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I've been on linux for many years, and have been growing curious about BSDs, but confused over the various BSDs variants. I'm still unclear of how exactly BSDs

I've been on linux for many years, and have been growing curious about BSDs, but confused over the various BSDs variants. I'm still unclear of how exactly BSDs are superior to linux. Could you shine a light on the different BSDS, and perhaps a recommendation?

owenmarshall 6y ago
The biggest thing you'll find over Linux (IMO) is the advantage of having one team build things. Linux the OS is actually the Linux kernel + userspace software, and those pieces are built independently. With the BSDs, the team is building the userspace and kernel together. You end up with a small, well-designed system that fits together nicely. As an example, OpenBSD gives you a HTTP server, load balancer, and firewall right out of the box – and they all make use of pledge(2) and privsep and other security designs in a very consistent manner. And the documentation for the whole system is top-notch: you can read their manpages and not have to resort to Googling things. I'd recommend you spin up OpenBSD on a VPC (try Vultr or DigitalOcean) and kick it around.
- sn 6y ago
  One thing we couldn't figure out from the documentation is encrypted root with serial console: https://prgmr.com/blog/openbsd/2020/05/08/openbsd-encrypted-root.html https://prgmr.com/blog/openbsd/2020/05/08/openbsd-encrypted-... I have gotten it on someone's TODO list to upstream that work though it hasn't happened yet.
- danieldk 6y ago
  Linux the OS is actually the Linux kernel + userspace software, and those pieces are built independently. With the BSDs, the team is building the userspace and kernel together. You end up with a small, well-designed system that fits together nicely. That's a blessing and a curse. While the BSD approach leads to more consistency, the Linux approach allows the ecosystem to move faster. In BSD projects, progress is often hampered, because proposals to drastically change subsystems is met with inertia, and then nothing happens. In Linux the inertia is there, but nobody stops people from implementing an alternative implementation, because the pieces are relatively decoupled, and then convince distributions to adopt the replacement. This is why Linux ecosystem went from System V init -> Upstart -> systemd. Similarly, X11 -> Mir/Wayland -> Wayland (although Wayland could be adopted as a default on BSDs as well). Or chroot -> LXC -> Docker (or more generally cgroups + user namespaces). Although controversial (every change leads to some controversy), technically systemd and Wayland are substantial improvements to their predecessors. Of course, the downside is that the integration is left to the distributors and the documentation may be inconsistent or uneven. --- Another thing to take into accounts when looking at BSDs is that the BSDs have far fewer contributors than the Linux ecosystem. So, you might find that it lacks basic things such as 802.11ac support (though there has recently been movement in FreeBSD again) or support for the newest GPUs.
billsix 6y ago
https://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/01 https://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/01
brobdingnagians 6y ago
OpenBSD is very elegant and secure; upgrading is as simple as 'sysupgrade'. The developers use it for desktop/laptop usage, so setting up X is supported in the installer. They have a lot of their own lean, minimalistic applications that focus on security and code correctness. Things like httpd, relayd, OpenSSH, their own secure X11 (Xenocara), pf firewall, and lots more. I love setting up servers with OpenBSD because for most things those work very well for my needs. They work well together and do what they do well. I use it for my desktop, application servers, load balancers, and so on. FreeBSD has noticeably higher performance, more packages, and is great for things like databases, virtualization, or application servers that are behind a load balancer or firewall. It has a lot of the OpenBSD applications ported to it though, so you can run pf or relayd on FreeBSD just fine. It's a bit more convenient to run FreeBSD for some things because of extensive packages (FreeBSD has things like C++ actor framework in packages, doesn't currently compile on OpenBSD). The jetbrains IDEs are better supported on FreeBSD than on OpenBSD too. (I've made some personal modifications to get things working on OpenBSD). Integrated ZFS is really nice for databases and storage servers as well. I don't have much experience with NetBSD, but it is portable to all kinds of things (e.g. toasters), and they have done some neat things with rump kernels. Dragonfly BSD has some cool experimental stuff with SMT and hammer filesystem, but I haven't played around with it much. EDIT: A few nice things in comparing BSD to Linux. ZFS on FreeBSD is nicely integrated w/ the kernel. In general, I think solutions in BSD take longer to come around than Linux, but when they do they are well designed and thought through. Things just seem to fit better. From what I've observed, the community thinks things through and often recommend that someone use Linux if it would work better for the use case. That is a fantastic level of maturity; like when the hardware store guy recommends the competitor store down the street, because they will have what I need.
- valarauko 6y ago
  Is it possible to use a BSD as a daily driver on your primary computer? Compared to a usual linux disto (eg, Pop! OS, my current driver), what's the drawbacks?
  - retro64 6y ago
    Yes, but maybe not 100%, depending. I have been using FreeBSD as my primary driver since 2006, and have been without a Windows box or partition since Win 10 was hatched. But, while I can accomplish 99% of what I want to do in BSD, I use Linux for the rest. I’ll resist the fanboi post and just say the usual things you hear about BSD vs. Linux (good and bad) are true. Personally I appreciate the rock solid consistency (configuration, file system, runtime) I’ve gained from FreeBSD, but it’s not a commercially supported OS and there are times I’ve had to fall back to Linux (GOG games are one example).

owenmarshall 6y ago

The biggest thing you'll find over Linux (IMO) is the advantage of having one team build things. Linux the OS is actually the Linux kernel + userspace software, and those pieces are built independently. With the BSDs, the team is building the userspace and kernel together. You end up with a small, well-designed system that fits together nicely. As an example, OpenBSD gives you a HTTP server, load balancer, and firewall right out of the box – and they all make use of pledge(2) and privsep and other security designs in a very consistent manner. And the documentation for the whole system is top-notch: you can read their manpages and not have to resort to Googling things. I'd recommend you spin up OpenBSD on a VPC (try Vultr or DigitalOcean) and kick it around.

sn 6y ago
One thing we couldn't figure out from the documentation is encrypted root with serial console: https://prgmr.com/blog/openbsd/2020/05/08/openbsd-encrypted-root.html https://prgmr.com/blog/openbsd/2020/05/08/openbsd-encrypted-... I have gotten it on someone's TODO list to upstream that work though it hasn't happened yet.
danieldk 6y ago
Linux the OS is actually the Linux kernel + userspace software, and those pieces are built independently. With the BSDs, the team is building the userspace and kernel together. You end up with a small, well-designed system that fits together nicely. That's a blessing and a curse. While the BSD approach leads to more consistency, the Linux approach allows the ecosystem to move faster. In BSD projects, progress is often hampered, because proposals to drastically change subsystems is met with inertia, and then nothing happens. In Linux the inertia is there, but nobody stops people from implementing an alternative implementation, because the pieces are relatively decoupled, and then convince distributions to adopt the replacement. This is why Linux ecosystem went from System V init -> Upstart -> systemd. Similarly, X11 -> Mir/Wayland -> Wayland (although Wayland could be adopted as a default on BSDs as well). Or chroot -> LXC -> Docker (or more generally cgroups + user namespaces). Although controversial (every change leads to some controversy), technically systemd and Wayland are substantial improvements to their predecessors. Of course, the downside is that the integration is left to the distributors and the documentation may be inconsistent or uneven. --- Another thing to take into accounts when looking at BSDs is that the BSDs have far fewer contributors than the Linux ecosystem. So, you might find that it lacks basic things such as 802.11ac support (though there has recently been movement in FreeBSD again) or support for the newest GPUs.

billsix 6y ago

https://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/01 https://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/01

brobdingnagians 6y ago

OpenBSD is very elegant and secure; upgrading is as simple as 'sysupgrade'. The developers use it for desktop/laptop usage, so setting up X is supported in the installer. They have a lot of their own lean, minimalistic applications that focus on security and code correctness. Things like httpd, relayd, OpenSSH, their own secure X11 (Xenocara), pf firewall, and lots more. I love setting up servers with OpenBSD because for most things those work very well for my needs. They work well together and do what they do well. I use it for my desktop, application servers, load balancers, and so on. FreeBSD has noticeably higher performance, more packages, and is great for things like databases, virtualization, or application servers that are behind a load balancer or firewall. It has a lot of the OpenBSD applications ported to it though, so you can run pf or relayd on FreeBSD just fine. It's a bit more convenient to run FreeBSD for some things because of extensive packages (FreeBSD has things like C++ actor framework in packages, doesn't currently compile on OpenBSD). The jetbrains IDEs are better supported on FreeBSD than on OpenBSD too. (I've made some personal modifications to get things working on OpenBSD). Integrated ZFS is really nice for databases and storage servers as well. I don't have much experience with NetBSD, but it is portable to all kinds of things (e.g. toasters), and they have done some neat things with rump kernels. Dragonfly BSD has some cool experimental stuff with SMT and hammer filesystem, but I haven't played around with it much. EDIT: A few nice things in comparing BSD to Linux. ZFS on FreeBSD is nicely integrated w/ the kernel. In general, I think solutions in BSD take longer to come around than Linux, but when they do they are well designed and thought through. Things just seem to fit better. From what I've observed, the community thinks things through and often recommend that someone use Linux if it would work better for the use case. That is a fantastic level of maturity; like when the hardware store guy recommends the competitor store down the street, because they will have what I need.

valarauko 6y ago
Is it possible to use a BSD as a daily driver on your primary computer? Compared to a usual linux disto (eg, Pop! OS, my current driver), what's the drawbacks?
- retro64 6y ago
  Yes, but maybe not 100%, depending. I have been using FreeBSD as my primary driver since 2006, and have been without a Windows box or partition since Win 10 was hatched. But, while I can accomplish 99% of what I want to do in BSD, I use Linux for the rest. I’ll resist the fanboi post and just say the usual things you hear about BSD vs. Linux (good and bad) are true. Personally I appreciate the rock solid consistency (configuration, file system, runtime) I’ve gained from FreeBSD, but it’s not a commercially supported OS and there are times I’ve had to fall back to Linux (GOG games are one example).