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While the BSD userland is very high quality (unlike Linux), the kernels aren't as good as Linux. The performance is noticeably worse, many of drivers are absent

by smabie 7y ago

While the BSD userland is very high quality (unlike Linux), the kernels aren't as good as Linux. The performance is noticeably worse, many of drivers are absent, and some kernel interfaces are different. Moreover, they tend to be less flexible than Linux as well. I guarantee that it would be easier to switch to LLVM from GCC or replace glibc with musl than swap out the kernel with any BSD.

yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
1. I don't think that's a meaningful counterpoint in this argument; busybox (intentionally) comes nowhere close to GNU's coreutils, musl tracks standards and foregoes glibc's extensions (mostly? I don't know if they've added any in the name of compatibility), and clang doesn't match gcc for sheer supported target platforms. If we're claiming that the GNU userland can be replaced, then I don't see where BSD kernel's don't count just as much. 2. That said, I also disagree that the BSD kernels are inferior. Linux is catching up to FreeBSD's network performance, but it is playing catch up. NetBSD, AFAIK, blows Linux out of the water in terms of hardware support, although it is behind on newer stuff. As to kernel interfaces, of course they're different, but I'm not convinced that that's bad. (ex. I've not used kqueue, but I'm told that it's far better than the Linux equivalent.) Now all that said, I'm happy to grant that Linux is certainly benefiting from the sheer number of devs they've got, and is a good all-arounder; less secure than OpenBSD, less portable than NetBSD, less performant than DragonFly BSD, but secure enough, portable to most hardware in wide use, and performant enough for most users. But it's not universally superior.
- smabie 7y ago
  DragonflyBSD's performance does not beat Linux. See https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=freebsd12-dragon54-linux&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=freebsd1... In fact DragonflyBSD is slower than FreeBSD in most benchmarks. I've always been under the impression that FreeBSD is for performance (though worse than Linux), OpenBSD is security and correctness (my favorite of the bunch), NetBSD is portability, and DragonflyBSD is for experimental crazy shit (my second favorite).

by smabie 7y ago

yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago

1. I don't think that's a meaningful counterpoint in this argument; busybox (intentionally) comes nowhere close to GNU's coreutils, musl tracks standards and foregoes glibc's extensions (mostly? I don't know if they've added any in the name of compatibility), and clang doesn't match gcc for sheer supported target platforms. If we're claiming that the GNU userland can be replaced, then I don't see where BSD kernel's don't count just as much. 2. That said, I also disagree that the BSD kernels are inferior. Linux is catching up to FreeBSD's network performance, but it is playing catch up. NetBSD, AFAIK, blows Linux out of the water in terms of hardware support, although it is behind on newer stuff. As to kernel interfaces, of course they're different, but I'm not convinced that that's bad. (ex. I've not used kqueue, but I'm told that it's far better than the Linux equivalent.) Now all that said, I'm happy to grant that Linux is certainly benefiting from the sheer number of devs they've got, and is a good all-arounder; less secure than OpenBSD, less portable than NetBSD, less performant than DragonFly BSD, but secure enough, portable to most hardware in wide use, and performant enough for most users. But it's not universally superior.

smabie 7y ago
DragonflyBSD's performance does not beat Linux. See https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=freebsd12-dragon54-linux&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=freebsd1... In fact DragonflyBSD is slower than FreeBSD in most benchmarks. I've always been under the impression that FreeBSD is for performance (though worse than Linux), OpenBSD is security and correctness (my favorite of the bunch), NetBSD is portability, and DragonflyBSD is for experimental crazy shit (my second favorite).