4 ms·

Yes ... and the future is bright. I have been using FreeBSD for almost two decades now (and still use it) both privately and professionally. I stared at 'dark'

Yes ... and the future is bright. I have been using FreeBSD for almost two decades now (and still use it) both privately and professionally. I stared at 'dark' 5.x times with problematic SMP implementation and DragonflyBSD split. These back then in 2004-2005 were the 'dark times' for FreeBSD. Since then all things improved or been reworked. Besides ZFS inclusion many great things happened in FreeBSD that are not available anywhere else like: - GEOM Storage Framework - Jails with VNET or Netgraph networking - Bhyve virtualization/hypervisor written from scratch and ported to macOS and Illumos - new LUA based loader(8) with support for ZFS Boot Environments - beadm(8)/bectl(8) - TLS in kernel (Netflix) - imported DTrace for better troubleshooting and looking for performance improvements - Capsicum sandboxing Security framework - 33000+ available packages in pkg(8) repository - support for new/latest GPUs - boot speed improved from 28 to 8 seconds: https://youtu.be/10XRCiBtyhA https://youtu.be/10XRCiBtyhA - import of pf(8) OpenBSD firewall - ported to ARM64 and POWER64 architectures - move from M:N to 1:1 threading model in SMP - new bsdinstall(8) installer and bsdconfig(8) companion - sendmail(8) removed for dma(8) from DragonflyBSD - ... and I definitely do not remember tons of other stuff (almost two decades) Not to mention BSD license that gives you ABSOLUTE freedom and not just a glimpse of it. Some of these features I described here: - https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2020/09/07/quare-freebsd/ https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2020/09/07/quare-freebsd/ Regards.

bgpepi 3y ago
Yes FreeBSD has, but there are things that the team around project must clean, more about security. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32506675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32506675
- emaste 3y ago
  The FreeBSD Foundation and FreeBSD Project members have been investing in and working on improving FreeBSD security for at least the last several years. Much of that "FreeBSD – A Lesson in Poor Defaults" blog post is outdated/incorrect/conjecture.
  - mistrial9 3y ago
    old programmers never die, the commit intervals do change however
    - emaste 3y ago
      Not really sure how this comment relates to mine.
- vermaden 3y ago
  About that 'lesson...' sendmail(8) - still in FreeBSD 13.x base but no longer in FreeBSD 14.x base (removed) - FreeBSD 14.x will use dma(8) from DragonflyBSD instead ntpd(8) - its in FreeBSD base system so ntpd(8) bugs translate to FreeBSD bugs - they can change that to chronyd(8) so they will have chronyd(8) bugs instead openssl(8) - same as with ntpd(8) - not a lot of software is ready to move to libressl(8) - HardenedBSD (security oriented fork of FreeBSD) moved to libressl(8) some time ago but they went back because patching 'all the world software was taking too much time'. portsnap(8) - is now deprecated - gitup(8) or git(8) can be used to update FreeBSD Ports tree A lot of complaints are not that FreeBSD is insecure - but that some things are not enabled by default - this is not a security hole. Anyone can enable SWAP encryption (in installer) or enable basic firewall config (after install). Not everyone needs that. FreeBSD is like a framework with available options - you enable/use what you like and thats it. For example why FreeBSD would dump TCP Wrappers features when it works properly? A lot of people rely on that (older configs/automations/...) FreeBSD does not dump older features 'just like that' because now they are not fancy. FreeBSD is not OpenBSD. OpenBSD tries to enable each possible security mechanism by default - yet they still have security holes sometimes (like all software). Not to mention that a lot of important stuff does not work on OpenBSD. WINE? Nvidia drivers? Bluetooth? Netflix? Virtualization of Windows or Linux? Any secure filesystem with checksums like ZFS? Running Linux binaries? Yes you can be secure when almost nothing is available - but I believe that is not the right path. I respect OpenBSD attitude and path - but I could not use it daily as it does not have features I need and use daily. Hope that helps.

bgpepi 3y ago

Yes FreeBSD has, but there are things that the team around project must clean, more about security. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32506675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32506675

emaste 3y ago
The FreeBSD Foundation and FreeBSD Project members have been investing in and working on improving FreeBSD security for at least the last several years. Much of that "FreeBSD – A Lesson in Poor Defaults" blog post is outdated/incorrect/conjecture.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  old programmers never die, the commit intervals do change however
  - emaste 3y ago
    Not really sure how this comment relates to mine.
vermaden 3y ago
About that 'lesson...' sendmail(8) - still in FreeBSD 13.x base but no longer in FreeBSD 14.x base (removed) - FreeBSD 14.x will use dma(8) from DragonflyBSD instead ntpd(8) - its in FreeBSD base system so ntpd(8) bugs translate to FreeBSD bugs - they can change that to chronyd(8) so they will have chronyd(8) bugs instead openssl(8) - same as with ntpd(8) - not a lot of software is ready to move to libressl(8) - HardenedBSD (security oriented fork of FreeBSD) moved to libressl(8) some time ago but they went back because patching 'all the world software was taking too much time'. portsnap(8) - is now deprecated - gitup(8) or git(8) can be used to update FreeBSD Ports tree A lot of complaints are not that FreeBSD is insecure - but that some things are not enabled by default - this is not a security hole. Anyone can enable SWAP encryption (in installer) or enable basic firewall config (after install). Not everyone needs that. FreeBSD is like a framework with available options - you enable/use what you like and thats it. For example why FreeBSD would dump TCP Wrappers features when it works properly? A lot of people rely on that (older configs/automations/...) FreeBSD does not dump older features 'just like that' because now they are not fancy. FreeBSD is not OpenBSD. OpenBSD tries to enable each possible security mechanism by default - yet they still have security holes sometimes (like all software). Not to mention that a lot of important stuff does not work on OpenBSD. WINE? Nvidia drivers? Bluetooth? Netflix? Virtualization of Windows or Linux? Any secure filesystem with checksums like ZFS? Running Linux binaries? Yes you can be secure when almost nothing is available - but I believe that is not the right path. I respect OpenBSD attitude and path - but I could not use it daily as it does not have features I need and use daily. Hope that helps.