13 ms·

FreeBSD at 30: Its secrets to success

178 points by open-source-ux 3y ago

open-source-ux 3y ago
FreeBSD Journal: FreeBSD 30th Anniversary Special Edition: https://freebsdfoundation.org/past-issues/freebsd-30th-anniversary-special-edition/ https://freebsdfoundation.org/past-issues/freebsd-30th-anniv...
whalesalad 3y ago
direct pdf link to avoid this obscure reader tool https://cdn.coverstand.com/33057/794483/9a09afdf5fb325213a554aba948ae00a2e4bba06.2.pdf https://cdn.coverstand.com/33057/794483/9a09afdf5fb325213a55...
- chungy 3y ago
  Thanks. I don't know why these custom viewers are attempted. They're invariable terrible.
- lproven 3y ago
  Thank you -- that is very handy! The viewer is emblematic of FreeBSD itself, in a way. "The major browsers have implemented rich native viewers for this industry-standard format now, that work on any OS, including ours. So what we will do is this: we will invent our own format and our own reader, done differently, with different controls. We will only have the time and manpower to implement, oh, maybe 10% of the features, but that doesn't matter." "Hey! Why are people complaining about it? It works for us!"
readingnews 3y ago
Not to be mean, but I started using Linux in 1992 (yes that early on, from the usenet posting), and I seem to recall hearing a lot more about FreeBSD or the *BSDs about 30 years ago than I do now. In my UNIX circles that I run around in, no one talks about FreeBSD. Honestly asking (yes, I guess I did not read the article) is most of its success on the commercial side? I think it is used in NAS boxes and routers/switches a lot, right?
- unmole 3y ago
  > and routers/switches a lot, right? Juniper's boxes all used to run a FreeBSD derivative. But even they have introduced Linux based products.
  - NexRebular 3y ago
    This downgrade is quite sad. Too many of the enterprise grade network devices rely on linux. At least the FreeBSD Junos still runs on the devices on top of KVM. I just can't understand why they didn't go for jails/bhyve or illumos zones instead.
    - djxfade 3y ago
      What makes you say it's a downgrade?
    - unmole 3y ago
      > This downgrade is quite sad. Too many of the enterprise grade network devices rely on linux. This is in no way a downgrade. Juniper just read the writing on the wall. Arista boxes ran Linux from day one and have a much better reputation for stability than virtually any other vendor.
      - NexRebular 3y ago
        I know of Arista (and the rest) all too well. It still doesn't change the fact that putting all eggs to one penguin-shaped basket give me the heebie-jeebies. Monoculturization is never a good thing, yet everyone seems to run towards it with a glee on linux. At least I can put money where my mouth is and continue budgeting for Juniper as long as they support FreeBSD.
- textread 3y ago
  Its secret to 'survival' is more appropriate. This article has a lot of fluff. eg: Specifically, companies needing redundancy require more than one operating system, since any single operating system may fall victim to a failure that could take out the entire company’s infrastructure What sort of argument is this. We need multiple political parties. Therefore, our existence is important even if we secure insignificant votes? Or does he mean BSD license vs GPL? In which case, I agree with his idea of diversified choices.
glassfish 3y ago
I have been using FreeBSD for the last 2 years on a 2015 Intel MacBook Pro, and I have been a long-time Linux user. Things I appreciate about FreeBSD: - init system (with real PIDs). - FreeBSD documentation. - installation experience (fast and hassle-free). - stability, consistency and low memory usage. - DWM / XFCE works great. - ease of configuring PF However, there are some main impediments that prevents me from using it as my daily driver: - WiFi drivers don't work unless it's a ThinkPad I think (specifically Broadcom 4360 on old Macbooks), I bought a Realtek USB WiFi adapter, which works but with reduced performance. - There are sketchy sound driver issues with the laptop speakers, resulting in tinny sound. - Bluetooth doesn't work at all, although my BOSS system shows up on hcinquiry.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  > init system (with real PIDs). I like FreeBSD's init system too, but what do you mean about PIDs? > WiFi drivers don't work unless it's a ThinkPad I think That's not it; FreeBSD works fine with the wifi in my Dell. I grant that the driver coverage is probably more spotty than Linux, but it's just on a per-device (card/chipset) basis.
  - itsmartapuntocm 3y ago
    Even OpenBSD has better wifi support. I'm able to use the WLAN adapter in my Pi 3 with OpenBSD, but it doesn't work in FreeBSD.
    - kaashif 3y ago
      Didn't it used to be the case that a lot of FreeBSD devs used OSX while OpenBSD devs used OpenBSD and this dogfooding produced better device driver support on OpenBSD? I heard that somewhere many years ago, but it may be false.
      - chriscappuccio 3y ago
        Yes that's absolutely true. And sad. What did FreeBSD do now? They are trying to create an environment to run Linux WiFi drivers. It's so hard to get documentation and support to develop a WiFi driver, less and less people want to do it.
User23 3y ago
And the number one secret: making it easy to use Linux drivers.
CodeCompost 3y ago
> success Can somebody elaborate on FreeBSD's "success"?
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  Frankly, the fact that it survived 30 years (and is still very actively used and developed and deployed) counts as success in my mind.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Being used as foundation for PlayStation OS, Netflix and others. Being available alongside Linux distributions as official supported OS on major cloud vendors. Maybe the contributions to upstream could be better, but that is the choice they decided to make.
  - pseudonym0us 3y ago
    >Being used as foundation for PlayStation OS, Netflix and others. Isn't that thanks to its license? They literally can be used in closed source software without a word of credit.
    - throw0101c 3y ago
      Netflix gives back quite a lot. You'll see "Sponsored by: Netfix" quite often in commit messages: * https://www.freshsource.org/commits.php https://www.freshsource.org/commits.php There isn't much special secret sauce that Netflix has at the OS layer of things, so there's not much reason for them to keep the patches in-house (and then have to maintain as the public source rolls forward). Other vendors that give back are Dell EMC Isilon (keeping their OneFS code private), Juniper, Netgate, etc. Sony is unique in that it was a one-time fork, and now that the product is out there's not much churn in things. Most vendors have learned that keeping things in-house just causes pain down the road when you have to re-base with the latest FreeBSD release.
      - monocasa 3y ago
pjmlp 3y ago
Congratulations. I would really like to buy a new edition of "The Design and Evolution of FreeBSD", if it ever happens.
- ysleepy 3y ago
  I assume s/Evolution/Implementation/, it is a good book.
  - codetrotter 3y ago
    I have the 2nd edition of the book from 2014 both in paper back and in digital format. It’s a nice book. I bought it years ago. I haven’t finished reading it yet, as it is a lot of pages and quite heaving reading. But I like it a lot. And I will continue to read it.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Yeah, typing from memory, so got it wrong.
- pengaru 3y ago
  In case you haven't already, you might want to check out the McKusick courses (available as videos). They're not cheap though, maybe you can find pirated copies. I was fortunate enough to see some back in the VHS days when someone in a local LUG convinced their employer to buy them as a way to support FreeBSD and give the team something to watch together (and recruit from the LUGs via hosted viewings no doubt). https://www.mckusick.com/courses/ https://www.mckusick.com/courses/
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    The few talks that are available from him online are quite interesting. Thanks for the link.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tiffanyh 3y ago
Love FreeBSD but ... Really wish there wasn't a split between FreeBSD & Matt Dillon 20-years ago, since DragonflyBSD is so strong and yet FreeBSD hasn't benefited from it's innovations. They'd truly would be better together than apart. Can only imagine how much stronger the BSD ecosystem would be overall today, if the past 20-years these teams had been together. https://www.dragonflybsd.org https://www.dragonflybsd.org Announcement: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2003-July/006889.html https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2003-Jul... EDIT: "stronger together" meaning, FreeBSD would benefit from the technology innovations, architecture simplicity and performance that DragonflyBSD brings ... and DragonflyBSD benefiting from the larger install base that FreeBSD has (and it's brand recognition).
- infofarmer 3y ago
  Complexity management is key in any project. Lots of successful forks reduce total complexity. NetBSD and OpenBSD are excellent examples — one could argue that their goals and innovations (in portability and security) would also be useful in the «mainline» FreeBSD, but that would explode complexity. The FreeBSD community is carefully watching progress across many forks and cherry-picking / importing a lot of the cream.
  - tiffanyh 3y ago
    As an outsider, I've actually seen the most engagement between OpenBSD & DragonflyBSD. E.g., there's active exploration of bringing the Hammer2 filesystem from DragonflyBSD to OpenBSD. https://github.com/kusumi/openbsd_hammer2 https://github.com/kusumi/openbsd_hammer2
    - nmhancoc 3y ago
      I’m not sure what to make of it, but amusingly your link says “OpenBSD version of netbsd_hammer2”, which itself says “NetBSD version of freebsd_hammer2”, which in turn says “FreeBSD version of openbsd_hammer2”. They’re all under the same profile so I think everyone is sharing?
- 3y ago
mistrial9 3y ago
was it really constructive for this pioneering tech to choose the actual "devil" as a logo? then the move to shiny plastic look for the logo? long-standing public divisions with no end.. niche opinionated choices sure, but dont be surprised at the results.
- Jtsummers 3y ago
  Is anyone actually offended by a mascot based on a joke about "Unix daemon"? Do they just not get the joke or are they really that sensitive? I imagine it's the same sort of person that opposes table top games like Dungeons & Dragons and shares out Chick tracts (often highly offensive and rude, ostensibly Christian, cartoon tracts denouncing Catholics, Jews, and Muslims, in particular, as well as other groups; we had someone leaving them in our office for a while).
  - fluoridation 3y ago
    Apparently a tiny minority of people are bothered by it. I was looking for information about the logo a few weeks ago and stumbled upon this anecdote: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-chat/2011-November/006642.html https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-chat/2011-Novemb... >I just got a call from the owner of a hotel for which we provide hotspot service. She says that a guest spotted the "Powered by FreeBSD" logo at the bottom of the login page, and was offended; the guest was convinced that either we or the hotel management "worshipped the Devil" and refused to stay at the hotel unless the logo was removed.
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      If you really search for it, you will always find someone offended by anything. Only a few years ago there was this German guy that bullied VS Code into removing their cutesy Santa hat which doesn't even have any religious context, it's originally a coca cola thing :') Anyway, having ubiquitous usage is not a goal of FreeBSD. People are free not to use it if they don't feel like it. I guess there's not much overlap in people being offended by penguins and those offended by daemons so I might have another suggestion :P
psychphysic 3y ago
Has it been successful? NetBSD seems to be more popular. Last time I used freeBSD was as a child circa 18 years ago.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  If that's how you judge popularity? FreeBSD is far more of a general OS, NetBSD is more known for its minimalism and extreme breadth of hardware support. It can run on almost anything. But in terms of usage numbers I'm pretty sure FreeBSD trumps it.
  - assimpleaspossi 3y ago
    Can't provide a source but the last one I saw showed NetBSD usage as miniscule by comparison.
  - sp0ck 3y ago
    Regarding NetBSD that is not true today. Linux has much more wider adoption on many different hardware. Toaster days are over :)
- mishac 3y ago
  Why do you think NetBSD is more popular? Of all the BSDs FreeBSD is by far the most widely used.
- pxc 3y ago
  A free software project doesn't have to be ubiquitous, or even popular, to be a success. Things like usability, usefulness, technical excellence, beauty, community activity, contributor-friendliness, and longevity are all legitimate software successes, each in their own right. Never mind the veracity of the reasoning you gave— why are we even looking for reasons to discount and dismiss a beloved, storied, ongoing F/OSS project like FreeBSD?
SpaceInvader 3y ago
I'm using FreeBSD on my servers non stop for 20 years. It has some quirks, but it's rock solid.
- tiffanyh 3y ago
  > "but [FreeBSD's] rock solid" Curious to hear your feedback of FreeBSD v5-8. Since many consider those releases (years) very bumpy.
  - boomboomsubban 3y ago
    If they started using FreeBSD 20 years ago, 5.x would probably be what they began with.
  - njt 3y ago
    I've been an erstwhile FreeBSD user since v2.x (ca. December 1996), running FreeBSD on my own machines since v4.x (ca 2001), and started using it as my primary laptop/desktop daily driver since v5.3 (ca. November 2004). Prior to that, SunOS/Solaris was my drug of choice. In the past, I would update the OS and ports religiously, sometimes rebuilding world and packages on a weekly basis. I've never once experienced any bumpiness between v5.x and v8.x (or any other version, but see my comments on v13 below). The OS has always been rock solid. I have occasionally experienced some package issues, usually when upgrading a port that had lagging dependencies -- some packages written in PHP come readily to mind. The number of times this has happened is more than 2 and less than 6, and in each of those cases, using portdowngrade and waiting it out a few weeks did the trick. Apart from OS-independent hardware issues, the only real FreeBSD issue that I've ever encountered was in the v12->v13 upgrade. If you were running ZFS, there was a gpart bootcode command you needed to run as part of the upgrade process, which I sometimes forgot to do, which caused the post-upgrade reboot to hang. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, you just insert the rescue CD and run the command and be on your way 2 minutes later; but at that time I had a number of my servers running on a VPS provider that didn't allow you to mount your own ISO, so I had to wipe the machine and reinstall the OS from scratch and restore stuff from backups. I don't really count this as a FreeBSD issue per se, just an obtuse service provider. (I've since moved most of my digital properties oceans away from that company.) Nowadays I upgrade the OS and packages far less frequently. I upgrade the OS with every minor release and also if there are any security issues that affect me. I upgrade the packages every couple of months, or if there is a bugfix that affects me, or if I need a new feature only available in a newer release. Since I started using it, there have been a number of developments that have made my FreeBSD life so much better: cperciva's portsnap and freebsd-update, pkg-ng, and of course the biggest one: ZFS. All of these allow me to maintain and upgrade the systems very easily. I stick with FreeBSD because of its consistency and ease of use, so I'd be curious to know what you mean by "bumpy"?
tristor 3y ago
I love FreeBSD and have been running it as a primary OS in my home and in my work since the late 90s. Unfortunately, there's some long-standing bugs that seem to have no traction to be resolved around booting from USB storage that impacted me in my home and some systems had to be rebuilt on Linux, making me not Linux-free at home for the first time in over a decade. I love FreeBSD and I hope it has another 30 years of success.
- ta47856857 3y ago
  Personally I've had to ditch my opnsense APU2 recently, as its failing on USB3 boot media. Even tried USB2 CD-ROM and no dice.
  - ChainOfFools 3y ago
    what did you ditch it for?
voytec 3y ago
On page 27, Michael W. Lucas starts his entry in a rather weird way.
- ybloviator 3y ago
  not at all weird for him
icedchai 3y ago
I've been running FreeBSD since the 2.x days. I worked at an early ISP where we used it for DNS, mail, and NNTP. Eventually I started running it at home.
- ybloviator 3y ago
  Yes! It was so huge in the ISP space back then because trying to run something like NNTP on Linux at the time was just not a great experience for customers. Indy ISPs aren't really a thing these days I guess, but back then it was a really strong market for FreeBSD.
wejick 3y ago
https://issue.freebsdfoundation.org/publication/?m=33057&i=794483&p=31&pp=1&ver=html5 https://issue.freebsdfoundation.org/publication/?m=33057&i=7... This part of FreeBSD history in Japan is also very interesting to read.
ggm 3y ago
I would echo the "I wish the split hadn't happened" voices but I suspect that the magic number of variants of an OS are around 3-5 and thats kind-of where we sit. It always was (to some extend) a set: Bell vs Berkely vs Digital vs Sun vs "the rest" with things taken from each, and added back. Getopt, NFS, mods to the TCP/IP stack, ideas about virtual disks and filestores. I may misunderstand, but I think there are "more" variants of Linux, but probably close to this magic number of really significant distros. I drove FreeBSD as a desktop on multiple machines for decades. I now live in OSX but I continue to operate FreeBSD for research nodes on Dell, but with more debian in the mix now than before. I'd love to try FreeBSD on RPi4 but what i read suggests it still has some issues in the uBoot and install area. I drive a 4 disk ZFS node through a jmicron USB-SATA bridge card, I need to be sure that will work before I can move but having adopted ZFS on Ubuntu the good thing is, ZFS variants apart, I SHOULD be able to do this transition without dataloss, assuming the controller chip works. Up in server land I've migrated between Debian and FreeBSD for ZFS filestores multiple times. Its really easy.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
jmmv 3y ago
This is so nice to see. Glad that FreeBSD is still alive after all these years. I guess I can share my story :) I played with some early versions of FreeBSD and OpenBSD but, at the time, I was still a Linux newbie so I wasn't comfortable with them. Disk I/O on FreeBSD 3.x was super-slow compared to Linux out of the box... because I didn't know what "soft updates" were and how enabling them would have resolved all my issues. It wasn't until FreeBSD 4.0 that I had learned enough Unix to make the jump, and that became my primary desktop for a while. Soon after, I switched to NetBSD (1.5.2), which I used as my only OS for various years, and I became an avid contributor to the project. I ported and maintained Gnome 2.x, and then developed things like tmpfs and the NetBSD testing framework. But... Mac OS X came along, I jumped ship to an iBook, and without being exposed to the BSDs on a daily basis via a desktop environment, I slowly lost the interest to continue using and contributing to them. I always said back then that having a strong desktop story was super-important to capture developers, and I think it still is. And I wasn't the only case. Mac OS X "stole" many BSD developers because it /was/ almost-BSD-but-with-a-great-UI. So I had left, until recently. I had kept a VM around all these years mostly as a curiosity, but just over a year ago, I set up (again) a home server on a "bargain" ThinkStation I found, mostly to act as a NAS and to run VMs on. My obvious choice was FreeBSD (I still "believe in" the BSDs), and ZFS and bhyve have delivered rock-solid and extremely pleasant experiences. Every time I type some zfs or vm commands, I'm amazed by how well the thing works. I used to favor NetBSD due to its minimalism and its portability, which in turn meant it had a neat internal design (which is what "wowed" me). But by then, it's true that FreeBSD was already the "easy to use" FreeBSD with the most active contributor base, although it was stuck on i386. I think this ease of use continues to this day, and FreeBSD has seen a lot of improvements to its internal design to make it portable. FreeBSD is less daunting to the beginner user _and_ developer, and I think the latter is also critical to run an open source projects these days because, to gain new contributors, you have to meet them where they are. FreeBSD's adoption of "common" tools, such as Git, Phabricator or Bugzilla (even if not "ideal" by some standards) has helped. I guess I should spend the time to write a full retrospective, but that will do for today, hehe.
JoeBtfsplk 3y ago
FreeBSD is so damn self-congratulatory. Leadership ugh culture argh. Makes me want to retch. How about get some users?
- olgeni 3y ago
  Here, I asked GPT to fix it for you: "I find FreeBSD's self-congratulatory nature quite off-putting, as well as the issues with its leadership and culture. It makes me feel nauseated. Perhaps focusing on attracting more users should be a priority." Save it on disk, fsync twice :D and use it next time.

FreeBSD Journal: FreeBSD 30th Anniversary Special Edition: https://freebsdfoundation.org/past-issues/freebsd-30th-anniversary-special-edition/ https://freebsdfoundation.org/past-issues/freebsd-30th-anniv...

whalesalad 3y ago

direct pdf link to avoid this obscure reader tool https://cdn.coverstand.com/33057/794483/9a09afdf5fb325213a554aba948ae00a2e4bba06.2.pdf https://cdn.coverstand.com/33057/794483/9a09afdf5fb325213a55...

chungy 3y ago
Thanks. I don't know why these custom viewers are attempted. They're invariable terrible.
lproven 3y ago
Thank you -- that is very handy! The viewer is emblematic of FreeBSD itself, in a way. "The major browsers have implemented rich native viewers for this industry-standard format now, that work on any OS, including ours. So what we will do is this: we will invent our own format and our own reader, done differently, with different controls. We will only have the time and manpower to implement, oh, maybe 10% of the features, but that doesn't matter." "Hey! Why are people complaining about it? It works for us!"

readingnews 3y ago

Not to be mean, but I started using Linux in 1992 (yes that early on, from the usenet posting), and I seem to recall hearing a lot more about FreeBSD or the *BSDs about 30 years ago than I do now. In my UNIX circles that I run around in, no one talks about FreeBSD. Honestly asking (yes, I guess I did not read the article) is most of its success on the commercial side? I think it is used in NAS boxes and routers/switches a lot, right?

unmole 3y ago
> and routers/switches a lot, right? Juniper's boxes all used to run a FreeBSD derivative. But even they have introduced Linux based products.
- NexRebular 3y ago
  This downgrade is quite sad. Too many of the enterprise grade network devices rely on linux. At least the FreeBSD Junos still runs on the devices on top of KVM. I just can't understand why they didn't go for jails/bhyve or illumos zones instead.
  - djxfade 3y ago
    What makes you say it's a downgrade?
  - unmole 3y ago
    > This downgrade is quite sad. Too many of the enterprise grade network devices rely on linux. This is in no way a downgrade. Juniper just read the writing on the wall. Arista boxes ran Linux from day one and have a much better reputation for stability than virtually any other vendor.
    - NexRebular 3y ago
      I know of Arista (and the rest) all too well. It still doesn't change the fact that putting all eggs to one penguin-shaped basket give me the heebie-jeebies. Monoculturization is never a good thing, yet everyone seems to run towards it with a glee on linux. At least I can put money where my mouth is and continue budgeting for Juniper as long as they support FreeBSD.
textread 3y ago
Its secret to 'survival' is more appropriate. This article has a lot of fluff. eg: Specifically, companies needing redundancy require more than one operating system, since any single operating system may fall victim to a failure that could take out the entire company’s infrastructure What sort of argument is this. We need multiple political parties. Therefore, our existence is important even if we secure insignificant votes? Or does he mean BSD license vs GPL? In which case, I agree with his idea of diversified choices.

glassfish 3y ago

I have been using FreeBSD for the last 2 years on a 2015 Intel MacBook Pro, and I have been a long-time Linux user. Things I appreciate about FreeBSD: - init system (with real PIDs). - FreeBSD documentation. - installation experience (fast and hassle-free). - stability, consistency and low memory usage. - DWM / XFCE works great. - ease of configuring PF However, there are some main impediments that prevents me from using it as my daily driver: - WiFi drivers don't work unless it's a ThinkPad I think (specifically Broadcom 4360 on old Macbooks), I bought a Realtek USB WiFi adapter, which works but with reduced performance. - There are sketchy sound driver issues with the laptop speakers, resulting in tinny sound. - Bluetooth doesn't work at all, although my BOSS system shows up on hcinquiry.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
> init system (with real PIDs). I like FreeBSD's init system too, but what do you mean about PIDs? > WiFi drivers don't work unless it's a ThinkPad I think That's not it; FreeBSD works fine with the wifi in my Dell. I grant that the driver coverage is probably more spotty than Linux, but it's just on a per-device (card/chipset) basis.
- itsmartapuntocm 3y ago
  Even OpenBSD has better wifi support. I'm able to use the WLAN adapter in my Pi 3 with OpenBSD, but it doesn't work in FreeBSD.
  - kaashif 3y ago
    Didn't it used to be the case that a lot of FreeBSD devs used OSX while OpenBSD devs used OpenBSD and this dogfooding produced better device driver support on OpenBSD? I heard that somewhere many years ago, but it may be false.
    - chriscappuccio 3y ago
      Yes that's absolutely true. And sad. What did FreeBSD do now? They are trying to create an environment to run Linux WiFi drivers. It's so hard to get documentation and support to develop a WiFi driver, less and less people want to do it.

User23 3y ago

And the number one secret: making it easy to use Linux drivers.

CodeCompost 3y ago

> success Can somebody elaborate on FreeBSD's "success"?

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
Frankly, the fact that it survived 30 years (and is still very actively used and developed and deployed) counts as success in my mind.
pjmlp 3y ago
Being used as foundation for PlayStation OS, Netflix and others. Being available alongside Linux distributions as official supported OS on major cloud vendors. Maybe the contributions to upstream could be better, but that is the choice they decided to make.
- pseudonym0us 3y ago
  >Being used as foundation for PlayStation OS, Netflix and others. Isn't that thanks to its license? They literally can be used in closed source software without a word of credit.
  - throw0101c 3y ago
    Netflix gives back quite a lot. You'll see "Sponsored by: Netfix" quite often in commit messages: * https://www.freshsource.org/commits.php https://www.freshsource.org/commits.php There isn't much special secret sauce that Netflix has at the OS layer of things, so there's not much reason for them to keep the patches in-house (and then have to maintain as the public source rolls forward). Other vendors that give back are Dell EMC Isilon (keeping their OneFS code private), Juniper, Netgate, etc. Sony is unique in that it was a one-time fork, and now that the product is out there's not much churn in things. Most vendors have learned that keeping things in-house just causes pain down the road when you have to re-base with the latest FreeBSD release.
    - monocasa 3y ago

pjmlp 3y ago

Congratulations. I would really like to buy a new edition of "The Design and Evolution of FreeBSD", if it ever happens.

ysleepy 3y ago
I assume s/Evolution/Implementation/, it is a good book.
- codetrotter 3y ago
  I have the 2nd edition of the book from 2014 both in paper back and in digital format. It’s a nice book. I bought it years ago. I haven’t finished reading it yet, as it is a lot of pages and quite heaving reading. But I like it a lot. And I will continue to read it.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Yeah, typing from memory, so got it wrong.
pengaru 3y ago
In case you haven't already, you might want to check out the McKusick courses (available as videos). They're not cheap though, maybe you can find pirated copies. I was fortunate enough to see some back in the VHS days when someone in a local LUG convinced their employer to buy them as a way to support FreeBSD and give the team something to watch together (and recruit from the LUGs via hosted viewings no doubt). https://www.mckusick.com/courses/ https://www.mckusick.com/courses/
- pjmlp 3y ago
  The few talks that are available from him online are quite interesting. Thanks for the link.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

tiffanyh 3y ago

Love FreeBSD but ... Really wish there wasn't a split between FreeBSD & Matt Dillon 20-years ago, since DragonflyBSD is so strong and yet FreeBSD hasn't benefited from it's innovations. They'd truly would be better together than apart. Can only imagine how much stronger the BSD ecosystem would be overall today, if the past 20-years these teams had been together. https://www.dragonflybsd.org https://www.dragonflybsd.org Announcement: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2003-July/006889.html https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2003-Jul... EDIT: "stronger together" meaning, FreeBSD would benefit from the technology innovations, architecture simplicity and performance that DragonflyBSD brings ... and DragonflyBSD benefiting from the larger install base that FreeBSD has (and it's brand recognition).

infofarmer 3y ago
Complexity management is key in any project. Lots of successful forks reduce total complexity. NetBSD and OpenBSD are excellent examples — one could argue that their goals and innovations (in portability and security) would also be useful in the «mainline» FreeBSD, but that would explode complexity. The FreeBSD community is carefully watching progress across many forks and cherry-picking / importing a lot of the cream.
- tiffanyh 3y ago
  As an outsider, I've actually seen the most engagement between OpenBSD & DragonflyBSD. E.g., there's active exploration of bringing the Hammer2 filesystem from DragonflyBSD to OpenBSD. https://github.com/kusumi/openbsd_hammer2 https://github.com/kusumi/openbsd_hammer2
  - nmhancoc 3y ago
    I’m not sure what to make of it, but amusingly your link says “OpenBSD version of netbsd_hammer2”, which itself says “NetBSD version of freebsd_hammer2”, which in turn says “FreeBSD version of openbsd_hammer2”. They’re all under the same profile so I think everyone is sharing?
3y ago

mistrial9 3y ago

was it really constructive for this pioneering tech to choose the actual "devil" as a logo? then the move to shiny plastic look for the logo? long-standing public divisions with no end.. niche opinionated choices sure, but dont be surprised at the results.

Jtsummers 3y ago
Is anyone actually offended by a mascot based on a joke about "Unix daemon"? Do they just not get the joke or are they really that sensitive? I imagine it's the same sort of person that opposes table top games like Dungeons & Dragons and shares out Chick tracts (often highly offensive and rude, ostensibly Christian, cartoon tracts denouncing Catholics, Jews, and Muslims, in particular, as well as other groups; we had someone leaving them in our office for a while).
- fluoridation 3y ago
  Apparently a tiny minority of people are bothered by it. I was looking for information about the logo a few weeks ago and stumbled upon this anecdote: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-chat/2011-November/006642.html https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-chat/2011-Novemb... >I just got a call from the owner of a hotel for which we provide hotspot service. She says that a guest spotted the "Powered by FreeBSD" logo at the bottom of the login page, and was offended; the guest was convinced that either we or the hotel management "worshipped the Devil" and refused to stay at the hotel unless the logo was removed.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    If you really search for it, you will always find someone offended by anything. Only a few years ago there was this German guy that bullied VS Code into removing their cutesy Santa hat which doesn't even have any religious context, it's originally a coca cola thing :') Anyway, having ubiquitous usage is not a goal of FreeBSD. People are free not to use it if they don't feel like it. I guess there's not much overlap in people being offended by penguins and those offended by daemons so I might have another suggestion :P

psychphysic 3y ago

Has it been successful? NetBSD seems to be more popular. Last time I used freeBSD was as a child circa 18 years ago.

wkat4242 3y ago
If that's how you judge popularity? FreeBSD is far more of a general OS, NetBSD is more known for its minimalism and extreme breadth of hardware support. It can run on almost anything. But in terms of usage numbers I'm pretty sure FreeBSD trumps it.
- assimpleaspossi 3y ago
  Can't provide a source but the last one I saw showed NetBSD usage as miniscule by comparison.
- sp0ck 3y ago
  Regarding NetBSD that is not true today. Linux has much more wider adoption on many different hardware. Toaster days are over :)
mishac 3y ago
Why do you think NetBSD is more popular? Of all the BSDs FreeBSD is by far the most widely used.
pxc 3y ago
A free software project doesn't have to be ubiquitous, or even popular, to be a success. Things like usability, usefulness, technical excellence, beauty, community activity, contributor-friendliness, and longevity are all legitimate software successes, each in their own right. Never mind the veracity of the reasoning you gave— why are we even looking for reasons to discount and dismiss a beloved, storied, ongoing F/OSS project like FreeBSD?

SpaceInvader 3y ago

I'm using FreeBSD on my servers non stop for 20 years. It has some quirks, but it's rock solid.

tiffanyh 3y ago
> "but [FreeBSD's] rock solid" Curious to hear your feedback of FreeBSD v5-8. Since many consider those releases (years) very bumpy.
- boomboomsubban 3y ago
  If they started using FreeBSD 20 years ago, 5.x would probably be what they began with.
- njt 3y ago
  I've been an erstwhile FreeBSD user since v2.x (ca. December 1996), running FreeBSD on my own machines since v4.x (ca 2001), and started using it as my primary laptop/desktop daily driver since v5.3 (ca. November 2004). Prior to that, SunOS/Solaris was my drug of choice. In the past, I would update the OS and ports religiously, sometimes rebuilding world and packages on a weekly basis. I've never once experienced any bumpiness between v5.x and v8.x (or any other version, but see my comments on v13 below). The OS has always been rock solid. I have occasionally experienced some package issues, usually when upgrading a port that had lagging dependencies -- some packages written in PHP come readily to mind. The number of times this has happened is more than 2 and less than 6, and in each of those cases, using portdowngrade and waiting it out a few weeks did the trick. Apart from OS-independent hardware issues, the only real FreeBSD issue that I've ever encountered was in the v12->v13 upgrade. If you were running ZFS, there was a gpart bootcode command you needed to run as part of the upgrade process, which I sometimes forgot to do, which caused the post-upgrade reboot to hang. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, you just insert the rescue CD and run the command and be on your way 2 minutes later; but at that time I had a number of my servers running on a VPS provider that didn't allow you to mount your own ISO, so I had to wipe the machine and reinstall the OS from scratch and restore stuff from backups. I don't really count this as a FreeBSD issue per se, just an obtuse service provider. (I've since moved most of my digital properties oceans away from that company.) Nowadays I upgrade the OS and packages far less frequently. I upgrade the OS with every minor release and also if there are any security issues that affect me. I upgrade the packages every couple of months, or if there is a bugfix that affects me, or if I need a new feature only available in a newer release. Since I started using it, there have been a number of developments that have made my FreeBSD life so much better: cperciva's portsnap and freebsd-update, pkg-ng, and of course the biggest one: ZFS. All of these allow me to maintain and upgrade the systems very easily. I stick with FreeBSD because of its consistency and ease of use, so I'd be curious to know what you mean by "bumpy"?

tristor 3y ago

I love FreeBSD and have been running it as a primary OS in my home and in my work since the late 90s. Unfortunately, there's some long-standing bugs that seem to have no traction to be resolved around booting from USB storage that impacted me in my home and some systems had to be rebuilt on Linux, making me not Linux-free at home for the first time in over a decade. I love FreeBSD and I hope it has another 30 years of success.

ta47856857 3y ago
Personally I've had to ditch my opnsense APU2 recently, as its failing on USB3 boot media. Even tried USB2 CD-ROM and no dice.
- ChainOfFools 3y ago
  what did you ditch it for?

voytec 3y ago

On page 27, Michael W. Lucas starts his entry in a rather weird way.

ybloviator 3y ago
not at all weird for him

icedchai 3y ago

I've been running FreeBSD since the 2.x days. I worked at an early ISP where we used it for DNS, mail, and NNTP. Eventually I started running it at home.

ybloviator 3y ago
Yes! It was so huge in the ISP space back then because trying to run something like NNTP on Linux at the time was just not a great experience for customers. Indy ISPs aren't really a thing these days I guess, but back then it was a really strong market for FreeBSD.

wejick 3y ago

https://issue.freebsdfoundation.org/publication/?m=33057&i=794483&p=31&pp=1&ver=html5 https://issue.freebsdfoundation.org/publication/?m=33057&i=7... This part of FreeBSD history in Japan is also very interesting to read.

ggm 3y ago

I would echo the "I wish the split hadn't happened" voices but I suspect that the magic number of variants of an OS are around 3-5 and thats kind-of where we sit. It always was (to some extend) a set: Bell vs Berkely vs Digital vs Sun vs "the rest" with things taken from each, and added back. Getopt, NFS, mods to the TCP/IP stack, ideas about virtual disks and filestores. I may misunderstand, but I think there are "more" variants of Linux, but probably close to this magic number of really significant distros. I drove FreeBSD as a desktop on multiple machines for decades. I now live in OSX but I continue to operate FreeBSD for research nodes on Dell, but with more debian in the mix now than before. I'd love to try FreeBSD on RPi4 but what i read suggests it still has some issues in the uBoot and install area. I drive a 4 disk ZFS node through a jmicron USB-SATA bridge card, I need to be sure that will work before I can move but having adopted ZFS on Ubuntu the good thing is, ZFS variants apart, I SHOULD be able to do this transition without dataloss, assuming the controller chip works. Up in server land I've migrated between Debian and FreeBSD for ZFS filestores multiple times. Its really easy.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

jmmv 3y ago

This is so nice to see. Glad that FreeBSD is still alive after all these years. I guess I can share my story :) I played with some early versions of FreeBSD and OpenBSD but, at the time, I was still a Linux newbie so I wasn't comfortable with them. Disk I/O on FreeBSD 3.x was super-slow compared to Linux out of the box... because I didn't know what "soft updates" were and how enabling them would have resolved all my issues. It wasn't until FreeBSD 4.0 that I had learned enough Unix to make the jump, and that became my primary desktop for a while. Soon after, I switched to NetBSD (1.5.2), which I used as my only OS for various years, and I became an avid contributor to the project. I ported and maintained Gnome 2.x, and then developed things like tmpfs and the NetBSD testing framework. But... Mac OS X came along, I jumped ship to an iBook, and without being exposed to the BSDs on a daily basis via a desktop environment, I slowly lost the interest to continue using and contributing to them. I always said back then that having a strong desktop story was super-important to capture developers, and I think it still is. And I wasn't the only case. Mac OS X "stole" many BSD developers because it /was/ almost-BSD-but-with-a-great-UI. So I had left, until recently. I had kept a VM around all these years mostly as a curiosity, but just over a year ago, I set up (again) a home server on a "bargain" ThinkStation I found, mostly to act as a NAS and to run VMs on. My obvious choice was FreeBSD (I still "believe in" the BSDs), and ZFS and bhyve have delivered rock-solid and extremely pleasant experiences. Every time I type some zfs or vm commands, I'm amazed by how well the thing works. I used to favor NetBSD due to its minimalism and its portability, which in turn meant it had a neat internal design (which is what "wowed" me). But by then, it's true that FreeBSD was already the "easy to use" FreeBSD with the most active contributor base, although it was stuck on i386. I think this ease of use continues to this day, and FreeBSD has seen a lot of improvements to its internal design to make it portable. FreeBSD is less daunting to the beginner user _and_ developer, and I think the latter is also critical to run an open source projects these days because, to gain new contributors, you have to meet them where they are. FreeBSD's adoption of "common" tools, such as Git, Phabricator or Bugzilla (even if not "ideal" by some standards) has helped. I guess I should spend the time to write a full retrospective, but that will do for today, hehe.

JoeBtfsplk 3y ago

FreeBSD is so damn self-congratulatory. Leadership ugh culture argh. Makes me want to retch. How about get some users?

olgeni 3y ago
Here, I asked GPT to fix it for you: "I find FreeBSD's self-congratulatory nature quite off-putting, as well as the issues with its leadership and culture. It makes me feel nauseated. Perhaps focusing on attracting more users should be a priority." Save it on disk, fsync twice :D and use it next time.