7 ms·

I never understood why you would use BSD instead of Linux. It it just a preference, or is there really a benefit?

by andix 5y ago

selfhoster11 5y ago
Preventing software monoculture, for one. The same argument could have been made about using Linux instead of Windows not that long ago.
- nix23 5y ago
  The terrible 1995-2000, where Dec and Solaris boxes where thrown away and shiny windows servers run everywhere, not one day without a hard reset.
- Koshkin 5y ago
  To be fair, when faced with a need to make a practical decision on whether to use a Linux or a BSD preventing software monoculture is the last thing on my mind. (In fact, my decision would often be influenced by wanting to keep the infrastructure as uniform as possible.)
nix23 5y ago
Yes it's a massive benefit (for me), but i don't tell you which one, because would you believe me that linux is better for server and development then windows without testing it out for yourself?
pjmlp 5y ago
BSDs actually descends from UNIX and had it not been for the AT&T litigation, most likely Linux kernel wouldn't have had the uptake it had. Additionally we don't need UNIX monoculture.
- ggm 5y ago
  I don't entirely agree. The SYSV vs BSD thing was constant before either (Free,Net,Open)BSD and Linux came into a rivalry. I was there, using both across the timescale (I'd been doing sysadmin and development work on V7, Unix 32V, BSD4.1->4.2 (thats sockets) and then Ultrix/Solaris &c) SYSV had streams/STREAMS when BSD had sockets. Arguably streams is a superior model. NFS came to the fore in BSD. SYSV had RFS. It was a different model of network filestore. MGR -> v8 ->Plan9 was there too. There has always been room for more than one viewpoint of what a UNIX conforming system is. The rise of Linux has a lot to do with licence terms (for some reason the BSD 4 clause hold harmless appealed more to the embedded market) and the natural tendency of some driver vendors to write for Linux. Google deciding to deploy linux at scale inside the borg, and as Android was recognition of reality. Van Jacobsen, who did a lot of work on TCP tuning and congestion control in the BSD kernel, wound up in Google, and stopped developing for BSD. So, BBR (for instance) came to BSD late and only because Netflix sponsored it. A bunch of the GPU driving space, WiFi card blobs, they're in Linux kernel before BSD. Docker hasn't been ported to BSD notwithstanding the possibly superior models in Jails and Bhyve, the supremacy of Dockerfile has to be understood as "mindshare" TL;DR BSD lost a lot of "mindshare" but there was always room for a BSD-vs-SYSV-vs-Plan9 thinking, from before-times.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    I was also there, and unless we are talking about embedded space, we are approaching a UNIX === Linux monoculture, versus how it used to be. As you very well point out, BSD lost a lot of mind share, and if it wasn't for macOS, it would probably matter even less. Hence why it matters to keep diversity alive.
toast0 5y ago
Why do you use Linux instead of BSD? It's the same question. Some potential reasons for using FreeBSD: It's the same three firewalls forever, not a progression of different firewalls. Old knowledge still works, for example, netstat is still the way to list socket connections and ifconfig is still the way to configure interfaces. I did some work with FreeBSD in 1999, and then nothing until 2004, and all the knowledge transferred, then in 2011 I changed jobs and skipped ahead several versions, and again all the knowledge transferred. But I kind of stopped using Linux heavily in 2013, and when I had to work on it at work in 2016, all the tools had changed, so I had to relearn (or just avoid the Linux part of my job, which I had the luxury of doing). Official kernel support for ZFS. Receive side scaling support is nice, if you need it; although I guess not a lot of people do. Different positions on philisophical arguments like an integrated source repository with the kernel and the base userland software, or init systems.
- bombcar 5y ago
  The "old knowledge" thing is a huge one - I know there are reasons why Linux keeps changing which firewall manager you're supposed to use and now we do ip addr show instead of ifconfig eth0 but it is annoying to keep up. I know Linus has a "don't break userland" theory which causes some of the above, but it breaks MY userland memory when I have to learn new tools. Of course if you stay with Ubuntu you'll find fifty thousand posts on whatever question you have.
  - AshamedCaptain 5y ago
    > I know Linus has a "don't break userland" theory which causes some of the above And the worst part, Linux actually breaks userland _way_ more often than any of the *BSDs... "Moving what should have been dev nodes to sysfs since 2010 (TM), then reorganizing sysfs every couple years..."
    - bombcar 5y ago
      This is where the *BSD trees including the kernel and the distribution also helps - they can keep the “user interface” the same while still updating everything. Linux seems to have to create a new way of doing something because there’s no guarantee they can get the distributions to update the tooling.
Koshkin 5y ago
The way I see it, there’s a bigger difference between some Linux distributions than between, say, Slackware Linux and a BSD, so one could also ask why someone would use Arch instead of Ubuntu (or the other way around).
linguae 5y ago
I use FreeBSD on my servers and for research for the following reasons: 1. The documentation is excellent. The man pages are well-written and have useful examples, and the FreeBSD Handbook and Developer Guide are great resources. 2. First-class support for features such as ZFS and Dtrace. 3. This is a preference, but I like the BSDs' conservatism when it comes to adding new features. It seems that new features in the BSDs seem to be more in line with the Unix philosophy (similar to the Solaris and Joyent communities' attitudes), while the Linux community seems to be more willing to add features that may solve problems, but not necessarily in the way that some diehard Unix users would (e.g., PulseAudio, systemd). With that being said, I use Linux for work and in the WSL environment on my Microsoft Surface tablet. Linux is also a great operating system, and sometimes I need to use Linux instead of FreeBSD for hardware and software support reasons (for example, I use CUDA for my job, which needs Linux).
rwaksmunski 5y ago
FreeBSD has superior: - package management (pkg & ports) - file system (native ZFS) - instrumentation (systat & dtrace) - documentation (handbook & examples in most man pages) - event notification interface (kqueue vs broken by design epoll & inotify) - license (BSD, no GPLv3 at all) - stability (POLA) - quality control (no shellshock, no dataloss on fsync) - network performance (200gbps TLS encrypted traffic on a single socket at Netflix, millions of open connections per server at WhatsApp) - scaling (there is no cliff when resources get saturated just a bit of a "back pressure") It adds up to the point where I see some companies keep their use of FreeBSD secret as a competitive advantage. On the other hand I really like what Alpine Linux is doing.
- kiwijamo 5y ago
  Agree with all except the package management part. I switched to Debian after 15 years using FreeBSD simply due to how much better apt is. I don't have much time so unattended-upgrades is a live saver for me. I do miss FreeBSD though, it is really well designed and thought out but it is more suited to people who are happy to maintain the packages regularly especially when there are major upgrades. A recent example is the change in the default version for Python which needed some manual intervention to sort out the packages. Somethjng that honestly apt does much better.
  - drewg123 5y ago
    Whatever happened to debian built around FreeBSD? (debian kFreeBSD?). Did systemd kill it?
    - toast0 5y ago
      I tried it circa 2012 (on a macbook, which was clearly a bad choice, but work told me I would love a mac and I didn't so might as well try other bad things). It was kind of a mess, I recall having trouble with basic networking utilities because they tried to provide GNU tools, but they didn't really work and you'd need to get the FreeBSD tools anyway, which was tricky because those weren't packaged.
  - 5y ago
ulzeraj 5y ago
I speak for myself. OpenBSD and FreeBSD are a joy to use. Haven't checked on NetBSD but that's what I would use if I had a m68k system lying around.
- nix23 5y ago
  Or check it out for free at https://sdf.org https://sdf.org
  - ulzeraj 5y ago
    Thats very cool but I want the m68k experience. While at it are there similar services for public testing? I briefly remember some years ago IBM allowing shell access to one of their then new POWER systems.
    - nix23 5y ago
      >IBM allowing shell access to one of their then new POWER systems. Can remember that too, was sponsored by IBM at some university, but it's closed long ago, was actually really cool.
      - ulzeraj 5y ago
        Oh... here I am again. Found this: https://openpower.ic.unicamp.br/minicloud/ https://openpower.ic.unicamp.br/minicloud/ This Brazilian university provides free access to a Power system for developers who want to port their applications. It looks like you can actually run your own virtual machines in a cloud-like environment: https://youtu.be/TE_4UKHrjwE https://youtu.be/TE_4UKHrjwE
vogon_laureate 5y ago
I got into BSD around the late 1990s. At the time, Linux distros like the famous Red Hat 5 series, SUSE and Caldera were touting the ease of install with graphical GUIs and X windows environments. I tried them all but found that I wasn't learning how to actually use the terminal commands or understand the startup scripts or filesystem very well. I then tried the BSDs and finally felt like I was beginning to understand how everything fit together and appreciated the whole system architecture better. Man pages were detailed and precise. Ports and packages were a breeze to install. For me, it made all the difference. I settled on OpenBSD for the security emphasis and my first project was to install a proper firewall for my office. It was a joy to setup. Config files were simple and clear. The firewall itself was incredibly powerful (since superseded by the even better PF https://www.openbsd.org/faq/pf/ https://www.openbsd.org/faq/pf/). I haven't looked back ever since. Whenever I have to work in a Linux environment, I shudder at the number of processes running, the confusing filesystem decisions of each distro, the poor Man pages and the behemoth that is systemd. I really wish BSDs got more attention and support from developers and users. They really are fantastic operating systems, each with their own particular specialisations (NetBSD - portability, OpenBSD - security, FreeBSD - general purpose, DragonflyBSD - clustering, SMP). Also, obligatory User Friendly strip link: http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990320.html http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990320...
gnubison 5y ago
I like the BSDs because I have a hope of understanding them. They're simple and well-documented, and make design choices I like. (For example, on a BSD I can use 'man -Otag=l ls' to go straight to the documentation for 'ls -l'. Try doing that reliably on Linux.)

I never understood why you would use BSD instead of Linux. It it just a preference, or is there really a benefit?

by andix 5y ago

I never understood why you would use BSD instead of Linux. It it just a preference, or is there really a benefit?

Preventing software monoculture, for one. The same argument could have been made about using Linux instead of Windows not that long ago.

nix23 5y ago
The terrible 1995-2000, where Dec and Solaris boxes where thrown away and shiny windows servers run everywhere, not one day without a hard reset.
Koshkin 5y ago
To be fair, when faced with a need to make a practical decision on whether to use a Linux or a BSD preventing software monoculture is the last thing on my mind. (In fact, my decision would often be influenced by wanting to keep the infrastructure as uniform as possible.)

nix23 5y ago

Yes it's a massive benefit (for me), but i don't tell you which one, because would you believe me that linux is better for server and development then windows without testing it out for yourself?

pjmlp 5y ago

BSDs actually descends from UNIX and had it not been for the AT&T litigation, most likely Linux kernel wouldn't have had the uptake it had. Additionally we don't need UNIX monoculture.

ggm 5y ago
I don't entirely agree. The SYSV vs BSD thing was constant before either (Free,Net,Open)BSD and Linux came into a rivalry. I was there, using both across the timescale (I'd been doing sysadmin and development work on V7, Unix 32V, BSD4.1->4.2 (thats sockets) and then Ultrix/Solaris &c) SYSV had streams/STREAMS when BSD had sockets. Arguably streams is a superior model. NFS came to the fore in BSD. SYSV had RFS. It was a different model of network filestore. MGR -> v8 ->Plan9 was there too. There has always been room for more than one viewpoint of what a UNIX conforming system is. The rise of Linux has a lot to do with licence terms (for some reason the BSD 4 clause hold harmless appealed more to the embedded market) and the natural tendency of some driver vendors to write for Linux. Google deciding to deploy linux at scale inside the borg, and as Android was recognition of reality. Van Jacobsen, who did a lot of work on TCP tuning and congestion control in the BSD kernel, wound up in Google, and stopped developing for BSD. So, BBR (for instance) came to BSD late and only because Netflix sponsored it. A bunch of the GPU driving space, WiFi card blobs, they're in Linux kernel before BSD. Docker hasn't been ported to BSD notwithstanding the possibly superior models in Jails and Bhyve, the supremacy of Dockerfile has to be understood as "mindshare" TL;DR BSD lost a lot of "mindshare" but there was always room for a BSD-vs-SYSV-vs-Plan9 thinking, from before-times.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  I was also there, and unless we are talking about embedded space, we are approaching a UNIX === Linux monoculture, versus how it used to be. As you very well point out, BSD lost a lot of mind share, and if it wasn't for macOS, it would probably matter even less. Hence why it matters to keep diversity alive.

toast0 5y ago

Why do you use Linux instead of BSD? It's the same question. Some potential reasons for using FreeBSD: It's the same three firewalls forever, not a progression of different firewalls. Old knowledge still works, for example, netstat is still the way to list socket connections and ifconfig is still the way to configure interfaces. I did some work with FreeBSD in 1999, and then nothing until 2004, and all the knowledge transferred, then in 2011 I changed jobs and skipped ahead several versions, and again all the knowledge transferred. But I kind of stopped using Linux heavily in 2013, and when I had to work on it at work in 2016, all the tools had changed, so I had to relearn (or just avoid the Linux part of my job, which I had the luxury of doing). Official kernel support for ZFS. Receive side scaling support is nice, if you need it; although I guess not a lot of people do. Different positions on philisophical arguments like an integrated source repository with the kernel and the base userland software, or init systems.

bombcar 5y ago
The "old knowledge" thing is a huge one - I know there are reasons why Linux keeps changing which firewall manager you're supposed to use and now we do ip addr show instead of ifconfig eth0 but it is annoying to keep up. I know Linus has a "don't break userland" theory which causes some of the above, but it breaks MY userland memory when I have to learn new tools. Of course if you stay with Ubuntu you'll find fifty thousand posts on whatever question you have.
- AshamedCaptain 5y ago
  > I know Linus has a "don't break userland" theory which causes some of the above And the worst part, Linux actually breaks userland _way_ more often than any of the *BSDs... "Moving what should have been dev nodes to sysfs since 2010 (TM), then reorganizing sysfs every couple years..."
  - bombcar 5y ago
    This is where the *BSD trees including the kernel and the distribution also helps - they can keep the “user interface” the same while still updating everything. Linux seems to have to create a new way of doing something because there’s no guarantee they can get the distributions to update the tooling.

Koshkin 5y ago

The way I see it, there’s a bigger difference between some Linux distributions than between, say, Slackware Linux and a BSD, so one could also ask why someone would use Arch instead of Ubuntu (or the other way around).

linguae 5y ago

I use FreeBSD on my servers and for research for the following reasons: 1. The documentation is excellent. The man pages are well-written and have useful examples, and the FreeBSD Handbook and Developer Guide are great resources. 2. First-class support for features such as ZFS and Dtrace. 3. This is a preference, but I like the BSDs' conservatism when it comes to adding new features. It seems that new features in the BSDs seem to be more in line with the Unix philosophy (similar to the Solaris and Joyent communities' attitudes), while the Linux community seems to be more willing to add features that may solve problems, but not necessarily in the way that some diehard Unix users would (e.g., PulseAudio, systemd). With that being said, I use Linux for work and in the WSL environment on my Microsoft Surface tablet. Linux is also a great operating system, and sometimes I need to use Linux instead of FreeBSD for hardware and software support reasons (for example, I use CUDA for my job, which needs Linux).

rwaksmunski 5y ago

FreeBSD has superior: - package management (pkg & ports) - file system (native ZFS) - instrumentation (systat & dtrace) - documentation (handbook & examples in most man pages) - event notification interface (kqueue vs broken by design epoll & inotify) - license (BSD, no GPLv3 at all) - stability (POLA) - quality control (no shellshock, no dataloss on fsync) - network performance (200gbps TLS encrypted traffic on a single socket at Netflix, millions of open connections per server at WhatsApp) - scaling (there is no cliff when resources get saturated just a bit of a "back pressure") It adds up to the point where I see some companies keep their use of FreeBSD secret as a competitive advantage. On the other hand I really like what Alpine Linux is doing.

kiwijamo 5y ago
Agree with all except the package management part. I switched to Debian after 15 years using FreeBSD simply due to how much better apt is. I don't have much time so unattended-upgrades is a live saver for me. I do miss FreeBSD though, it is really well designed and thought out but it is more suited to people who are happy to maintain the packages regularly especially when there are major upgrades. A recent example is the change in the default version for Python which needed some manual intervention to sort out the packages. Somethjng that honestly apt does much better.
- drewg123 5y ago
  Whatever happened to debian built around FreeBSD? (debian kFreeBSD?). Did systemd kill it?
  - toast0 5y ago
    I tried it circa 2012 (on a macbook, which was clearly a bad choice, but work told me I would love a mac and I didn't so might as well try other bad things). It was kind of a mess, I recall having trouble with basic networking utilities because they tried to provide GNU tools, but they didn't really work and you'd need to get the FreeBSD tools anyway, which was tricky because those weren't packaged.
- 5y ago

ulzeraj 5y ago

I speak for myself. OpenBSD and FreeBSD are a joy to use. Haven't checked on NetBSD but that's what I would use if I had a m68k system lying around.

nix23 5y ago
Or check it out for free at https://sdf.org https://sdf.org
- ulzeraj 5y ago
  Thats very cool but I want the m68k experience. While at it are there similar services for public testing? I briefly remember some years ago IBM allowing shell access to one of their then new POWER systems.
  - nix23 5y ago
    >IBM allowing shell access to one of their then new POWER systems. Can remember that too, was sponsored by IBM at some university, but it's closed long ago, was actually really cool.
    - ulzeraj 5y ago
      Oh... here I am again. Found this: https://openpower.ic.unicamp.br/minicloud/ https://openpower.ic.unicamp.br/minicloud/ This Brazilian university provides free access to a Power system for developers who want to port their applications. It looks like you can actually run your own virtual machines in a cloud-like environment: https://youtu.be/TE_4UKHrjwE https://youtu.be/TE_4UKHrjwE

vogon_laureate 5y ago

I got into BSD around the late 1990s. At the time, Linux distros like the famous Red Hat 5 series, SUSE and Caldera were touting the ease of install with graphical GUIs and X windows environments. I tried them all but found that I wasn't learning how to actually use the terminal commands or understand the startup scripts or filesystem very well. I then tried the BSDs and finally felt like I was beginning to understand how everything fit together and appreciated the whole system architecture better. Man pages were detailed and precise. Ports and packages were a breeze to install. For me, it made all the difference. I settled on OpenBSD for the security emphasis and my first project was to install a proper firewall for my office. It was a joy to setup. Config files were simple and clear. The firewall itself was incredibly powerful (since superseded by the even better PF https://www.openbsd.org/faq/pf/ https://www.openbsd.org/faq/pf/). I haven't looked back ever since. Whenever I have to work in a Linux environment, I shudder at the number of processes running, the confusing filesystem decisions of each distro, the poor Man pages and the behemoth that is systemd. I really wish BSDs got more attention and support from developers and users. They really are fantastic operating systems, each with their own particular specialisations (NetBSD - portability, OpenBSD - security, FreeBSD - general purpose, DragonflyBSD - clustering, SMP). Also, obligatory User Friendly strip link: http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990320.html http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990320...

gnubison 5y ago

I like the BSDs because I have a hope of understanding them. They're simple and well-documented, and make design choices I like. (For example, on a BSD I can use 'man -Otag=l ls' to go straight to the documentation for 'ls -l'. Try doing that reliably on Linux.)