3 ms·

It just works, you don't have to deal with systemd, things are kept simple, it's rock solid, works quite well under load, the networking layer is performant, PF

by petre 7y ago

It just works, you don't have to deal with systemd, things are kept simple, it's rock solid, works quite well under load, the networking layer is performant, PF is a well designed firewall, the base system is very well integrated, the ports tree is very extensive, only Debian offers more packages I think. PostgresSQL also used to run a bit better on FreeBSD. Nowadays thanks to pkg installing and upgrading packages is easy. I have 11.3R instalations that were incrementaly upgraded from 8.0R. It fells like the OS is designed by greybeards that don't care too much about the latest and greatest hype, hence this article.

GordonS 7y ago
> It just works, you don't have to deal with systemd, things are kept simple, it's rock solid, works quite well under load, the networking layer is performant, PF is a well designed firewall I don't mean to offend, but TBH there isn't anything terribly compelling there. I don't care either way for SysV/systemD, but distros still using SysV exist if it matters to you. CentOS et al are rock solid and work well under load, and have performant networking layers. FirewallD and UFW are also good firewall systems.
- petre 7y ago
  If it works for you fine, for me systemd has been an annoyance at times, as in not predictable. Plus the mess of badly designed tools it brings with it (eg. systemd-resolved, journald). Never been a fan of SysV either. We also run openSuSE, Ubuntu and Debian. FirewallD and UFW are just layers above a not so greatly designed firewall setup tool (iptables). PF is very well integrated and can be easily used directly without any higher level layers. You can even add ALTQ queuing rules in its config file. I'm not trying to convince anyone, but FreeBSD has always worked great for me and has been a sane OS in every respect.
- JdeBP 7y ago
  > distros still using SysV exist if it matters to you As a BSD user, it wouldn't matter to xem at all. The BSDs never used the AT&T System 5 mechanism, nor its van Smoorenburg clone. It's you the Linux user that it matters to, and even then not nearly as much as you are implying it might matter to someone else. It pretty much hasn't mattered greatly to anyone apart from Linux, and before it Minix, users for 30 years. There is a fallacy in discussions of systemd, which was called out by the Uselessd Guy years ago. It is the fallacy that only systemd and van Smoorenburg init/rc exist. This is not the case. It wasn't the case for Ubuntu and Fedora. It is especially not so when a BSD is the topic. The BSDs have a quite different family heritage in this area. But then, AT&T Unix itself actually has a different history to what people who bandy about the erroneous "SysV/systemd" dichotomy think. The init/rc that Miquel van Smoorenburg cloned had actually already been superseded years before Linux was even invented. It wasn't used in the BSD side of the universe at all. But it was only a major mechanism in the AT&T side of the universe for just over half a decade, in the 1980s. The BSD side of the universe could turn around and observe that they were right all along; were it not for the fact that the other side of the universe largely thought better of the mechanism as well, coming up with the SAF in 1988 and the likes of the SRC in 1991. (-: Of course, the BSD world wasn't just standing still all of those years, moreover, and had things like /etc/rc.local.d/ and Mewburn rc. * https://web.archive.org/web/20190306213420/http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/ProSystemdAntiSystemd/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190306213420/http://uselessd.d... * http://jdebp.uk./FGA/rc.local-is-history.html http://jdebp.uk./FGA/rc.local-is-history.html * http://jdebp.uk./FGA/inittab-getty-is-history.html http://jdebp.uk./FGA/inittab-getty-is-history.html * http://jdebp.uk./FGA/run-levels-are-history.html http://jdebp.uk./FGA/run-levels-are-history.html * http://jdebp.uk./FGA/unix-service-access-facility.html http://jdebp.uk./FGA/unix-service-access-facility.html * https://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/ https://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/
  - GordonS 7y ago
    I have to say, I'm very confused by this, and I'm not really sure what you're trying to say. > As a BSD user, it wouldn't matter to xem at all I can only assume "xem" is some kind of "BSD thing"? > It's you the Linux user that it matters to... AT&T Unix itself actually has a different history to what people who bandy about the erroneous "SysV/systemd" dichotomy think... I did actually say I didn't care much either way, in part because I really didn't want to derail this thread into a sysv/systemd flamewar - I only wanted to know why I might use BSD over Linux.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
archbytheway 7y ago
Arch offers the most packages, bar none. You have the excellent base pacman package-system, and then you have AUR, which is easily sanitizable. You can quickly verify that even things from AUR, in Arch Linux, won't do anything fancy in a bad way. Thinking Debian and *BSD has more packages than Arch is retarded. And once you AUR something, could be anything, and, everything is easy to verify not doing any shenanigans, then the final built package is handled with the internal Arch Linux package system, ie pacman.

by petre 7y ago

GordonS 7y ago

> It just works, you don't have to deal with systemd, things are kept simple, it's rock solid, works quite well under load, the networking layer is performant, PF is a well designed firewall I don't mean to offend, but TBH there isn't anything terribly compelling there. I don't care either way for SysV/systemD, but distros still using SysV exist if it matters to you. CentOS et al are rock solid and work well under load, and have performant networking layers. FirewallD and UFW are also good firewall systems.

petre 7y ago
If it works for you fine, for me systemd has been an annoyance at times, as in not predictable. Plus the mess of badly designed tools it brings with it (eg. systemd-resolved, journald). Never been a fan of SysV either. We also run openSuSE, Ubuntu and Debian. FirewallD and UFW are just layers above a not so greatly designed firewall setup tool (iptables). PF is very well integrated and can be easily used directly without any higher level layers. You can even add ALTQ queuing rules in its config file. I'm not trying to convince anyone, but FreeBSD has always worked great for me and has been a sane OS in every respect.
JdeBP 7y ago
> distros still using SysV exist if it matters to you As a BSD user, it wouldn't matter to xem at all. The BSDs never used the AT&T System 5 mechanism, nor its van Smoorenburg clone. It's you the Linux user that it matters to, and even then not nearly as much as you are implying it might matter to someone else. It pretty much hasn't mattered greatly to anyone apart from Linux, and before it Minix, users for 30 years. There is a fallacy in discussions of systemd, which was called out by the Uselessd Guy years ago. It is the fallacy that only systemd and van Smoorenburg init/rc exist. This is not the case. It wasn't the case for Ubuntu and Fedora. It is especially not so when a BSD is the topic. The BSDs have a quite different family heritage in this area. But then, AT&T Unix itself actually has a different history to what people who bandy about the erroneous "SysV/systemd" dichotomy think. The init/rc that Miquel van Smoorenburg cloned had actually already been superseded years before Linux was even invented. It wasn't used in the BSD side of the universe at all. But it was only a major mechanism in the AT&T side of the universe for just over half a decade, in the 1980s. The BSD side of the universe could turn around and observe that they were right all along; were it not for the fact that the other side of the universe largely thought better of the mechanism as well, coming up with the SAF in 1988 and the likes of the SRC in 1991. (-: Of course, the BSD world wasn't just standing still all of those years, moreover, and had things like /etc/rc.local.d/ and Mewburn rc. * https://web.archive.org/web/20190306213420/http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/ProSystemdAntiSystemd/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190306213420/http://uselessd.d... * http://jdebp.uk./FGA/rc.local-is-history.html http://jdebp.uk./FGA/rc.local-is-history.html * http://jdebp.uk./FGA/inittab-getty-is-history.html http://jdebp.uk./FGA/inittab-getty-is-history.html * http://jdebp.uk./FGA/run-levels-are-history.html http://jdebp.uk./FGA/run-levels-are-history.html * http://jdebp.uk./FGA/unix-service-access-facility.html http://jdebp.uk./FGA/unix-service-access-facility.html * https://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/ https://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/
- GordonS 7y ago
  I have to say, I'm very confused by this, and I'm not really sure what you're trying to say. > As a BSD user, it wouldn't matter to xem at all I can only assume "xem" is some kind of "BSD thing"? > It's you the Linux user that it matters to... AT&T Unix itself actually has a different history to what people who bandy about the erroneous "SysV/systemd" dichotomy think... I did actually say I didn't care much either way, in part because I really didn't want to derail this thread into a sysv/systemd flamewar - I only wanted to know why I might use BSD over Linux.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

archbytheway 7y ago

Arch offers the most packages, bar none. You have the excellent base pacman package-system, and then you have AUR, which is easily sanitizable. You can quickly verify that even things from AUR, in Arch Linux, won't do anything fancy in a bad way. Thinking Debian and *BSD has more packages than Arch is retarded. And once you AUR something, could be anything, and, everything is easy to verify not doing any shenanigans, then the final built package is handled with the internal Arch Linux package system, ie pacman.