5 ms·

I am not a freebsd user, been on linux since 1992, but most of the time I read something about freebsd users and it seems like they want to be some older unix,

I am not a freebsd user, been on linux since 1992, but most of the time I read something about freebsd users and it seems like they want to be some older unix, like Solaris or True64 or something.

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
I expect they want to be FreeBSD. In particular, they are not Linux, and have no need to be Linux, if that's what you're getting at. Certainly I do get a certain amount of Solaris feel from them; they ripped a decent amount of tech out of OpenSolaris (yay dtrace and ZFS) and BSDs were always structured more like Solaris than most Linux distros (base system separate from packages, base system created by installing multiple sets/consolidations), but they're their own thing. EDIT: Oh, and I would expect BSDs to feel a lot more like traditional unix because they're direct descendants of UNIX™, unlike the later clones like GNU/Linux.
- liveoneggs 5y ago
  SunOS was a BSD before it turned into Solaris, a System V
xenophonf 5y ago
FreeBSD _is_ a Unix, being derived from the BSD Net-2 release in the early 1990s. GNU and Linux distributions are actually Unix clones, with different distributions mimicking or incorporating code from the various open source and proprietary Unix operating systems. For example, Slackware used to use an rc-style init system like BSD. Linux cgroups (underlying tech like Docker) look very much like Solaris zones. GNU coreutils have POSIX compatibility modes. Systemd looks a lot like Solaris SMF. Stuff like ZFS and DTrace were imported from OpenSolaris. And so on.
- hyproxia 5y ago
  >FreeBSD _is_ a Unix That's a common misconception. It's as much of a UNIX as Linux is (see the AT&T lawsuit).
  - xenophonf 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
markstos 5y ago
I used FreeBSD in production for years as a hosting platform, starting in the late nineties. Then it had an earned reputation as being more secure, stable and higher performance than Linux. Yahoo and other large services were using it for their servers as well. Since then Linux has improved, but a diverse ecosystem of options is healthy. A monoculture of OSes would be vulnerable to global security problems just a diet based on only one crop. It's great that other projects make other choices about default shells and other system design details.
kloch 5y ago
Pre-1992 it was SunOS and yes that is exactly what we want (without all the security holes). SunOS was BSD and Nirvana as far as Unix goes. Solaris was SysV and quickly earned the nickname "Slowlaris". For me FreeBSD is the functional descendant of SunOS. As for Linux I first tried it out in 1993 and was appalled that command line switches for most standard Unix utils had been arbitrarily remapped. Tried FreeBSD 1.0 when it came out and never looked back. Of course I use Linux in AWS and various servers at work and regularly experiment with Linux distros on personal machines but it always feels a bit "off". I wonder how many other greybeards that cut their teeth on SunOS prefer FreeBSD over Linux today?
- readingnews 5y ago
  > I wonder how many other greybeards that cut their teeth on SunOS prefer FreeBSD over Linux today? That could be an interesting question. I certainly cut my teeth on SunOS and Irix. I much prefer modern Linux.
- Bluecobra 5y ago
  I think the Slowlaris moniker was not due to Solaris itself, but the speed of their SPARC processors. I used to work very closely with x86 Solaris for financial trading and it was performant (and stable!) on Intel hardware at the time (circa 2010). At the time Solaris 10 was feee as in beer. When Oracle took over they got rid of this and wanted $1K per CPU socket per year on non Sun/Oracle hardware. Needless to say everything went to Linux rather quickly. I do prefer FreeBSD over most Linux distros (except Slackware) from a philosophical standpoint.
  - zokula 5y ago
    Slowlaris: /slo'�lahr�is/, n. [Usenet; poss. from the variety of prosimian called a “slow loris”. The variant ‘Slowlartus’ is also common, related to LART] Common hackish term for Solaris, Sun's System VR4 version of Unix that came out of the standardization wars of the early 1990s. So named because especially on older hardware, responsiveness was much less crisp than under the preceding SunOS. Early releases of Solaris (that is, Solaris 2, as some marketroids at Sun retroactively rechristened SunOS as Solaris 1) were quite buggy, and Sun was forced by customer demand to support SunOS for quite some time. Newer versions are acknowledged to be among the best commercial Unix variants in 1998, but still lose single-processor benchmarks to Sparc Linux.
tomc1985 5y ago
I want it to be a more-simple Linux without so many competing choices or moving parts, and it largely succeeds on that front.
spookthesunset 5y ago
Naw. FreeBSD feels like a cohesive whole, if that makes sense. All the basic stuff in it all work together. Comparatively, Linux is a pile of parts strapped together with tape. Plus the documentation for FreeBSD is much, much better. For one thing, no pushing me to use that god awful “infodoc” crap.
pjmlp 5y ago
BSDs are UNIX. https://www.amazon.com/Design-Implementation-FreeBSD-Operating-System/dp/0201702452 https://www.amazon.com/Design-Implementation-FreeBSD-Operati...
e12e 5y ago
Well, GNU's Not UNIX after all...

I am not a freebsd user, been on linux since 1992, but most of the time I read something about freebsd users and it seems like they want to be some older unix, like Solaris or True64 or something.

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago

I expect they want to be FreeBSD. In particular, they are not Linux, and have no need to be Linux, if that's what you're getting at. Certainly I do get a certain amount of Solaris feel from them; they ripped a decent amount of tech out of OpenSolaris (yay dtrace and ZFS) and BSDs were always structured more like Solaris than most Linux distros (base system separate from packages, base system created by installing multiple sets/consolidations), but they're their own thing. EDIT: Oh, and I would expect BSDs to feel a lot more like traditional unix because they're direct descendants of UNIX™, unlike the later clones like GNU/Linux.

liveoneggs 5y ago
SunOS was a BSD before it turned into Solaris, a System V

xenophonf 5y ago

FreeBSD _is_ a Unix, being derived from the BSD Net-2 release in the early 1990s. GNU and Linux distributions are actually Unix clones, with different distributions mimicking or incorporating code from the various open source and proprietary Unix operating systems. For example, Slackware used to use an rc-style init system like BSD. Linux cgroups (underlying tech like Docker) look very much like Solaris zones. GNU coreutils have POSIX compatibility modes. Systemd looks a lot like Solaris SMF. Stuff like ZFS and DTrace were imported from OpenSolaris. And so on.

hyproxia 5y ago
>FreeBSD _is_ a Unix That's a common misconception. It's as much of a UNIX as Linux is (see the AT&T lawsuit).
- xenophonf 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

markstos 5y ago

I used FreeBSD in production for years as a hosting platform, starting in the late nineties. Then it had an earned reputation as being more secure, stable and higher performance than Linux. Yahoo and other large services were using it for their servers as well. Since then Linux has improved, but a diverse ecosystem of options is healthy. A monoculture of OSes would be vulnerable to global security problems just a diet based on only one crop. It's great that other projects make other choices about default shells and other system design details.

kloch 5y ago

Pre-1992 it was SunOS and yes that is exactly what we want (without all the security holes). SunOS was BSD and Nirvana as far as Unix goes. Solaris was SysV and quickly earned the nickname "Slowlaris". For me FreeBSD is the functional descendant of SunOS. As for Linux I first tried it out in 1993 and was appalled that command line switches for most standard Unix utils had been arbitrarily remapped. Tried FreeBSD 1.0 when it came out and never looked back. Of course I use Linux in AWS and various servers at work and regularly experiment with Linux distros on personal machines but it always feels a bit "off". I wonder how many other greybeards that cut their teeth on SunOS prefer FreeBSD over Linux today?

readingnews 5y ago
> I wonder how many other greybeards that cut their teeth on SunOS prefer FreeBSD over Linux today? That could be an interesting question. I certainly cut my teeth on SunOS and Irix. I much prefer modern Linux.
Bluecobra 5y ago
I think the Slowlaris moniker was not due to Solaris itself, but the speed of their SPARC processors. I used to work very closely with x86 Solaris for financial trading and it was performant (and stable!) on Intel hardware at the time (circa 2010). At the time Solaris 10 was feee as in beer. When Oracle took over they got rid of this and wanted $1K per CPU socket per year on non Sun/Oracle hardware. Needless to say everything went to Linux rather quickly. I do prefer FreeBSD over most Linux distros (except Slackware) from a philosophical standpoint.
- zokula 5y ago
  Slowlaris: /slo'�lahr�is/, n. [Usenet; poss. from the variety of prosimian called a “slow loris”. The variant ‘Slowlartus’ is also common, related to LART] Common hackish term for Solaris, Sun's System VR4 version of Unix that came out of the standardization wars of the early 1990s. So named because especially on older hardware, responsiveness was much less crisp than under the preceding SunOS. Early releases of Solaris (that is, Solaris 2, as some marketroids at Sun retroactively rechristened SunOS as Solaris 1) were quite buggy, and Sun was forced by customer demand to support SunOS for quite some time. Newer versions are acknowledged to be among the best commercial Unix variants in 1998, but still lose single-processor benchmarks to Sparc Linux.

tomc1985 5y ago

I want it to be a more-simple Linux without so many competing choices or moving parts, and it largely succeeds on that front.

spookthesunset 5y ago

Naw. FreeBSD feels like a cohesive whole, if that makes sense. All the basic stuff in it all work together. Comparatively, Linux is a pile of parts strapped together with tape. Plus the documentation for FreeBSD is much, much better. For one thing, no pushing me to use that god awful “infodoc” crap.

pjmlp 5y ago

BSDs are UNIX. https://www.amazon.com/Design-Implementation-FreeBSD-Operating-System/dp/0201702452 https://www.amazon.com/Design-Implementation-FreeBSD-Operati...

e12e 5y ago

Well, GNU's Not UNIX after all...