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My boss graduated from Berkely, and so I occasionally had to administer a FreeBSD box he kept around for the "superior OS philosophy". My biggest annoyance, ap

My boss graduated from Berkely, and so I occasionally had to administer a FreeBSD box he kept around for the "superior OS philosophy". My biggest annoyance, apart from the obvious lack of systemd, was a social one: Any time I had to look up how to accomplish some non-trivial task I would inevitably find a thread on the FreeBSD forums by someone else who has had exactly the same problem in the past, together with a response by some dev along the lines of "why would anyone ever need to do that?".

willjp 5y ago
I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, this is extremely alienating. On the other hand, I respect when devs reject features to keep their code simple. I don't think this has anything to do with graduating from berkely, I'm a hobo with a keyboard.
gunapologist99 5y ago
Even though I severely dislike systemd, and am a fan of FreeBSD's stability and simplicity, I also have found this attitude to be an annoyance. For example, if I want to upgrade a fleet of a hundred or so FreeBSD boxes remotely, the answer seems to be, "Don't do that. You must upgrade each one by hand." This is the principal reason why I've leaned toward Debian stable (which also aims at being a stable UNIX like FreeBSD) for decades, even though Debian has also been infected with systemd and has made other questionable decisions. Alternatively, I've also had good luck with Void, Alpine, and Artix. (I've had difficulties with electron apps on Void desktop, but it runs flawlessly on servers.)
- simcop2387 5y ago
  > For example, if I want to upgrade a fleet of a hundred or so FreeBSD boxes remotely, the answer seems to be, "Don't do that. You must upgrade each one by hand." either that or "don't do an upgrade, build new ones and replace the old ones instead"
- LAC-Tech 5y ago
  > (I've had difficulties with electron apps on Void desktop, but it runs flawlessly on servers.) If by any chance it was related to sound, today is your lucky day as I just solved that this morning before work.
- ybloviator 5y ago
  If you're getting the "do it by hand" answer, you're asking in the wrong places. Ansible, SaltStack, all the devops automation stuff is available and can certainly handle "freebsd-update fetch; freebsd-update install; reboot".
passthejoe 5y ago
I needed to script something for a FreeBSD server, and I was doing the development in Linux. It would have been OK if I had used Ruby/Python/Perl, etc., but I decided to do it in Bash. I had to make quite a few fixes when I got the script on the FreeBSD box. Then I deployed it to an OpenBSD system. More fixes.
- ybloviator 5y ago
  Did you try "pkg install bash"?
throwawayboise 5y ago
> I would inevitably find a thread on the FreeBSD forums That was your mistake. With BSDs, you use the man pages ;-)

willjp 5y ago

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, this is extremely alienating. On the other hand, I respect when devs reject features to keep their code simple. I don't think this has anything to do with graduating from berkely, I'm a hobo with a keyboard.

gunapologist99 5y ago

Even though I severely dislike systemd, and am a fan of FreeBSD's stability and simplicity, I also have found this attitude to be an annoyance. For example, if I want to upgrade a fleet of a hundred or so FreeBSD boxes remotely, the answer seems to be, "Don't do that. You must upgrade each one by hand." This is the principal reason why I've leaned toward Debian stable (which also aims at being a stable UNIX like FreeBSD) for decades, even though Debian has also been infected with systemd and has made other questionable decisions. Alternatively, I've also had good luck with Void, Alpine, and Artix. (I've had difficulties with electron apps on Void desktop, but it runs flawlessly on servers.)

simcop2387 5y ago
> For example, if I want to upgrade a fleet of a hundred or so FreeBSD boxes remotely, the answer seems to be, "Don't do that. You must upgrade each one by hand." either that or "don't do an upgrade, build new ones and replace the old ones instead"
LAC-Tech 5y ago
> (I've had difficulties with electron apps on Void desktop, but it runs flawlessly on servers.) If by any chance it was related to sound, today is your lucky day as I just solved that this morning before work.
ybloviator 5y ago
If you're getting the "do it by hand" answer, you're asking in the wrong places. Ansible, SaltStack, all the devops automation stuff is available and can certainly handle "freebsd-update fetch; freebsd-update install; reboot".

passthejoe 5y ago

I needed to script something for a FreeBSD server, and I was doing the development in Linux. It would have been OK if I had used Ruby/Python/Perl, etc., but I decided to do it in Bash. I had to make quite a few fixes when I got the script on the FreeBSD box. Then I deployed it to an OpenBSD system. More fixes.

ybloviator 5y ago
Did you try "pkg install bash"?

throwawayboise 5y ago

> I would inevitably find a thread on the FreeBSD forums That was your mistake. With BSDs, you use the man pages ;-)