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Been a FreeBSD user for very long time besides Linux Slackware distributions since kernel 1.0. Started with Walnut Creek CD distributions. In early years it was
by dragonsh 7y ago
Been a FreeBSD user for very long time besides Linux Slackware distributions since kernel 1.0. Started with Walnut Creek CD distributions. In early years it was much better than Linux with its fast networking stack and filesystem. Also it gives a sense of conceptual integrity as distribution is not just kernel but all the utilities, they work together in unison. But than it also hamper innovation due to design by committee vs the best tool for the job.
Now with time and various flavours of Linux from NixOS, GuixSD, Gentoo, LFS, Slackware, arch, Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, OracleOS etc., it is in many case a better choice than FreeBSD.
In most benchmarks and hardware support it has surpassed FreeBSD. I still hope FreeBSD continue to grow and innovate, but it’s not a viable choice in many areas of modern computing. Hopefully it can catch up. It still is a very viable choice in building network devices, but there also with modern hardware support Linux is giving it a tough competition.
I still use FreeBSD, but my majority production workload now is Linux with some firewall and networking related stuff in FreeBSD and openBSD.
I did try portable FreeBSD based version like dragonfly and pcbsd. But now I don’t use them that often.
- proverbialbunny 7y agoAs a counter to this, if you're working on network software that uses a lot of bandwidth and a lot of open connections, BSD is a bit more stable than Linux, so it's generally a better choice for that at least.
- jauer 7y agoThis hasn't been a significant issue for a while now, to the point that Linux is used on cache appliances from the FAANG (though Netflix is notable for using FreeBSD in that role).
- dsies 7y agoThis is dangerous advice. BSD networking stack may have been superior at some point but that hasn’t been the case for many years now. You are very likely to run into issues trying to do filtering and/or routing at anything >1Gbps on commodity hardware (ie. e1000 nics). Pf is pretty but it’s not worth trading stability for.
- swills 7y agoipfw is faster
- kyuudou 7y agoDid Juniper stop using FreeBSD recently? Also, Force10's FTOS has used NetBSD as a base certainly less than "many years now". Force10's L3 switches are at 1GB, 10GB and 40GB speeds IIRC.
- sigjuice 7y agoThe Force10 speeds are most likely not directly due to NetBSD, but from custom or specialized silicon.
- effie 7y agoIsn't 1Gbps the highest throughput of such hardware?
- agapon 7y agoFreeBSD network stack has always remained rather stable. In terms of performance Linux caught up and even overtook at some point, but lately Netflix did a lot of performance improvements for FreeBSD. So, your information could be outdated.
- mekster 7y agoNo citation on such a big claim?