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Cool. I would recommend FreeBSD to anyone wanting to jump out of the Linux bandwagon Sadly my bug is still present if you attempt to create a Virtual Machine w

Cool. I would recommend FreeBSD to anyone wanting to jump out of the Linux bandwagon Sadly my bug is still present if you attempt to create a Virtual Machine with bHyve in a jail. Appears to only effect limited servers: in this case an Cisco UCS 220 M5. https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=274051 https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=274051

zvmaz 3y ago
> I would recommend FreeBSD to anyone wanting to jump out of the Linux bandwagon As a desktop OS?
- doublerabbit 3y ago
  Totally, it's my daily driver. I now only reboot to Windows if I feel like gaming. Proton is available too. I use Xfce and Nvidia drivers on a 3060 but AMD worked too when I was using an 5700 XT. Processor: Ryzen 5950X - no issues Sound, I'm using a PreSonus via USB Ethernet (realtek) too works nicely. WiFi I've not attempted but probably would. Can't fault it.
  - jasaldivara 3y ago
    What advantages do you find over Linux?
    - torstenvl 3y ago
      You know how there's a constant stream of weird things Linux does that annoy and confuse you? Like .sudo_as_admin_successful showing up in your home directory with no way to turn it off and nothing really documented anywhere? Or being afraid to upgrade because you don't know which method won't clobber your custom kernel modules? That stuff happens a lot less on FreeBSD.
      - BirAdam 3y ago
        You can get rid of a lot of unexpected behavior just by using Slackware. I like the BSDs, but I also like having broader hardware and software compatibility.
        torstenvl 3y ago
        Sure. I'm not married to the FreeBSD kernel, but to the BSD approach generally. If someone did the opposite of Debian/kFreeBSD I would be interested. FreeBSD/kLinux?
        yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
        Chimera Linux?
        yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
        > Since its first beta release in April of 1993, the Slackware Linux Project has aimed at producing the most "UNIX-like" Linux distribution out there. - http://www.slackware.com/info/ http://www.slackware.com/info/ A person could reasonably argue that Slackware was always a BSD that happened to use the Linux kernel:)
      - 79a6ed87 3y ago
        I've only seen that in Debian-based or Ubuntu-based distributions
    - doublerabbit 3y ago
      It's not Linux. I have more than one gripe with Linux and FreeBSD free those. Yes Linux can do all those things but that's not the reason here. The kernel feels solid and bHyve is a goddess. Jails are great for running isolated browsers with sound.
      - livrem 3y ago
        > bHyve is a goddess Does it work well with graphics? I just started using FreeBSD and one of the first thing I did was to follow the Handbook instructions to set up a minimal Debian in Bhyve that I then used to access my old Linux partitions to copy files. Works very well for that and I have no complaints, but I also can't say I noticed any major improvement over Qemu? But I made a quick attempt to also install something with graphics, probably Lubuntu, and I did not get that to boot. Is the graphics good enough to play games and run some Linux-only applications with reasonable performance?
        doublerabbit 3y ago
        The hypervisor is not enterprise like VMware where you can easily pass 3D accelerated adapters. But it's still very usable over remote-desktop. Windows Server works a charm, as does Linux Desktops via VNC or whatever remote protocol you use. You can pass though hardware devices including graphic cards but you need to have it as a secondary and unused. bHyve is unable to use the primary card as well as a shared device for the guest.
        wkat4242 3y ago
        Yeah the thing is that bhyve doesn't seem to have an emulated console like the other virtualization solutions out there. That makes things a little more cumbersome. I'm not even talking about 3D passthrough. Just a fake VGA adapter you can see in a window so you can run an installer.
        ptx 3y ago
        It provides a graphical console over VNC: https://github.com/churchers/vm-bhyve/wiki/UEFI-Graphics-(VNC) https://github.com/churchers/vm-bhyve/wiki/UEFI-Graphics-(VN...
- drewg123 3y ago
  I've used it as my desktop OS since 1999 or so (first on FreeBSD's DEC Alpha port, so as to eat my on dogfood as I was one of the main contributors to the alpha port), with a brief detour running Ubuntu Linux on x86 when I was doing almost 100% linux work from 2010-2015 or so. I run very basic GPU (GTX 750), use ZFS for everything, run lxde, and use linux firefox as my main web browser (via the LinuxJails project at https://wiki.freebsd.org/LinuxJails https://wiki.freebsd.org/LinuxJails). For day-to-day use its nearly the same as linux, and runs nearly the same apps as linux. The biggest frustration I have is "linux recipes" for doing things often don't work (naturally, since the OS is different), and electron apps are a crapshoot, since the electron is chrome, and the emulation needed for chrome is incomplete. For example, I'm listening to spotify right now and I can listen to playlists, but can't just play a song.. EDIT: One the things I loved about Ubuntu LTS is the packages being essentially frozen, aside from security fixes. FreeBSD is a "rolling release" OS for 3rd party packages, even on stable branches. That's one of the reasons that I use the ubuntu LTS firefox ... I can apt-get update & apt-get upgrade just the web browser and its dependencies, rather than the 1700 unrelated packages that I'd need to update just to get the newest firefox.
  - CoolCold 3y ago
    You are probably the first FreeBSD guy who understands [and likes] the LTS option one can get with Linux world. Many from FreeBSD crowd just don't get the plain idea of LTS at all. Kudos!
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Vscode is also Electron and works great though. Chromium itself too. For Spotify I use spotify-qt which is ok (not great) though with the latest version from ports it refuses to store my password in the KDE keychain any longer :( Ps I actually love the rolling packages on FreeBSD while keeping a stable OS. On Linux these things are usually coupled. You can however change FreeBSD to quarterly updated packages if you so desire. Just set it to the quarterly branch instead of latest.
    - drewg123 3y ago
      I use spotifyd and control the music from my phone most of the time. I mostly don't care if I have the latest version of libfoo, but I do care that I have the latest version of anything exposed to the internet (eg, firefox), and any security updates required to libfoo. What I hate is when I do a pkg update; pkg upgrade firefox and it pulls in 1000+ pkg updates via dependency chains, some of which change how things work. That's why I like the linux jail approach. Back in the old days (early/mid 2000s) when things were simpler, I still ran linux web browsers for the same reason. I could just download the tarball from mozilla or opera or whatever and update to the latest browser binary without taking a chance on fubar'ing my system.
llm_nerd 3y ago
Hopefully people have a better reason than simply getting off a purported bandwagon. I was engaged with the early stages of a project where one of the founders wanted us to base a payment platform around FreeBSD. His reasoning boiled down to "Linux is too popular". The consequences of this choice would be significant, and that just isn't a justified position so I bowed out. The project, unsurprisingly, was a failure.
- LeonenTheDK 3y ago
  I'm curious if you could talk about any of the consequences at all. There's a very similar situation unfolding at my company currently. New project running on FreeBSD because that's what the admin likes, and he takes every opportunity to bash Linux that he can. I'd like to prepare for potential pitfalls best I can. We've already had issues around compatibility with third party software and OS upgrades (which surprised me in particular, likely a mistake on the admin's part but I'm not privy to the details). FreeBSD seems like a wonderful OS for purpose-built hardware (eg pfsense, PlaystationOS, Netflix's distribution servers), but I'd much prefer to be on something common for the general compute. I don't even want to know what hiring another/replacement admin will be like in the future (we're entirely on-prem in a city that's away from a major population centre, niche enough as it is without adding FreeBSD on top).
  - doublerabbit 3y ago
    Normally the reasons for me don't tend to fit those who use Linux. And then it always turn in to a pissing match of "Linux can do that too". As linux suits to you for reasons. It's up for you to take my recommendation and try for what you want the OS for rather than take my reasons to why. I may recommend a Honda for that it's a Japanese manufacturer but the reason may be because my type of drinking cups fit the holders. Why FreeBSD: bHyve (Virtual Machines) within Jails. I have individual applications running in Jails, with proper ZFS integration including encryption. The kernel is rock solid, its a fresh breath of air. Especially when to compiling your own. Server stability is excellent minus this issue. Everything just works, it feels less clunky than Linux in my opinion. That then turns in to a flame. My personal opinion is that Systemd infuriates me. Microsoft has its grubby hands over it and many others. Political and non. I don't have time to debate all this nor do people seem to accept that's how I feel about the Linux community. Both have their flaws and disadvantages. Justifying my opinions is tiring and time consuming.
bkallus 3y ago
I've only recently had to start using BSD, and FreeBSD is definitely easier to get started with. Anecdote: I found a null pointer dereference in the OpenBSD httpd last week that allows an attacker to crash the server with a single crafted request. It's now patched. I tried for a while to get a backtrace of the bug on OpenBSD, but their ancient gdb port doesn't support follow-fork-mode, and their clang port generates DWARF that their gdb port doesn't understand. Every time I reproduced the crash, the backtrace was just useless ASLR addresses. FreeBSD had none of these problems, and I was able to collect the backtrace in minutes.
ptx 3y ago
What's the advantage of running Bhyve within a jail? The userspace process is sandboxed with Capsicum[0], which should provide similar security benefits, shouldn't it? Is it just that you already have a jail and need to add Bhyve to it? [0] https://mysteriouscode.com/blog/sandboxing-the-hypervisor/ https://mysteriouscode.com/blog/sandboxing-the-hypervisor/

zvmaz 3y ago

> I would recommend FreeBSD to anyone wanting to jump out of the Linux bandwagon As a desktop OS?

doublerabbit 3y ago
Totally, it's my daily driver. I now only reboot to Windows if I feel like gaming. Proton is available too. I use Xfce and Nvidia drivers on a 3060 but AMD worked too when I was using an 5700 XT. Processor: Ryzen 5950X - no issues Sound, I'm using a PreSonus via USB Ethernet (realtek) too works nicely. WiFi I've not attempted but probably would. Can't fault it.
- jasaldivara 3y ago
  What advantages do you find over Linux?
  - torstenvl 3y ago
    You know how there's a constant stream of weird things Linux does that annoy and confuse you? Like .sudo_as_admin_successful showing up in your home directory with no way to turn it off and nothing really documented anywhere? Or being afraid to upgrade because you don't know which method won't clobber your custom kernel modules? That stuff happens a lot less on FreeBSD.
    - BirAdam 3y ago
      You can get rid of a lot of unexpected behavior just by using Slackware. I like the BSDs, but I also like having broader hardware and software compatibility.
      - torstenvl 3y ago
        Sure. I'm not married to the FreeBSD kernel, but to the BSD approach generally. If someone did the opposite of Debian/kFreeBSD I would be interested. FreeBSD/kLinux?
        yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
        Chimera Linux?
      - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
        > Since its first beta release in April of 1993, the Slackware Linux Project has aimed at producing the most "UNIX-like" Linux distribution out there. - http://www.slackware.com/info/ http://www.slackware.com/info/ A person could reasonably argue that Slackware was always a BSD that happened to use the Linux kernel:)
    - 79a6ed87 3y ago
      I've only seen that in Debian-based or Ubuntu-based distributions
  - doublerabbit 3y ago
    It's not Linux. I have more than one gripe with Linux and FreeBSD free those. Yes Linux can do all those things but that's not the reason here. The kernel feels solid and bHyve is a goddess. Jails are great for running isolated browsers with sound.
    - livrem 3y ago
      > bHyve is a goddess Does it work well with graphics? I just started using FreeBSD and one of the first thing I did was to follow the Handbook instructions to set up a minimal Debian in Bhyve that I then used to access my old Linux partitions to copy files. Works very well for that and I have no complaints, but I also can't say I noticed any major improvement over Qemu? But I made a quick attempt to also install something with graphics, probably Lubuntu, and I did not get that to boot. Is the graphics good enough to play games and run some Linux-only applications with reasonable performance?
      - doublerabbit 3y ago
        The hypervisor is not enterprise like VMware where you can easily pass 3D accelerated adapters. But it's still very usable over remote-desktop. Windows Server works a charm, as does Linux Desktops via VNC or whatever remote protocol you use. You can pass though hardware devices including graphic cards but you need to have it as a secondary and unused. bHyve is unable to use the primary card as well as a shared device for the guest.
        wkat4242 3y ago
        Yeah the thing is that bhyve doesn't seem to have an emulated console like the other virtualization solutions out there. That makes things a little more cumbersome. I'm not even talking about 3D passthrough. Just a fake VGA adapter you can see in a window so you can run an installer.
        ptx 3y ago
        It provides a graphical console over VNC: https://github.com/churchers/vm-bhyve/wiki/UEFI-Graphics-(VNC) https://github.com/churchers/vm-bhyve/wiki/UEFI-Graphics-(VN...
drewg123 3y ago
I've used it as my desktop OS since 1999 or so (first on FreeBSD's DEC Alpha port, so as to eat my on dogfood as I was one of the main contributors to the alpha port), with a brief detour running Ubuntu Linux on x86 when I was doing almost 100% linux work from 2010-2015 or so. I run very basic GPU (GTX 750), use ZFS for everything, run lxde, and use linux firefox as my main web browser (via the LinuxJails project at https://wiki.freebsd.org/LinuxJails https://wiki.freebsd.org/LinuxJails). For day-to-day use its nearly the same as linux, and runs nearly the same apps as linux. The biggest frustration I have is "linux recipes" for doing things often don't work (naturally, since the OS is different), and electron apps are a crapshoot, since the electron is chrome, and the emulation needed for chrome is incomplete. For example, I'm listening to spotify right now and I can listen to playlists, but can't just play a song.. EDIT: One the things I loved about Ubuntu LTS is the packages being essentially frozen, aside from security fixes. FreeBSD is a "rolling release" OS for 3rd party packages, even on stable branches. That's one of the reasons that I use the ubuntu LTS firefox ... I can apt-get update & apt-get upgrade just the web browser and its dependencies, rather than the 1700 unrelated packages that I'd need to update just to get the newest firefox.
- CoolCold 3y ago
  You are probably the first FreeBSD guy who understands [and likes] the LTS option one can get with Linux world. Many from FreeBSD crowd just don't get the plain idea of LTS at all. Kudos!
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Vscode is also Electron and works great though. Chromium itself too. For Spotify I use spotify-qt which is ok (not great) though with the latest version from ports it refuses to store my password in the KDE keychain any longer :( Ps I actually love the rolling packages on FreeBSD while keeping a stable OS. On Linux these things are usually coupled. You can however change FreeBSD to quarterly updated packages if you so desire. Just set it to the quarterly branch instead of latest.
  - drewg123 3y ago
    I use spotifyd and control the music from my phone most of the time. I mostly don't care if I have the latest version of libfoo, but I do care that I have the latest version of anything exposed to the internet (eg, firefox), and any security updates required to libfoo. What I hate is when I do a pkg update; pkg upgrade firefox and it pulls in 1000+ pkg updates via dependency chains, some of which change how things work. That's why I like the linux jail approach. Back in the old days (early/mid 2000s) when things were simpler, I still ran linux web browsers for the same reason. I could just download the tarball from mozilla or opera or whatever and update to the latest browser binary without taking a chance on fubar'ing my system.

llm_nerd 3y ago

Hopefully people have a better reason than simply getting off a purported bandwagon. I was engaged with the early stages of a project where one of the founders wanted us to base a payment platform around FreeBSD. His reasoning boiled down to "Linux is too popular". The consequences of this choice would be significant, and that just isn't a justified position so I bowed out. The project, unsurprisingly, was a failure.

LeonenTheDK 3y ago
I'm curious if you could talk about any of the consequences at all. There's a very similar situation unfolding at my company currently. New project running on FreeBSD because that's what the admin likes, and he takes every opportunity to bash Linux that he can. I'd like to prepare for potential pitfalls best I can. We've already had issues around compatibility with third party software and OS upgrades (which surprised me in particular, likely a mistake on the admin's part but I'm not privy to the details). FreeBSD seems like a wonderful OS for purpose-built hardware (eg pfsense, PlaystationOS, Netflix's distribution servers), but I'd much prefer to be on something common for the general compute. I don't even want to know what hiring another/replacement admin will be like in the future (we're entirely on-prem in a city that's away from a major population centre, niche enough as it is without adding FreeBSD on top).
- doublerabbit 3y ago
  Normally the reasons for me don't tend to fit those who use Linux. And then it always turn in to a pissing match of "Linux can do that too". As linux suits to you for reasons. It's up for you to take my recommendation and try for what you want the OS for rather than take my reasons to why. I may recommend a Honda for that it's a Japanese manufacturer but the reason may be because my type of drinking cups fit the holders. Why FreeBSD: bHyve (Virtual Machines) within Jails. I have individual applications running in Jails, with proper ZFS integration including encryption. The kernel is rock solid, its a fresh breath of air. Especially when to compiling your own. Server stability is excellent minus this issue. Everything just works, it feels less clunky than Linux in my opinion. That then turns in to a flame. My personal opinion is that Systemd infuriates me. Microsoft has its grubby hands over it and many others. Political and non. I don't have time to debate all this nor do people seem to accept that's how I feel about the Linux community. Both have their flaws and disadvantages. Justifying my opinions is tiring and time consuming.

bkallus 3y ago

I've only recently had to start using BSD, and FreeBSD is definitely easier to get started with. Anecdote: I found a null pointer dereference in the OpenBSD httpd last week that allows an attacker to crash the server with a single crafted request. It's now patched. I tried for a while to get a backtrace of the bug on OpenBSD, but their ancient gdb port doesn't support follow-fork-mode, and their clang port generates DWARF that their gdb port doesn't understand. Every time I reproduced the crash, the backtrace was just useless ASLR addresses. FreeBSD had none of these problems, and I was able to collect the backtrace in minutes.

ptx 3y ago

What's the advantage of running Bhyve within a jail? The userspace process is sandboxed with Capsicum[0], which should provide similar security benefits, shouldn't it? Is it just that you already have a jail and need to add Bhyve to it? [0] https://mysteriouscode.com/blog/sandboxing-the-hypervisor/ https://mysteriouscode.com/blog/sandboxing-the-hypervisor/