal (pun intended) or at least average.
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  I think I've been pretty clear that I don't know why FreeBSD users are on the high end of the knowledge scale, and that survival bias is a plausible explanation. And, yes, Windows users, taken as a whole, do average out to be (very) low quality users. Linux users are somewhere in between. I'm not making a argument about causation, merely one of correlation and probably something about the mean level of knowledge.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - jrapdx3 10y ago
    The "user quality" associated with FBSD may be "higher", though it's a hard parameter to measure. Worth considering if the user quality has something to do with properties of FBSD itself vs. user characteristics. Since I run a number of systems, each of the 3 OS (FBSD, Linux, Windows) is represented. Two OS attributes define important differences, ease of administration, and ease of user applications (including installation of app software). Here's my theory: As I see it the OS sort out in opposite directions based on these attributes. For ease of admin I rank them as: FBSD > Linux > Windows. Ease of use/apps is the reverse order: Windows > Linux > FBSD. From an admin point of view, FBSD is the most straightforward to configure and maintain. Windows is an admin nightmare. Linux is more complex than FBSD partly because of its heterogeneous origin and more frequent, less predictable changes. No doubt non-tech savvy users are more comfortable and feel more productive with Windows and don't have to learn much about the OS itself. FBSD can be used as a desktop/laptop OS but that's much more difficult to accomplish. Linux has more options/apps vs. FBSD, but fewer than Windows. These factors favor FBSD in the role of server and Windows for general users. Linux can be a server or desktop. The reason Linux is more often used in the server role is probably an outcome of FBSD's relative obscurity, not inherent Linux superiority. When it comes to servers, given a choice, in a Linux-dominated world relatively few will select FBSD. When there's a chance to get familiar with both, the lower admin burden of FBSD makes it an attractive option. In my view FBSD, especially in the server niche, is simpler and easier to master which encourages admins to learn it in depth, therefore its users tend to more consistently appear to have a higher knowledge level.

smsm42 10y ago

> I think the best thing about FreeBSD is the incredibly high quality of its users; I suspect survivor bias in action here. At least I would consider a possibility that these users are so well-educated about their system because they have no choice. And that's not always what one wants. I don't really want to be extremely well-educated about the details of my car. I just want to operate a couple of buttons, levers and other gadgets and get quickly and safely from point A to point B. I couldn't care less how the car does it, for all I care it could have magical pixies inside. Now, I'm not saying BSD users doing it wrong. On the contrary, if it works for them that's great, and becoming the master of your tools is both personally rewarding and enriching. But - if you're preaching to outside audience, one has to mention that "BSD users are very knowledgeable about the details of their system" might also mean "you can't use this system unless you become an expert in it, if you're just interested in being a casual consumer you're in trouble".

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
I suspect self-selection: Right now, Linux is the most popular Unix. If you're going to another system, there's probably a reason, either technical or ideological. But to know enough to know why you might want to move already requires a lot of technical knowlege. And the will to actually do it, stick it out, and learn the different ways the system works requires a certain willingness to learn (although the excellent docs DO help). It's not so much that you can't use the system if you're a casual consumer, it's that if you're a casual consumer, you won't bother. Also, it's not a bias: We're trying to root-cause why the freeBSD community is so knowledgable. if it's because only the most knowlegable are capable of using it, that isn't a bias, it's just a result. /nitpick
- smsm42 10y ago
  It's bias in a meaning that the cause is not BSD making their users somehow knowledgeable, but only users having enough motivation and knowledge to become power-users continue to use BSD. So if you approach it as a new user evaluating whether to use BSD, saying "BSD users are very knowledgeable" may mislead you as to the reason why.
- toomanythings4 10y ago
  Linux is not Unix. Never has been and moving further away from it. (Ignoring the very recent version in January which got certified somehow)
toomanythings4 10y ago
FreeBSD is a professional operating system for professionals. It bothers me none if a 15-year old redditor can't handle getting his games to work on it.
astrange 10y ago
It's difficult to use FreeBSD without becoming a 90s-style expert sysadmin, and the handbook doesn't really help even if it's possible to do better. Setting up a server should be as secure and fast as possible with no work, you should get backups, and you shouldn't need a C compiler installed, let alone /usr/src. But the docs still act like you need to be checking out the whole OS and recompiling it for every machine, and then recompile again for jails. And once you get traffic to your web server there's a few pages of sysctl numbers to increase because it won't autotune anything. On the power user topics, is there a way to get a changelog of port/pkg updates or OS beta releases? It's hard to know when you should bother testing something.

grkvlt 10y ago

Something about this seems slightly wrong to me. Perhaps it's the assumption that users are a thing that is a property of the software? I guess it isn't clear what way the causation goes, or even if it exists - just as the GP points out above. Would you say Windows had _low_ quality users? Or just _more_ users? I think early or niche adopters by their nature have to have a lot invested, and this manifests itself in commitment to producing documentation, bug reports, evangelising and so on. Essentially you are sampling from the far end of the long tail, whereas with commodity software the gaussian distribution comes into play and pretty much everything is normal (pun intended) or at least average.

SwellJoe 10y ago
I think I've been pretty clear that I don't know why FreeBSD users are on the high end of the knowledge scale, and that survival bias is a plausible explanation. And, yes, Windows users, taken as a whole, do average out to be (very) low quality users. Linux users are somewhere in between. I'm not making a argument about causation, merely one of correlation and probably something about the mean level of knowledge.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jrapdx3 10y ago
  The "user quality" associated with FBSD may be "higher", though it's a hard parameter to measure. Worth considering if the user quality has something to do with properties of FBSD itself vs. user characteristics. Since I run a number of systems, each of the 3 OS (FBSD, Linux, Windows) is represented. Two OS attributes define important differences, ease of administration, and ease of user applications (including installation of app software). Here's my theory: As I see it the OS sort out in opposite directions based on these attributes. For ease of admin I rank them as: FBSD > Linux > Windows. Ease of use/apps is the reverse order: Windows > Linux > FBSD. From an admin point of view, FBSD is the most straightforward to configure and maintain. Windows is an admin nightmare. Linux is more complex than FBSD partly because of its heterogeneous origin and more frequent, less predictable changes. No doubt non-tech savvy users are more comfortable and feel more productive with Windows and don't have to learn much about the OS itself. FBSD can be used as a desktop/laptop OS but that's much more difficult to accomplish. Linux has more options/apps vs. FBSD, but fewer than Windows. These factors favor FBSD in the role of server and Windows for general users. Linux can be a server or desktop. The reason Linux is more often used in the server role is probably an outcome of FBSD's relative obscurity, not inherent Linux superiority. When it comes to servers, given a choice, in a Linux-dominated world relatively few will select FBSD. When there's a chance to get familiar with both, the lower admin burden of FBSD makes it an attractive option. In my view FBSD, especially in the server niche, is simpler and easier to master which encourages admins to learn it in depth, therefore its users tend to more consistently appear to have a higher knowledge level.