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I have just about zero experience running any kind of BSD systems, but I just wanted to know a bit more about this: > With Linux, at least with the distributio

I have just about zero experience running any kind of BSD systems, but I just wanted to know a bit more about this: > With Linux, at least with the distributions that I like for other reasons, I have to always supervise the updates, because the updates frequently break things What distributions have you run into these issues with and how often is "frequently" for you? I'm running Arch Linux on my desktop and bunch of servers, for more than five years each one and can count the number of breakages on one hand. On the other hand, I run Ubuntu on my laptop and stopped counting the amount of issues I've had with upgrades. But I'd consider that amount of breakage from my Arch installs very infrequent, but maybe I'm comparing it to the wrong thing, as as I said before, I don't have any experience with BSD systems, maybe breakage there is even more uncommon?

CoolCold 4y ago
the secret sauce here is that "ports collection/packages collection" aka anything useful beyond service NAT gateway/network router is not a system! from the docs: > FreeBSD is bundled with a rich collection of system tools as part of the base system. In addition, FreeBSD provides two complementary technologies for installing third-party software: the FreeBSD Ports Collection, for installing from source, and packages, for installing from pre-built binaries. Thus, when FreeBSD guys say "my system is solid" - means he can use ping/top/csh. But if update breaks say Firefox - it's not part of the system and haha, system is stable!
- anthk 4y ago
  FreeBSD users with issues will just recompile Firefox from the ports. Also, I am an OpenBSD user (not FreeBSD), and I can say packages are much better maintained than in the 99% of the distros.
  - CoolCold 4y ago
    I was trying to produce good example on differences in reading "stable system" on FreeBSD vs Linux worlds, when definition on what is "system" differs. No anything specific I have to put against Firefox or any other application here.
- adrian_b 4y ago
  I never use csh, the first step when I install FreeBSD is to install bash. Most of the programs that I use on FreeBSD come from ports, not from the base system (they are various networking applications like squid or samba or nginx), even if I use some functions from the base system, e.g. firewall/NAT/routing, some times the NFS server. Nevertheless, I did not have problems with inconsistencies in the ports collection, and that includes Firefox (which I use some times together with vncserver, so I can use it remotely even if I do not normally install the X11 server on FreeBSD). It is true however that on FreeBSD I have used only seldom programs with GUI interfaces, Firefox being an exception to that, and those are usually among the programs more likely to be broken by updates on Linux systems.
- nortonham 4y ago
  I take your point, but I've used freebsd on a laptop before and never had 3rd party software (like firefox) break after an update. FreeBSD really is stable. For desktops/laptops I would probably lean towards a linux distro first due to hw support, but FreeBSD being stale/solid is no joke.
- 0x457 4y ago
  nah, I used FreeBSD on desktop, and I was tracking CURRENT with weekly rebuilds. The only time things "broke" for me is when X11 on FreeBSD switched to libinput by default. Never had issues with anything else: - nvidia drivers always worked, unlike ubuntu that tried to install opensource-not-working-driver every time it gets - My keyboard remapping worked every upgrade. Ubuntu broke it major release, Arch broke it from time to time. Fedora I didn't even bother. - Most of my software was always on bleeding edge release when possible - Docker in bhyve worked better than on linux because I could just restart VM - Not once, my bootloader went foobar in 20 years (with GRUB I live in constant fear) Now, if FreeBSD folks stopped with perfectionism and finally landed GPU and WiFi drivers...I'd be still using it. Now I won't switch back though, I'm far too friendly with Nix.
  - throw0101a 4y ago
    > - nvidia drivers always worked, unlike ubuntu that tried to install opensource-not-working-driver every time it gets Many, many moons ago a video game called Return to Castle Wolfenstein was released, and in addition to a Linux server where you could host multi-player games, it actually had a Linux client. I played on the Linux client for a while with an NVidia GPU. But my main desktop was FreeBSD at the time, and so instead of dual-booting I used FreeBSD's Linux API/ABI emulation to play RtCW with FreeBSD NVidia drivers. I even got a few more FPS under FreeBSD. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein
- toast0 4y ago
  I'm not going to debate if ports/pkg is solid or not, either way it sure is nice to have a solid system at the base. On Linux, where the base is intermingled with everything else, it's a lot easier to upgrade packages and break the whole system, because there's no distinction between packages and the base system.
anthk 4y ago
Being a Linux user since Debian Woody and others until 2011, I can say most of them. Debian and Ubuntu breackage was guaranteed. On RH/RHEL, it was not easy somtimes. Arch had two major switchs (SystemD and anothers). On OpenBSD, you just read the upgrade guide, download the bsd.rd, boot it and upgrade. Or with sysupgrade from a few releases. Much reliable than Linux. https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade71.html https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade71.html
- nortonham 4y ago
  what breakage do you remember from Debian? I remember using debian on the same machine and going through three major releases without issue. ubuntu, not so much. agreed about the ease of openBSD upgrades from one release to another
  - anthk 4y ago
    I think Woody->Sarge, some ALSA settings. I used bf24 (2.4) kernel in Woody.
adrian_b 4y ago
I almost always use only programs that I compile from sources (with few exceptions, like the NVIDIA drivers and libraries or some commercial EDA/CAD programs). I also strongly dislike systemd (not based on hearsay, but after testing it for a couple of months a few years ago, while using Arch Linux). These 2 conditions disqualify many Linux distributions for me. So I most frequently use Gentoo or some distribution derived from it, e.g. Funtoo. I have switched to Gentoo around 2002/2003, after using a few older distributions, including Slackware, Redhat and SUSE. During the first decade of using Gentoo, the Portage collection was better maintained and I would have never had problems with upgrades, except that when I have tested KDE 4 I was astonished by how the team which hijacked its development had been able to remove all the features that I liked in KDE 3.5, so I have wiped KDE 4 and I have reverted to KDE 3.5. Then, for a couple of years I had to fight more and more at each upgrade to avoid the breakage of the preserved KDE 3.5, until that became so difficult that I gave up and I replaced KDE with XFCE. Then for a few years there have been no problems with upgrades, but during the last decade they have begun to appear sporadically. In many cases the upgrades still work without surprises, but every few months there is one that fails because some package does not compile for various reasons, e.g. because some library is not listed as a dependence so it has not been updated, or because there is a circular package dependence that appears only with the specific combination of USE flags that are set on my system, or because there is some conflict between the dependencies of some packages that prevent them to be installed together without certain workarounds. What I like at Gentoo is that it permits an extreme customization of the system, but that is what makes very difficult for the package maintainers to test their package build instructions, because it is hard to generate all the combinations of options that might have been chosen by some user. The breakages are not frequent, but because they happen sometimes I am not confident to allow them to be performed automatically, without supervision, like I allow them to be done on FreeBSD. I would prefer a package system like that of Nix, but I have not found yet enough time to play with Nix, or maybe with Guix, to evaluate which will be the consequences of converting to it.

CoolCold 4y ago

the secret sauce here is that "ports collection/packages collection" aka anything useful beyond service NAT gateway/network router is not a system! from the docs: > FreeBSD is bundled with a rich collection of system tools as part of the base system. In addition, FreeBSD provides two complementary technologies for installing third-party software: the FreeBSD Ports Collection, for installing from source, and packages, for installing from pre-built binaries. Thus, when FreeBSD guys say "my system is solid" - means he can use ping/top/csh. But if update breaks say Firefox - it's not part of the system and haha, system is stable!

anthk 4y ago
FreeBSD users with issues will just recompile Firefox from the ports. Also, I am an OpenBSD user (not FreeBSD), and I can say packages are much better maintained than in the 99% of the distros.
- CoolCold 4y ago
  I was trying to produce good example on differences in reading "stable system" on FreeBSD vs Linux worlds, when definition on what is "system" differs. No anything specific I have to put against Firefox or any other application here.
adrian_b 4y ago
I never use csh, the first step when I install FreeBSD is to install bash. Most of the programs that I use on FreeBSD come from ports, not from the base system (they are various networking applications like squid or samba or nginx), even if I use some functions from the base system, e.g. firewall/NAT/routing, some times the NFS server. Nevertheless, I did not have problems with inconsistencies in the ports collection, and that includes Firefox (which I use some times together with vncserver, so I can use it remotely even if I do not normally install the X11 server on FreeBSD). It is true however that on FreeBSD I have used only seldom programs with GUI interfaces, Firefox being an exception to that, and those are usually among the programs more likely to be broken by updates on Linux systems.
nortonham 4y ago
I take your point, but I've used freebsd on a laptop before and never had 3rd party software (like firefox) break after an update. FreeBSD really is stable. For desktops/laptops I would probably lean towards a linux distro first due to hw support, but FreeBSD being stale/solid is no joke.
0x457 4y ago
nah, I used FreeBSD on desktop, and I was tracking CURRENT with weekly rebuilds. The only time things "broke" for me is when X11 on FreeBSD switched to libinput by default. Never had issues with anything else: - nvidia drivers always worked, unlike ubuntu that tried to install opensource-not-working-driver every time it gets - My keyboard remapping worked every upgrade. Ubuntu broke it major release, Arch broke it from time to time. Fedora I didn't even bother. - Most of my software was always on bleeding edge release when possible - Docker in bhyve worked better than on linux because I could just restart VM - Not once, my bootloader went foobar in 20 years (with GRUB I live in constant fear) Now, if FreeBSD folks stopped with perfectionism and finally landed GPU and WiFi drivers...I'd be still using it. Now I won't switch back though, I'm far too friendly with Nix.
- throw0101a 4y ago
  > - nvidia drivers always worked, unlike ubuntu that tried to install opensource-not-working-driver every time it gets Many, many moons ago a video game called Return to Castle Wolfenstein was released, and in addition to a Linux server where you could host multi-player games, it actually had a Linux client. I played on the Linux client for a while with an NVidia GPU. But my main desktop was FreeBSD at the time, and so instead of dual-booting I used FreeBSD's Linux API/ABI emulation to play RtCW with FreeBSD NVidia drivers. I even got a few more FPS under FreeBSD. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein
toast0 4y ago
I'm not going to debate if ports/pkg is solid or not, either way it sure is nice to have a solid system at the base. On Linux, where the base is intermingled with everything else, it's a lot easier to upgrade packages and break the whole system, because there's no distinction between packages and the base system.

anthk 4y ago

Being a Linux user since Debian Woody and others until 2011, I can say most of them. Debian and Ubuntu breackage was guaranteed. On RH/RHEL, it was not easy somtimes. Arch had two major switchs (SystemD and anothers). On OpenBSD, you just read the upgrade guide, download the bsd.rd, boot it and upgrade. Or with sysupgrade from a few releases. Much reliable than Linux. https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade71.html https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade71.html

nortonham 4y ago
what breakage do you remember from Debian? I remember using debian on the same machine and going through three major releases without issue. ubuntu, not so much. agreed about the ease of openBSD upgrades from one release to another
- anthk 4y ago
  I think Woody->Sarge, some ALSA settings. I used bf24 (2.4) kernel in Woody.

adrian_b 4y ago

I almost always use only programs that I compile from sources (with few exceptions, like the NVIDIA drivers and libraries or some commercial EDA/CAD programs). I also strongly dislike systemd (not based on hearsay, but after testing it for a couple of months a few years ago, while using Arch Linux). These 2 conditions disqualify many Linux distributions for me. So I most frequently use Gentoo or some distribution derived from it, e.g. Funtoo. I have switched to Gentoo around 2002/2003, after using a few older distributions, including Slackware, Redhat and SUSE. During the first decade of using Gentoo, the Portage collection was better maintained and I would have never had problems with upgrades, except that when I have tested KDE 4 I was astonished by how the team which hijacked its development had been able to remove all the features that I liked in KDE 3.5, so I have wiped KDE 4 and I have reverted to KDE 3.5. Then, for a couple of years I had to fight more and more at each upgrade to avoid the breakage of the preserved KDE 3.5, until that became so difficult that I gave up and I replaced KDE with XFCE. Then for a few years there have been no problems with upgrades, but during the last decade they have begun to appear sporadically. In many cases the upgrades still work without surprises, but every few months there is one that fails because some package does not compile for various reasons, e.g. because some library is not listed as a dependence so it has not been updated, or because there is a circular package dependence that appears only with the specific combination of USE flags that are set on my system, or because there is some conflict between the dependencies of some packages that prevent them to be installed together without certain workarounds. What I like at Gentoo is that it permits an extreme customization of the system, but that is what makes very difficult for the package maintainers to test their package build instructions, because it is hard to generate all the combinations of options that might have been chosen by some user. The breakages are not frequent, but because they happen sometimes I am not confident to allow them to be performed automatically, without supervision, like I allow them to be done on FreeBSD. I would prefer a package system like that of Nix, but I have not found yet enough time to play with Nix, or maybe with Guix, to evaluate which will be the consequences of converting to it.