9 ms·

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 *B

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.
- kjellsbells 3y ago
  I think the statement is poorly worded. Perhaps a better formulation is that a monoculture carries a special kind of risk (it also holds benefits to a business of course). Same is true in politics where having a strong ruling party and an enfeebled opposition is not healthy. You need some external energy into the system to keep it on its toes.
- whartung 3y ago
  Wasn't there some kind of issue with a leap second sending machines (Linux machines?) off the deep end years ago (and all about the same time)? Conceptually, if you're running a mix of OSs, then there's much less chance of something undiscovered wiping out your entire infrastructure. There was a story I heard that when working on the avionics for one of their planes, Boeing mandated three separate CPU architectures, with the code developed by three different, isolated, teams, using three different toolsets (languages and runtimes) to minimize the risk of some Unknown Unknown commonality taking them all out. Dunno what actually happened. Could be completely folklore.
- throw0101c 3y ago
  > What sort of argument is this. We need multiple political parties. Therefore, our existence is important even if we secure insignificant votes? Yes, it keeps userland code honest if you follow the published API and not a specific behaviour. See for example the fsync() saga on Linux: * https://lwn.net/Articles/752063/ https://lwn.net/Articles/752063/ * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19238121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19238121 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19119991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19119991 It's the same reason why porting to obscure CPUs can be useful: DEC Alpha was never popular, but supporting it kind of forced Linux to be 64-bit clean in some ways, so when amd64 came along there was already a bunch of infrastructure in place. And having 'external parties' that are not part of the same 'tribal structures' and same zeitgeist / group think can allow for experimenting of ideas.
tw04 3y ago
Netflix runs a massive fleet of FreeBSD servers. NetApp and Dell/EMC isilon are built on it. The previous Compellent product was based on NetBSD. You can infer others if you look at the historical sponsor pages: https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-donors/donors/ https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-donors/donors/ There are plenty of companies that may not use the full BSD stack but pull bits and pieces of code as needed. Microsoft is known to have built off BSD networking code for Windows.
- muststopmyths 3y ago
  >Microsoft is known to have built off BSD networking code for Windows. 30+ years ago, when everyone was basing their TCP stacks on the BSD implementation. That was one of the reasons that the infamous 64k+ "ping of death" affected more than just Windows in 1998. The stack was re-written for Vista/Longhorn more than 20 years ago. My point being that the GP question was about FreeBSD's success today and the Windows TCP stack is not a good candidate to illustrate that.
forinti 3y ago
I did some experiments to find out what is the bare minimum I would need for remote work (VPN+RDP). It turns out it would be possible, albeit a bit slow, on a Pi B (512MB of RAM) using OpenBSD or FreeBSD. The latter was a bit faster. With Raspbian, I would need more memory (1GB did the job). On the negative side, there aren't as many packages for the BSDs on ARM. Anyway, it got me interested enough to buy an x86 laptop just to run FreeBSD.
pjmlp 3y ago
Anyone playing PlayStation uses a FreeBSD based OS. PlayStation OS is basically the FreeBSD kernel and a custom userspace tailored to the console.
- lionkor 3y ago
  The year of the FreeBSD console....!
postmodest 3y ago
That's because 30 years ago, BSD was getting sued by Ma Bell ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc._v._Berkeley_Software_Design,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc..... ), which is probably the only reason Linux exists. ...though I guess you could also argue that people felt like they had more stake in GPL than BSD-licensed code.
throwawaylinux 3y ago
Going by volumes of commits and posts on most mailing list, it has been in a long slow decline since probably early-mid 00's. I'll leave others to speculate on the reasons, but it is a pity. I'm a Linux user and developer and hardly meddled with the BSDs, but I think competition in the open source OS space is a great benefit. I certainly remember the competition used to spur ideas and development in days past. One thing that has amazed me is that despite the weight of development and investment in Linux far outstripping FreeBSD since around that time if not earlier, FreeBSD still managed to hold its own in performance, at least in some workloads and situations. Is there something about the people, community, methodologies, or technology that provide advantages to help achieve this? It would have been nice to know what could have been with a more even split of resources. Although I will say in my experience by far the most capable people have been those with passion who would have been working on a project as a hobby anyway (if not so many hours), and often the best results come from those people attacking problems that interest or concern them as opposed to ones that go through committees and executives and project managers, etc. The latter often serve to crapify things in the long run by being driven by short-term and selfish thinking (not necessarily by any one developer or person, just the nature of the whole beast). Linux kernel has been doing as well as can be expected in avoiding that corporate crapification, but it certainly is not immune. I could easily believe the average developer-hour invested in FreeBSD has a far greater value to the project in general than that in Linux (yes I'm aware many FreeBSD developers do get paid to work on it, and many Linux ones don't). (References) https://marc.info/?l=freebsd-commits-all https://marc.info/?l=freebsd-commits-all https://marc.info/?l=freebsd-hackers https://marc.info/?l=freebsd-hackers https://marc.info/?l=freebsd-current https://marc.info/?l=freebsd-current
TMWNN 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. There's a reason why the "BSD is dying" copypasta <https://everything2.com/title/BSD+is+dying https://everything2.com/title/BSD+is+dying> was born 25 years ago!

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.

kjellsbells 3y ago
I think the statement is poorly worded. Perhaps a better formulation is that a monoculture carries a special kind of risk (it also holds benefits to a business of course). Same is true in politics where having a strong ruling party and an enfeebled opposition is not healthy. You need some external energy into the system to keep it on its toes.
whartung 3y ago
Wasn't there some kind of issue with a leap second sending machines (Linux machines?) off the deep end years ago (and all about the same time)? Conceptually, if you're running a mix of OSs, then there's much less chance of something undiscovered wiping out your entire infrastructure. There was a story I heard that when working on the avionics for one of their planes, Boeing mandated three separate CPU architectures, with the code developed by three different, isolated, teams, using three different toolsets (languages and runtimes) to minimize the risk of some Unknown Unknown commonality taking them all out. Dunno what actually happened. Could be completely folklore.
throw0101c 3y ago
> What sort of argument is this. We need multiple political parties. Therefore, our existence is important even if we secure insignificant votes? Yes, it keeps userland code honest if you follow the published API and not a specific behaviour. See for example the fsync() saga on Linux: * https://lwn.net/Articles/752063/ https://lwn.net/Articles/752063/ * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19238121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19238121 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19119991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19119991 It's the same reason why porting to obscure CPUs can be useful: DEC Alpha was never popular, but supporting it kind of forced Linux to be 64-bit clean in some ways, so when amd64 came along there was already a bunch of infrastructure in place. And having 'external parties' that are not part of the same 'tribal structures' and same zeitgeist / group think can allow for experimenting of ideas.

tw04 3y ago

Netflix runs a massive fleet of FreeBSD servers. NetApp and Dell/EMC isilon are built on it. The previous Compellent product was based on NetBSD. You can infer others if you look at the historical sponsor pages: https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-donors/donors/ https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-donors/donors/ There are plenty of companies that may not use the full BSD stack but pull bits and pieces of code as needed. Microsoft is known to have built off BSD networking code for Windows.

muststopmyths 3y ago
>Microsoft is known to have built off BSD networking code for Windows. 30+ years ago, when everyone was basing their TCP stacks on the BSD implementation. That was one of the reasons that the infamous 64k+ "ping of death" affected more than just Windows in 1998. The stack was re-written for Vista/Longhorn more than 20 years ago. My point being that the GP question was about FreeBSD's success today and the Windows TCP stack is not a good candidate to illustrate that.

forinti 3y ago

I did some experiments to find out what is the bare minimum I would need for remote work (VPN+RDP). It turns out it would be possible, albeit a bit slow, on a Pi B (512MB of RAM) using OpenBSD or FreeBSD. The latter was a bit faster. With Raspbian, I would need more memory (1GB did the job). On the negative side, there aren't as many packages for the BSDs on ARM. Anyway, it got me interested enough to buy an x86 laptop just to run FreeBSD.

pjmlp 3y ago

Anyone playing PlayStation uses a FreeBSD based OS. PlayStation OS is basically the FreeBSD kernel and a custom userspace tailored to the console.

lionkor 3y ago
The year of the FreeBSD console....!

postmodest 3y ago

That's because 30 years ago, BSD was getting sued by Ma Bell ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc._v._Berkeley_Software_Design,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc..... ), which is probably the only reason Linux exists. ...though I guess you could also argue that people felt like they had more stake in GPL than BSD-licensed code.

throwawaylinux 3y ago

Going by volumes of commits and posts on most mailing list, it has been in a long slow decline since probably early-mid 00's. I'll leave others to speculate on the reasons, but it is a pity. I'm a Linux user and developer and hardly meddled with the BSDs, but I think competition in the open source OS space is a great benefit. I certainly remember the competition used to spur ideas and development in days past. One thing that has amazed me is that despite the weight of development and investment in Linux far outstripping FreeBSD since around that time if not earlier, FreeBSD still managed to hold its own in performance, at least in some workloads and situations. Is there something about the people, community, methodologies, or technology that provide advantages to help achieve this? It would have been nice to know what could have been with a more even split of resources. Although I will say in my experience by far the most capable people have been those with passion who would have been working on a project as a hobby anyway (if not so many hours), and often the best results come from those people attacking problems that interest or concern them as opposed to ones that go through committees and executives and project managers, etc. The latter often serve to crapify things in the long run by being driven by short-term and selfish thinking (not necessarily by any one developer or person, just the nature of the whole beast). Linux kernel has been doing as well as can be expected in avoiding that corporate crapification, but it certainly is not immune. I could easily believe the average developer-hour invested in FreeBSD has a far greater value to the project in general than that in Linux (yes I'm aware many FreeBSD developers do get paid to work on it, and many Linux ones don't). (References) https://marc.info/?l=freebsd-commits-all https://marc.info/?l=freebsd-commits-all https://marc.info/?l=freebsd-hackers https://marc.info/?l=freebsd-hackers https://marc.info/?l=freebsd-current https://marc.info/?l=freebsd-current

TMWNN 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. There's a reason why the "BSD is dying" copypasta <https://everything2.com/title/BSD+is+dying https://everything2.com/title/BSD+is+dying> was born 25 years ago!