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I use FreeBSD on servers and desktops since 15 years. Yes, it takes more time to create your desktop then just install Elementary OS or Ubuntu where someone el

I use FreeBSD on servers and desktops since 15 years. Yes, it takes more time to create your desktop then just install Elementary OS or Ubuntu where someone else made that for You, but once You have your configuration files, its similar experience. On a new box You just install it, add needed packages and put your configs in the ${HOME} directory, same for FreeBSD, same for Ubuntu. You will also 'lose' less time later since You will have bulletproof upgrades with ZFS Boot Environments (sysutils/beadm) and a lot more stable environment - no rush changes - no systemd - no ifconfig/ip problem - no netstat/ss problem - etc.

danieldk 8y ago
But also relatively outdated graphics drivers outside the NVIDIA proprietary drivers (yes, I know that there is a branch with Linux DRM drivers). This also means relatively limited support for Wayland, so you have to use X11, which is insecure. Even though there are proprietary NVIDIA drivers, CUDA is not supported, which excludes most modern machine learning. [edit: removed some criticism, not nice on a birthday :)] I really like FreeBSD as a clean, understandable UNIX system, it wish it had more momentum (and thus more hardware support, testing, etc.).
- sureaboutthis 8y ago
  While other OSes may support 10,000 hardware devices, and FreeBSD only supports 9374 of them, you only need one of those devices and chances are the one popular one you want to use works on FreeBSD, too.
- vermaden 8y ago
  > But also relatively outdated graphics drivers outside the NVIDIA proprietary drivers (yes, I know that there is a branch with Linux DRM drivers). This was true until drm-next-kmod and drm-stable-kmod ports appeared. Now you have very similar Linux and FreeBSD graphics experience. > This also means relatively limited support for Wayland, so you have to use X11, which is insecure. Wayland is enabled by default since recently. As we talk about security... * Linux - Vulnerabilities (2103) - https://www.cvedetails.com/vendor/33/Linux.html https://www.cvedetails.com/vendor/33/Linux.html * FreeBSD - Vulnerabilities (368) - https://www.cvedetails.com/vendor/6/Freebsd.html https://www.cvedetails.com/vendor/6/Freebsd.html About 7 times more on the Linux side, do not mix X11 into that :) FreeBSD as every system has its limitations, that is for sure, but as I track its developments of the span of 15 years its just getting better and better, in all aspects - including desktop. Of course there are 'environments' where its all or nothing like 'mobile', Linux has most of the market here with Android while FreeBSD has nothing.
  - danieldk 8y ago
    This was true until drm-next-kmod and drm-stable-kmod ports appeared. Now you have very similar Linux and FreeBSD graphics experience. Which are, respectively, based on 4.9 and 4.11 in ports. The AMD has made large strides since then. In those kernels, the amdgpu driver barely supported Southern/Sea Islands. These work extremely well with recent kernels (much smoother than the old radeon driver). Vega cards only support graphical output since 4.15. Wayland is enabled by default since recently. The FreeBSD website states that Wayland is not ready for general use. Wayland has been 'enabled' in many Linux distributions for years, but it took a long time to remove all the wrinkles. I wonder: did you actually run a full GNOME desktop on Wayland on FreeBSD for a couple of months? Linux - Vulnerabilities (2103) - FreeBSD - Vulnerabilities (368) Linux is far more popular and most likely audited more as a result of that. So, it is not surprising that it has more CVEs. Also, the Linux kernel is a fair bit larger, supports more architecture, and more hardware, which means more surface. About 7 times more on the Linux side, do not mix X11 into that :) X11 is a permanent security vulnerability. Every application can read each other application's mouse events, key strokes, and do screen grabs.
    - vermaden 8y ago
      > Which are, respectively, based on 4.9 and 4.11 in ports. The AMD has made large strides since then. In those kernels, the amdgpu driver barely supported Southern/Sea Islands. These work extremely well with recent kernels (much smoother than the old radeon driver). Vega cards only support graphical output since 4.15. Yes, its currently little older, but they catching up ;) > The FreeBSD website states that Wayland is not ready for general use. Wayland has been 'enabled' in many Linux distributions for years, but it took a long time to remove all the wrinkles. I haven't used it, so I do not know how mature it is. > I wonder: did you actually run a full GNOME desktop on Wayland on FreeBSD for a couple of months? I run 'light' with openbox/tint/dzen and do not prefer Desktop Environments, besides, for me it does not matter if it runs on X11 or on Wayland as the end result is the same, but as I did not used Wayland I will stop with conclusions here. > Linux is far more popular and most likely audited more as a result of that. So, it is not surprising that it has more CVEs. Also, the Linux kernel is a fair bit larger, supports more architecture, and more hardware, which means more surface. Microsoft Windows is magnitudes more popular then Linux, yet it has less holes, so its not only popularity. https://www.cvedetails.com/product/17153/Microsoft-Windows-7.html?vendor_id=26 https://www.cvedetails.com/product/17153/Microsoft-Windows-7...
Fnoord 8y ago
A lot of this boils down to preference. For example, I've never liked IPT and I believe the way you set up pf(.conf) makes a lot more sense and is easier to understand. You can work somewhat around that (and vice versa as well via pfctl) but I prefer PF. YMMV. Things like ifconfig and ip differ per *NIX which is bloody annoying. The macOS ifconfig and route differ a lot from the Linux one, for example adding a default gateway in Linux and FreeBSD with the route command requires different syntax/argument and just typing route on macOS doesn't yield the current routes (cause logic). As much as there is a learning curve involved, iproute2 is a great solution to simplify. There's even iproute2mac for if you're accustomed to iproute2 on Linux. It is a wrapper for ifconfig/route/etc though advanced arguments don't work. Systemd has the same problem iproute2 has: a learning curve of an integral part of the OS. As for snapshots, Windows, macOS, and Nix have that as well. Personally, I love the macOS desktop (and Mac in general with UNIX under the hood) but something like i3wm would also do the job. And I bet it'd run just as great on FreeBSD.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  > something like i3wm would also do the job. And I bet it'd run just as great on FreeBSD. It does. I use i3 everywhere, and once you've logged in, there's absolutely no difference across any Linux distro or BSD I've tried. Debian, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Alpine linux... short of actually running `uname`, it's not really possible to tell what the underlying system is.
- vermaden 8y ago
  > A lot of this boils down to preference. As everything in our lives, some prefer Linux, some prefer FreeBSD, some OpenBSD, some macOS, etc. > Systemd has the same problem iproute2 has: a learning curve of an integral part of the OS. Its not the learning, its just broken and I will not waste my or your time to discuss this again. ;) > As for snapshots, Windows, macOS, and Nix have that as well. Can you boot from them and preserve fully working UNMODIFIED system after upgrade? Nope. That is the difference in ZFS Boot Environments. I also used Mac OS X (it was called that way before it became macOS) and I also liked it, but I feel on FreeBSD more 'at home'. Regards, vermaden
foobarbazetc 8y ago
... what’s wrong with systemd? Or ip? Or netstat? Honestly though, systemd is actually a good thing. We write a single .service that works everywhere and takes care of ulimit, private tmp, cgroups/slices, etc, etc.
- vermaden 8y ago
  The ideas behind implementing something like systemd are good - check SMF on Solaris/Illumos or launchd on macOS. The systemd implementation is just bad - http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Arguments_against_systemd http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Arguments_against_... What about ip/ifconfig or netstat/ss? Deprecating good old tools by rewriting them over and over again with new bugs and not covering full features of the original instead of improving the well tested tools.

danieldk 8y ago

But also relatively outdated graphics drivers outside the NVIDIA proprietary drivers (yes, I know that there is a branch with Linux DRM drivers). This also means relatively limited support for Wayland, so you have to use X11, which is insecure. Even though there are proprietary NVIDIA drivers, CUDA is not supported, which excludes most modern machine learning. [edit: removed some criticism, not nice on a birthday :)] I really like FreeBSD as a clean, understandable UNIX system, it wish it had more momentum (and thus more hardware support, testing, etc.).

sureaboutthis 8y ago
While other OSes may support 10,000 hardware devices, and FreeBSD only supports 9374 of them, you only need one of those devices and chances are the one popular one you want to use works on FreeBSD, too.
vermaden 8y ago
> But also relatively outdated graphics drivers outside the NVIDIA proprietary drivers (yes, I know that there is a branch with Linux DRM drivers). This was true until drm-next-kmod and drm-stable-kmod ports appeared. Now you have very similar Linux and FreeBSD graphics experience. > This also means relatively limited support for Wayland, so you have to use X11, which is insecure. Wayland is enabled by default since recently. As we talk about security... * Linux - Vulnerabilities (2103) - https://www.cvedetails.com/vendor/33/Linux.html https://www.cvedetails.com/vendor/33/Linux.html * FreeBSD - Vulnerabilities (368) - https://www.cvedetails.com/vendor/6/Freebsd.html https://www.cvedetails.com/vendor/6/Freebsd.html About 7 times more on the Linux side, do not mix X11 into that :) FreeBSD as every system has its limitations, that is for sure, but as I track its developments of the span of 15 years its just getting better and better, in all aspects - including desktop. Of course there are 'environments' where its all or nothing like 'mobile', Linux has most of the market here with Android while FreeBSD has nothing.
- danieldk 8y ago
  This was true until drm-next-kmod and drm-stable-kmod ports appeared. Now you have very similar Linux and FreeBSD graphics experience. Which are, respectively, based on 4.9 and 4.11 in ports. The AMD has made large strides since then. In those kernels, the amdgpu driver barely supported Southern/Sea Islands. These work extremely well with recent kernels (much smoother than the old radeon driver). Vega cards only support graphical output since 4.15. Wayland is enabled by default since recently. The FreeBSD website states that Wayland is not ready for general use. Wayland has been 'enabled' in many Linux distributions for years, but it took a long time to remove all the wrinkles. I wonder: did you actually run a full GNOME desktop on Wayland on FreeBSD for a couple of months? Linux - Vulnerabilities (2103) - FreeBSD - Vulnerabilities (368) Linux is far more popular and most likely audited more as a result of that. So, it is not surprising that it has more CVEs. Also, the Linux kernel is a fair bit larger, supports more architecture, and more hardware, which means more surface. About 7 times more on the Linux side, do not mix X11 into that :) X11 is a permanent security vulnerability. Every application can read each other application's mouse events, key strokes, and do screen grabs.
  - vermaden 8y ago
    > Which are, respectively, based on 4.9 and 4.11 in ports. The AMD has made large strides since then. In those kernels, the amdgpu driver barely supported Southern/Sea Islands. These work extremely well with recent kernels (much smoother than the old radeon driver). Vega cards only support graphical output since 4.15. Yes, its currently little older, but they catching up ;) > The FreeBSD website states that Wayland is not ready for general use. Wayland has been 'enabled' in many Linux distributions for years, but it took a long time to remove all the wrinkles. I haven't used it, so I do not know how mature it is. > I wonder: did you actually run a full GNOME desktop on Wayland on FreeBSD for a couple of months? I run 'light' with openbox/tint/dzen and do not prefer Desktop Environments, besides, for me it does not matter if it runs on X11 or on Wayland as the end result is the same, but as I did not used Wayland I will stop with conclusions here. > Linux is far more popular and most likely audited more as a result of that. So, it is not surprising that it has more CVEs. Also, the Linux kernel is a fair bit larger, supports more architecture, and more hardware, which means more surface. Microsoft Windows is magnitudes more popular then Linux, yet it has less holes, so its not only popularity. https://www.cvedetails.com/product/17153/Microsoft-Windows-7.html?vendor_id=26 https://www.cvedetails.com/product/17153/Microsoft-Windows-7...

Fnoord 8y ago

A lot of this boils down to preference. For example, I've never liked IPT and I believe the way you set up pf(.conf) makes a lot more sense and is easier to understand. You can work somewhat around that (and vice versa as well via pfctl) but I prefer PF. YMMV. Things like ifconfig and ip differ per *NIX which is bloody annoying. The macOS ifconfig and route differ a lot from the Linux one, for example adding a default gateway in Linux and FreeBSD with the route command requires different syntax/argument and just typing route on macOS doesn't yield the current routes (cause logic). As much as there is a learning curve involved, iproute2 is a great solution to simplify. There's even iproute2mac for if you're accustomed to iproute2 on Linux. It is a wrapper for ifconfig/route/etc though advanced arguments don't work. Systemd has the same problem iproute2 has: a learning curve of an integral part of the OS. As for snapshots, Windows, macOS, and Nix have that as well. Personally, I love the macOS desktop (and Mac in general with UNIX under the hood) but something like i3wm would also do the job. And I bet it'd run just as great on FreeBSD.

yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
> something like i3wm would also do the job. And I bet it'd run just as great on FreeBSD. It does. I use i3 everywhere, and once you've logged in, there's absolutely no difference across any Linux distro or BSD I've tried. Debian, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Alpine linux... short of actually running `uname`, it's not really possible to tell what the underlying system is.
vermaden 8y ago
> A lot of this boils down to preference. As everything in our lives, some prefer Linux, some prefer FreeBSD, some OpenBSD, some macOS, etc. > Systemd has the same problem iproute2 has: a learning curve of an integral part of the OS. Its not the learning, its just broken and I will not waste my or your time to discuss this again. ;) > As for snapshots, Windows, macOS, and Nix have that as well. Can you boot from them and preserve fully working UNMODIFIED system after upgrade? Nope. That is the difference in ZFS Boot Environments. I also used Mac OS X (it was called that way before it became macOS) and I also liked it, but I feel on FreeBSD more 'at home'. Regards, vermaden

foobarbazetc 8y ago

... what’s wrong with systemd? Or ip? Or netstat? Honestly though, systemd is actually a good thing. We write a single .service that works everywhere and takes care of ulimit, private tmp, cgroups/slices, etc, etc.

vermaden 8y ago
The ideas behind implementing something like systemd are good - check SMF on Solaris/Illumos or launchd on macOS. The systemd implementation is just bad - http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Arguments_against_systemd http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Arguments_against_... What about ip/ifconfig or netstat/ss? Deprecating good old tools by rewriting them over and over again with new bugs and not covering full features of the original instead of improving the well tested tools.