3 ms·

Lots of people and places use freebsd like netflix. I only see the popularity of freebsd increasing as linux moves more and more away from unix.

yamtaddle 4y ago
I'm slowly switching over for server-side, and next time I try a free OS desktop it'll probably be freebsd. Only thing I miss is docker, which I mostly just use as a package manager and service manager so I don't have to screw with distro-specific trivia for those things, and that's less of a problem on FreeBSD anyway. I've long tolerated Linux but never loved it, and it's moving away from anything I'm interested in with each year, it seems (the competing mostly-bad image-based app distribution systems and the way Wayland's going are... yikes). Glad FreeBSD's there as an alternative.
- tcmart14 4y ago
  On FreeBSD, I would recommend looking at jails and something like CBSD as a way to manage jails. https://github.com/cbsd/cbsd https://github.com/cbsd/cbsd
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Right, I'm familiar with them, but a huge part of the benefit of docker is that it's basically a cross-distro (and, to some degree, cross-platform) very up-to-date server-oriented package manager. There are some efforts to create something like that for Jails but AFAIK none of them have gotten very far. Docker's benefit is that ~everyone uses it so there's usually an official docker image for anything one might want to run, kept in step with releases, plus a substantial history of images for rollbacks and testing and such. It turns "how do I install and run this?" from a bunch of platform- and distro-specific instructions into `docker-compose up` for everything, with the bonus that the compose file also tells you exactly where data & config for the service live, so it's also concise, guaranteed-accurate, and extremely useful documentation. Old LTS Ubuntu? Can run the same version of a service, with the same command, as on bleeding-edge Arch. On Arch, exact same command. Debian, Red Hat? Same command. MacOS, if you've got docker set up, same command. Windows, ditto. The latter two, non-natively, sure, but it works. Learn docker, and you can use it everywhere, unlike becoming proficient with, say, dpkg/apt or portage or pacman. It can even kinda save you from having to worry about how a given platform's init system and process management works, at least for simple use cases. Again, if you're doing most or everything on FreeBSD, development and hosting both, those benefits mostly vanish. But the reality is many workplaces or even personal dev+hosting environments are mixed, and docker suits those better than anything else I'm aware of—but if FreeBSD is in the mix, it's the odd-man-out. It's good not (only) because of its kinda-Jails-like isolation, but because of the excellent coverage of the image repository.
    - dangerface 4y ago
      True the lack of docker support is a pretty big deal breaker if you use docker a lot. Freebsd jails have been a unique selling point for freebsd for years but I think linux containers have caught up and dockers ease of use and community support is unmatched. I don't use docker much so its not an issue for me. I could probably setup jails for the stuff I use docker for but I'm lazy so I have a debian virtual machine running on bhyve that runs any docker stuff I want. My preference is freebsd but im not precious ill use what ever tool fits the job best.

yamtaddle 4y ago

I'm slowly switching over for server-side, and next time I try a free OS desktop it'll probably be freebsd. Only thing I miss is docker, which I mostly just use as a package manager and service manager so I don't have to screw with distro-specific trivia for those things, and that's less of a problem on FreeBSD anyway. I've long tolerated Linux but never loved it, and it's moving away from anything I'm interested in with each year, it seems (the competing mostly-bad image-based app distribution systems and the way Wayland's going are... yikes). Glad FreeBSD's there as an alternative.

tcmart14 4y ago
On FreeBSD, I would recommend looking at jails and something like CBSD as a way to manage jails. https://github.com/cbsd/cbsd https://github.com/cbsd/cbsd
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Right, I'm familiar with them, but a huge part of the benefit of docker is that it's basically a cross-distro (and, to some degree, cross-platform) very up-to-date server-oriented package manager. There are some efforts to create something like that for Jails but AFAIK none of them have gotten very far. Docker's benefit is that ~everyone uses it so there's usually an official docker image for anything one might want to run, kept in step with releases, plus a substantial history of images for rollbacks and testing and such. It turns "how do I install and run this?" from a bunch of platform- and distro-specific instructions into `docker-compose up` for everything, with the bonus that the compose file also tells you exactly where data & config for the service live, so it's also concise, guaranteed-accurate, and extremely useful documentation. Old LTS Ubuntu? Can run the same version of a service, with the same command, as on bleeding-edge Arch. On Arch, exact same command. Debian, Red Hat? Same command. MacOS, if you've got docker set up, same command. Windows, ditto. The latter two, non-natively, sure, but it works. Learn docker, and you can use it everywhere, unlike becoming proficient with, say, dpkg/apt or portage or pacman. It can even kinda save you from having to worry about how a given platform's init system and process management works, at least for simple use cases. Again, if you're doing most or everything on FreeBSD, development and hosting both, those benefits mostly vanish. But the reality is many workplaces or even personal dev+hosting environments are mixed, and docker suits those better than anything else I'm aware of—but if FreeBSD is in the mix, it's the odd-man-out. It's good not (only) because of its kinda-Jails-like isolation, but because of the excellent coverage of the image repository.
  - dangerface 4y ago
    True the lack of docker support is a pretty big deal breaker if you use docker a lot. Freebsd jails have been a unique selling point for freebsd for years but I think linux containers have caught up and dockers ease of use and community support is unmatched. I don't use docker much so its not an issue for me. I could probably setup jails for the stuff I use docker for but I'm lazy so I have a debian virtual machine running on bhyve that runs any docker stuff I want. My preference is freebsd but im not precious ill use what ever tool fits the job best.