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What could be done in order to help the BSDs to become mainstream or more visible as server-side alternative to Linux? I've operated a small FBSD mail server un
by tannhaeuser 10y ago
What could be done in order to help the BSDs to become mainstream or more visible as server-side alternative to Linux? I've operated a small FBSD mail server until 2004 (FBSD 4, vinum RAID, sendmail, cyrus IMAP) and was extremely pleased with the performance, robustness and overall coherency of it (though I wouldn't use that stack today).
While Linux certainly works well, I'm instinctively against monocultures of any kind or form. With Linux-only containers (Docker and co.) there's now the danger that we're loosing the BSDs terminally as a replacement for Linux. But is the isolation (or lack thereof) and interfacing to the host system provided by Docker/runC/whatever really worth it (compared to portable POSIX-based primitives eg. chroot jails, or modern capabilities-based generalizations of it such as FBSD's capsicum)?
It's also odd that a GPL-licensed OS, of all things, is making it to the top in containerland. But then the nominal "default" host OS for Docker (Alpine Linux) uses musl (MIT-licenses libc) rather than glibc. I'm not complaining, and there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it legally, but the commercial Docker image ecosystem, to me, has the smell of a GPL-circumvention device of sorts in that many images routinely install the Debian/GNU userland tools on first load.
- eatonphil 10y agoFreeBSD jails are on a different level in terms of stability (and simplicity, that contributes to stability) compared to Docker. Personally -- having run Docker containers for over a year in testing -- I would take jails over containers in a heartbeat.
- lacampbell 10y agohow do they compare to LXC? I ran into a lot of annoying issues trying to set them up in ubuntu
- AsyncAwait 10y agoYeah, I would take jails over Docker as well, but systemd is just so much better, (more so than jails over Docker in my opinion), than init, that I am hoping for a better tool to come about, the underlying LXC technology appears to be solid.
- tannhaeuser 10y agoFor me, systemd is another reason to move away from Linux actually (or at least not deepen the dependency on Linux-exclusive features). It's not that I think systemd is bad per se, it's just way too monolithic and heavy for my taste (and binary logs and ini files are a no-go for me; if I wanted that, I'd be using Windows). Btw. the BSDs don't use SysV init but the somewhat saner/simpler BSD init (with full-blown service managers as optional add-ons in ports).
- AsyncAwait 10y agosystemd is not for everyone, but for me is way saner than any other init system, including BSDs init. Writing service files for systemd just makes sense in my mind. There are other aspects for why I do not recommend BSD to anyone who asks, most importantly their licensing and their general stance towards software freedoms, to the point where they are smug and happy when somebody violates the GPL, because "at least they get more users", as well as their relatively little upstream contribution to ZFS despite riding that train as fBSDs signature feature for years, but that's a different discussion altogether.
- tannhaeuser 10y agoI don't know about BSD being smug and the other things you say. This sounds to me like what could be perceived when reading clickbaity and polarizing articles of the "Linux vs BSD" variety. I'm seeing BSD as a welcome choice/alternative to Linux that I would hate to loose.
- AsyncAwait 10y agoYeah, I don't want BSDs to disappear as well, (not likely), but watching this, (among other things) definitely left a bad taste[1]. 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cofKxtIO3Is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cofKxtIO3Is