7 ms·

Who uses FreeBSD those days? As a company that runs on the cloud, AWS/GCP/Azure you run windows/linux, and on desktop people mainly run MacOS/Windows/Linux. I

Who uses FreeBSD those days? As a company that runs on the cloud, AWS/GCP/Azure you run windows/linux, and on desktop people mainly run MacOS/Windows/Linux. I am really asking as for what is the main use case of FreeBSD in 2022?

LeoPanthera 5y ago
Domain-specific derivatives of FreeBSD are still very popular, such as TrueNAS, pfSense, OPNsense, and so on.
rsync 5y ago
We[1] have our entire infrastructure on FreeBSD - and always have. That's why this has been frustrating - we have a history of committing real money[2][3] to the project in an attempt to make investments ... but there is never a fixed target to make those investments in. It is a matter of fact that our own use of FreeBSD - in live production for a business - is completely divorced from the experience and day to day usage of FreeBSD developers. [1] rsync.net and, previously, JohnCompanies [2] https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/2007cb.html https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/2007cb.html [3] USD 50k donation offered - https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2012-January/037369.html https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2012-Jan...
- bojo 5y ago
  Whoa, I recall spinning a box up on JohnCompanies back when you guys first popped onto the scene. Cool to see people still building on FreeBSD, sad to see that it's an uphill battle to stay relevant with it.
  - rsync 5y ago
    Did you learn about us from our kuro5hin ads ? That was 21 years ago ...
    - bojo 5y ago
      That must have been it, used kuro5hin quite a bit back then.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rubyist5eva 5y ago
We run everything on Linux except our PostgresSQL database which is FreeBSD and ZFS. Have nothing but good things to say.
- mulmen 5y ago
  Have you done any writing about that experience and setup? Both Postgres and ZFS are COW, I seem to recall some warnings back in the day about conflicts between the two systems but I have no first hand experience.
  - djbusby 5y ago
    I've been told (in like 2006) that PG is "best" on FreeBSD - but I don't have a link to that IRC channel log. I did find this benchmark which maybe helpful https://redbyte.eu/en/blog/postgresql-benchmark-freebsd-centos-ubuntu-debian-opensuse/ https://redbyte.eu/en/blog/postgresql-benchmark-freebsd-cent... I use PG on both and have never had issues (systems only sorta busy (200 connections, less than 2TB on disk))
    - mulmen 5y ago
      Best on FreeBSD is one thing but best on ZFS on FreeBSD? IIRC the (oldschool?) guidance was UFS for Postgres.
  - caffeinated_me 5y ago
    I've seen ZFS being used with Postgres in a few different environments. Seems to work fine for the most part- surprisingly good compression (~8X in one case, usually lower), with the major downside being increased CPU usage when taking advantage of said compression. I think that only one or two of those environments were heavily used production instances, so if there is a serious gotcha here it might not have been apparent to me.
  - rubyist5eva 5y ago
    No we’re kind of a lean shop so we don’t do much tech blogging - it’s something we’re thinking of doing soon though. As for CoW, we just turn it off on the postgres config and rely strictly on ZFS. We also turned off checksumming and compression in postgres and use Zstd:3 on the file system. Beyond that we just followed your run of the mill tuning guide you’d find on Google.
cerved 5y ago
there's a small startup called Netflix that does some internet thing with it
- andai 5y ago
  Also WhatsApp, Yahoo!, and many others [1] including Sony (playstation's OS), Apple (macOS) and Microsoft (Azure). https://freebsdfoundation.org/freebsd/ https://freebsdfoundation.org/freebsd/
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    MacOS isn’t FreeBSD. I believe they forked the FreeBSD userland a long time ago but used GNU for their shell and toolchain (and the kernel etc is completely different.)
    - nix23 5y ago
      MacOS is mostly a FreeBSD-Kernel plus a MACH-Kernel together called XNU, and most "core"-utils are still from FreeBSD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)#/media/File:Diagram_of_Mac_OS_X_architecture.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)#/med...
      - oblio 5y ago
        And those core utils are generally seen as a hindrance by developers using it. Plus how long did MacOS diverge from FreeBSD? 20+ years ago? Does it even resemble current FreeBSD enough that this observation makes sense, except from a software history perspective? Edit: Actually, considering that the divergence started with NextStep in 1988, from 4.3 BSD and not FreeBSD, and that Unix was created in 1969, this becomes a bit like comparing Unix 1969 to Linux 1999... so not really relevant anymore.
        ayushnix 5y ago
        > Plus how long did MacOS diverge from FreeBSD? 20+ years ago? Does it even resemble current FreeBSD enough that this observation makes sense, except from a software history perspective? You'll always find people who'll say that Android and ChromeOS are Linux distributions and MacOS is based on FreeBSD. I guess it makes them feel good.
robbomacrae 5y ago
It's funny you wrote that because when browsing HackerNews, for me the 3rd item above this was: We're migrating many of our servers from Linux to FreeBSD (dragas.net) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30057549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30057549
- stragies 5y ago
  The (currently) top-voted comment of that thread is somebody describing, how they went back to Linux after the honeymoon-period with FreeBSD, among others because of systemd.
- bojo 5y ago
  I imagine rsync posted this as a reminder to what's in store. There were roughly 4-5 FreeBSD related posts which hit the main page on HN today.
accrual 5y ago
Nintendo Switch
- astrange 5y ago
  And PS5, FreeNAS and some smaller appliances, and macOS uses some of the userland.
- edgyquant 5y ago
  SwitchOS is not based on FreeBSD. It has a net stack forked from FreeBSD code but if that makes it a FreeBSD than Windows and Linux are both BSDs I guess.
yyyk 5y ago
The BSDs always had a following in network-related roles, since Linux has had some issues in the past (e.g. accept filters used to be useful, iptables more complicated than pf), and OpenBSD cultivated a security-minded reputation.
heavyset_go 5y ago
It's used to build and distribute closed source operating systems and devices to users. Every Mac and iPhone user has a little bit of 2003-era FreeBSD running that provides XNU its BSD "flavor".

LeoPanthera 5y ago

Domain-specific derivatives of FreeBSD are still very popular, such as TrueNAS, pfSense, OPNsense, and so on.

rsync 5y ago

We[1] have our entire infrastructure on FreeBSD - and always have. That's why this has been frustrating - we have a history of committing real money[2][3] to the project in an attempt to make investments ... but there is never a fixed target to make those investments in. It is a matter of fact that our own use of FreeBSD - in live production for a business - is completely divorced from the experience and day to day usage of FreeBSD developers. [1] rsync.net and, previously, JohnCompanies [2] https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/2007cb.html https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/2007cb.html [3] USD 50k donation offered - https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2012-January/037369.html https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2012-Jan...

bojo 5y ago
Whoa, I recall spinning a box up on JohnCompanies back when you guys first popped onto the scene. Cool to see people still building on FreeBSD, sad to see that it's an uphill battle to stay relevant with it.
- rsync 5y ago
  Did you learn about us from our kuro5hin ads ? That was 21 years ago ...
  - bojo 5y ago
    That must have been it, used kuro5hin quite a bit back then.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rubyist5eva 5y ago

We run everything on Linux except our PostgresSQL database which is FreeBSD and ZFS. Have nothing but good things to say.

mulmen 5y ago
Have you done any writing about that experience and setup? Both Postgres and ZFS are COW, I seem to recall some warnings back in the day about conflicts between the two systems but I have no first hand experience.
- djbusby 5y ago
  I've been told (in like 2006) that PG is "best" on FreeBSD - but I don't have a link to that IRC channel log. I did find this benchmark which maybe helpful https://redbyte.eu/en/blog/postgresql-benchmark-freebsd-centos-ubuntu-debian-opensuse/ https://redbyte.eu/en/blog/postgresql-benchmark-freebsd-cent... I use PG on both and have never had issues (systems only sorta busy (200 connections, less than 2TB on disk))
  - mulmen 5y ago
    Best on FreeBSD is one thing but best on ZFS on FreeBSD? IIRC the (oldschool?) guidance was UFS for Postgres.
- caffeinated_me 5y ago
  I've seen ZFS being used with Postgres in a few different environments. Seems to work fine for the most part- surprisingly good compression (~8X in one case, usually lower), with the major downside being increased CPU usage when taking advantage of said compression. I think that only one or two of those environments were heavily used production instances, so if there is a serious gotcha here it might not have been apparent to me.
- rubyist5eva 5y ago
  No we’re kind of a lean shop so we don’t do much tech blogging - it’s something we’re thinking of doing soon though. As for CoW, we just turn it off on the postgres config and rely strictly on ZFS. We also turned off checksumming and compression in postgres and use Zstd:3 on the file system. Beyond that we just followed your run of the mill tuning guide you’d find on Google.

cerved 5y ago

there's a small startup called Netflix that does some internet thing with it

andai 5y ago
Also WhatsApp, Yahoo!, and many others [1] including Sony (playstation's OS), Apple (macOS) and Microsoft (Azure). https://freebsdfoundation.org/freebsd/ https://freebsdfoundation.org/freebsd/
- edgyquant 5y ago
  MacOS isn’t FreeBSD. I believe they forked the FreeBSD userland a long time ago but used GNU for their shell and toolchain (and the kernel etc is completely different.)
  - nix23 5y ago
    MacOS is mostly a FreeBSD-Kernel plus a MACH-Kernel together called XNU, and most "core"-utils are still from FreeBSD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)#/media/File:Diagram_of_Mac_OS_X_architecture.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)#/med...
    - oblio 5y ago
      And those core utils are generally seen as a hindrance by developers using it. Plus how long did MacOS diverge from FreeBSD? 20+ years ago? Does it even resemble current FreeBSD enough that this observation makes sense, except from a software history perspective? Edit: Actually, considering that the divergence started with NextStep in 1988, from 4.3 BSD and not FreeBSD, and that Unix was created in 1969, this becomes a bit like comparing Unix 1969 to Linux 1999... so not really relevant anymore.
      - ayushnix 5y ago
        > Plus how long did MacOS diverge from FreeBSD? 20+ years ago? Does it even resemble current FreeBSD enough that this observation makes sense, except from a software history perspective? You'll always find people who'll say that Android and ChromeOS are Linux distributions and MacOS is based on FreeBSD. I guess it makes them feel good.

robbomacrae 5y ago

It's funny you wrote that because when browsing HackerNews, for me the 3rd item above this was: We're migrating many of our servers from Linux to FreeBSD (dragas.net) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30057549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30057549

stragies 5y ago
The (currently) top-voted comment of that thread is somebody describing, how they went back to Linux after the honeymoon-period with FreeBSD, among others because of systemd.
bojo 5y ago
I imagine rsync posted this as a reminder to what's in store. There were roughly 4-5 FreeBSD related posts which hit the main page on HN today.

accrual 5y ago

Nintendo Switch

astrange 5y ago
And PS5, FreeNAS and some smaller appliances, and macOS uses some of the userland.
edgyquant 5y ago
SwitchOS is not based on FreeBSD. It has a net stack forked from FreeBSD code but if that makes it a FreeBSD than Windows and Linux are both BSDs I guess.

yyyk 5y ago

The BSDs always had a following in network-related roles, since Linux has had some issues in the past (e.g. accept filters used to be useful, iptables more complicated than pf), and OpenBSD cultivated a security-minded reputation.

heavyset_go 5y ago

It's used to build and distribute closed source operating systems and devices to users. Every Mac and iPhone user has a little bit of 2003-era FreeBSD running that provides XNU its BSD "flavor".