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FreeBSD is an entire operating system. Linux is just a kernel used in hundreds of different distros. It is correct that they are both UNIX like derivatives.

FreeBSD is an entire operating system. Linux is just a kernel used in hundreds of different distros. It is correct that they are both UNIX like derivatives. FreeBSD is based on the BSD license, Linux on the GPL (this is important if you want to make something proprietary, like the PS4). Most major Linux distros have different package managers and you download binary updates. They supply their own kernel with backports and custom compiled to stay in sync with the rest of their userland. In FreeBSD the kernel and userland are in sync so you dont have this issue. Linux has better driver support due to more exposure to hardware. You can go one for quite a while about how different they are, so they are very different. But you are right it is user preference. (I excluded systemd and init to avoid a holy war)

Koshkin 8y ago
> Linux is just a kernel Well, this mantra is really getting old - because when people say "Linux" they almost never talk about Linux-the-kernel. Which is also why, for instance, nobody calls Android "Linux", but when referring to Ubuntu, Slackware, etc., they do.
- umanwizard 8y ago
  You are misunderstanding. It actually makes a huge difference. Let's compare apples to apples: Ubuntu vs. FreeBSD. In Ubuntu there is a kernel made by one group (the Linux project), a bunch of userland tools and C compiler made by another group (the GNU project), desktop environment made by the GNOME project, etc. etc. Whereas FreeBSD is just FreeBSD. It is one project, in one source tree, maintained by one group of people. (The biggest exception to this is the C compiler -- it is a third-party project which gets imported into the main tree. But that's a minor thing compared to Ubuntu which does this for everything.)
  - laumars 8y ago
    That's not really the best of examples because the C compiler and desktop environments are not part of FreeBSD's base system, let alone developed by FreeBSD devs. In that regard Ubuntu and FreeBSD are similar. I'd have probably gone with init daemons, ABIs and other core systems. Maybe mention how some of the base CLI tools differ (eg GNU has slightly different flags and rules for ordering them for `cp`, `find`, `ps`, etc). FreeBSD is a bit of a gateway drug in that it's the most like GNU of all the BSDs. Had you use OpenBSD as your point of comparison then the differences would have been easier to describe. But ultimately you're always going to get some cross-pollination across all the POSIX platforms (eg GNU/Linux uses OpenBSD's OpenSSH; FreeBSD has a bunch of GNU tools; and all of the above platforms will run most DEs, Apache projects, etc). That's a good thing though - it was the point of POSIX. I just wish there wasn't so many differences with syscalls - but that's moan about a very specific problem I'm having on a current hobby project.
    - Koshkin 8y ago
      > the C compiler Or any desktop environment, for that matter, or much of everything else of any importance for the end user.
      - laumars 8y ago
        This is literally what I just said. Including the desktop environment example.
    - umanwizard 8y ago
      The C compiler is in fact part of the FreeBSD base system (if it weren't, you would need to install a port just to update from source. You don't.) You are right that it's one of the few pieces that is developed outside the project (and periodically imported into the tree). It is, on the other hand, fully supported. Bugs in the C compiler are considered bugs in the OS and will be fixed. I don't need a desktop environment or care about having one, so it not being part of the core OS doesn't bother me. I'll copy-and-paste my thoughts on why I like FreeBSD from an earlier comment I made: "Every one I have used installs the source code to the entire OS in /usr/src and make it very easy to change and recompile the system. On the BSDs I mentioned, if you don't understand how something works or you want to fix some bug, it's usually pretty easy to go find the source code, read it and learn how it works, and fix it. On most Linux-based OSs you would have to go figure out which random organization makes the component that has a bug (Linux project for the kernel, GNU for a lot of utilities, zillions of others for everything else), figure out how to download and build the source and install it into your distro (which is probably totally unsupported since your distro will expect to be using RPMs or DEBs rather than random stuff installed from tarballs...) This is the most salient feature of the modern pc BSDs to me. It's impossible to describe how different it feels to be truly in control of your system and understand/change it however you want."
      - laumars 8y ago
        Preaching to the choir there; im a fully paid up FreeBSD contributor and use it on several personal systems. It’s a great platform to use :) The reason I brought the DE into the equation was simply because it was being compared against Ubuntu. I don’t really think Ubuntu is the best case study there either to be honest but I’m just following on from the post that preceded me.
loeg 8y ago
> In FreeBSD the kernel and userland are in sync so you dont have this issue. This is true for the base system, but not necessarily true for ports / pkg. You can end up with an inconsistent pkg collection, unfortunately.
- toast0 8y ago
  Sure, but you would never run into having the wrong version of ifconfig, because it's not distributed through ports, it's in in the same repo as the kernel, so they are distributed together.
  - loeg 8y ago
    Yep, I believe that is consistent with my earlier comment :-).
    - siffland 8y ago
      What is awesome with FreeBSD is when you can do a rm -Rf /var/db/pkg/* /usr/local/* /usr/ports/distfiles/* reboot the system and all the non OS packages (installed via ports and packages) are gone and you can start over (reboot is probably optional).
- umanwizard 8y ago
  Of course, but this is true for any OS. Some random freeware you download isn't magically going to be in sync with your release of Windows, either. In FreeBSD at least there is a real, fully-featured, usable OS out of the box, all consistent, in one source tree at /usr/src which is quite easy to read, change, and build. Unlike most GNU/Linux distros where each random thing like "grep" is its own package developed by its own separate group of people.
  - loeg 8y ago
    Allow me to clarify: the way FreeBSD ports are built, updated, and pushed to mirrors means that ABI compatibility may sneak in accidentally and that updating subsets of your installed package base is unreliable and may introduce, e.g., applications that depend on missing SONAMEs. Linux distros avoid this problem by separating the process of committing to an individual port/source package; building that individual package, and possibly rebuilding dependencies; and pushing out updates, which are atomic and can contain an updated library and all of its dependencies. My experience is that Linux package managers (dnf/rpm anyway) are better at catching operations that would introduce broken ABIs, as well. In contrast, the FreeBSD ports model is to invoke poudriere periodically and rebuild all ports at once, then push the entire set out to mirrors. There is no automation that checks for ABI changes in libraries, and pkg(1) does not do a great job of confirming that a library upgrade does not break installed programs (or other libraries) via SONAME bump; much less symbol changes not reflected in SONAME.

Koshkin 8y ago

> Linux is just a kernel Well, this mantra is really getting old - because when people say "Linux" they almost never talk about Linux-the-kernel. Which is also why, for instance, nobody calls Android "Linux", but when referring to Ubuntu, Slackware, etc., they do.

umanwizard 8y ago
You are misunderstanding. It actually makes a huge difference. Let's compare apples to apples: Ubuntu vs. FreeBSD. In Ubuntu there is a kernel made by one group (the Linux project), a bunch of userland tools and C compiler made by another group (the GNU project), desktop environment made by the GNOME project, etc. etc. Whereas FreeBSD is just FreeBSD. It is one project, in one source tree, maintained by one group of people. (The biggest exception to this is the C compiler -- it is a third-party project which gets imported into the main tree. But that's a minor thing compared to Ubuntu which does this for everything.)
- laumars 8y ago
  That's not really the best of examples because the C compiler and desktop environments are not part of FreeBSD's base system, let alone developed by FreeBSD devs. In that regard Ubuntu and FreeBSD are similar. I'd have probably gone with init daemons, ABIs and other core systems. Maybe mention how some of the base CLI tools differ (eg GNU has slightly different flags and rules for ordering them for `cp`, `find`, `ps`, etc). FreeBSD is a bit of a gateway drug in that it's the most like GNU of all the BSDs. Had you use OpenBSD as your point of comparison then the differences would have been easier to describe. But ultimately you're always going to get some cross-pollination across all the POSIX platforms (eg GNU/Linux uses OpenBSD's OpenSSH; FreeBSD has a bunch of GNU tools; and all of the above platforms will run most DEs, Apache projects, etc). That's a good thing though - it was the point of POSIX. I just wish there wasn't so many differences with syscalls - but that's moan about a very specific problem I'm having on a current hobby project.
  - Koshkin 8y ago
    > the C compiler Or any desktop environment, for that matter, or much of everything else of any importance for the end user.
    - laumars 8y ago
      This is literally what I just said. Including the desktop environment example.
  - umanwizard 8y ago
    The C compiler is in fact part of the FreeBSD base system (if it weren't, you would need to install a port just to update from source. You don't.) You are right that it's one of the few pieces that is developed outside the project (and periodically imported into the tree). It is, on the other hand, fully supported. Bugs in the C compiler are considered bugs in the OS and will be fixed. I don't need a desktop environment or care about having one, so it not being part of the core OS doesn't bother me. I'll copy-and-paste my thoughts on why I like FreeBSD from an earlier comment I made: "Every one I have used installs the source code to the entire OS in /usr/src and make it very easy to change and recompile the system. On the BSDs I mentioned, if you don't understand how something works or you want to fix some bug, it's usually pretty easy to go find the source code, read it and learn how it works, and fix it. On most Linux-based OSs you would have to go figure out which random organization makes the component that has a bug (Linux project for the kernel, GNU for a lot of utilities, zillions of others for everything else), figure out how to download and build the source and install it into your distro (which is probably totally unsupported since your distro will expect to be using RPMs or DEBs rather than random stuff installed from tarballs...) This is the most salient feature of the modern pc BSDs to me. It's impossible to describe how different it feels to be truly in control of your system and understand/change it however you want."
    - laumars 8y ago
      Preaching to the choir there; im a fully paid up FreeBSD contributor and use it on several personal systems. It’s a great platform to use :) The reason I brought the DE into the equation was simply because it was being compared against Ubuntu. I don’t really think Ubuntu is the best case study there either to be honest but I’m just following on from the post that preceded me.

loeg 8y ago

> In FreeBSD the kernel and userland are in sync so you dont have this issue. This is true for the base system, but not necessarily true for ports / pkg. You can end up with an inconsistent pkg collection, unfortunately.

toast0 8y ago
Sure, but you would never run into having the wrong version of ifconfig, because it's not distributed through ports, it's in in the same repo as the kernel, so they are distributed together.
- loeg 8y ago
  Yep, I believe that is consistent with my earlier comment :-).
  - siffland 8y ago
    What is awesome with FreeBSD is when you can do a rm -Rf /var/db/pkg/* /usr/local/* /usr/ports/distfiles/* reboot the system and all the non OS packages (installed via ports and packages) are gone and you can start over (reboot is probably optional).
umanwizard 8y ago
Of course, but this is true for any OS. Some random freeware you download isn't magically going to be in sync with your release of Windows, either. In FreeBSD at least there is a real, fully-featured, usable OS out of the box, all consistent, in one source tree at /usr/src which is quite easy to read, change, and build. Unlike most GNU/Linux distros where each random thing like "grep" is its own package developed by its own separate group of people.
- loeg 8y ago
  Allow me to clarify: the way FreeBSD ports are built, updated, and pushed to mirrors means that ABI compatibility may sneak in accidentally and that updating subsets of your installed package base is unreliable and may introduce, e.g., applications that depend on missing SONAMEs. Linux distros avoid this problem by separating the process of committing to an individual port/source package; building that individual package, and possibly rebuilding dependencies; and pushing out updates, which are atomic and can contain an updated library and all of its dependencies. My experience is that Linux package managers (dnf/rpm anyway) are better at catching operations that would introduce broken ABIs, as well. In contrast, the FreeBSD ports model is to invoke poudriere periodically and rebuild all ports at once, then push the entire set out to mirrors. There is no automation that checks for ABI changes in libraries, and pkg(1) does not do a great job of confirming that a library upgrade does not break installed programs (or other libraries) via SONAME bump; much less symbol changes not reflected in SONAME.