8 ms·

A Journey from Linux to FreeBSD

87 points by BSDobelix 2y ago

jmclnx 2y ago
Love seeing all this FreeBSD press! Maybe people will give it a try and hopefully Linux developers will once again start believing portability is a good thing :)
- 7speter 2y ago
  I'm glad to see a FreeBSD user welcoming others to try the OS. I always see FreeBSD users shooing others away from the OS, it's really disheartening.
KnowtheRopes 2y ago
FreeBSD is a cool OS, especially as a work machine. Once, I almost joined a company where my first assignment was to install FreeBSD on my work computer. It worked really well, and I actually liked using xfce. What a time! I was young, the grass was green, and the skies were blue.
- omani 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- cruffle_duffle 2y ago
  Typing “man $something” and getting actual good documentation rather than “use infodoc you uncultured swine” was always a bonus too. Back when such things were my deal, the FreeBSD docs were a breath of fresh air. It was like the whole platform was designed intentionally rather than the pile of cobbled together components that most Linux distros felt like.
  - jmclnx 2y ago
    >“use infodoc you uncultured swine” Quote of the year. I see you hate info almost as much as I do.
    - IshKebab 2y ago
      Ha yes let me just agree with you both that info is trash. It's the GNU way to make things unnecessarily difficult. If it was easy then any commoner could do it. By making things difficult they ensure that only the most dedicated acolytes can succeed, and everyone else is unworthy and pitiable.
      - musicale 2y ago
        man should just handle info transparently.
ramon156 2y ago
As a fedora user, why would I consider FreeBSD? I don't know enough about the differences. All I know is that FreeBSD is currently behind on features and tool versions
- TacticalCoder 2y ago
  > As a fedora user, why would I consider FreeBSD? The vid talks about how big Linux vendor, like Red Hat, betrayed the Linux community (their words, not mine). If you're fine with the "microsoftization" of Linux, then you're all good and set with Fedora or Ubuntu. For many users Linux is just "Windows but sucking a bit less than Windows". But others do feel the betrayal they talk about in the vid. For me for example systemd and systemd's author now officially being on Microsoft' payroll is a very hard pill to swallow. Same for many non-portable things now targeting only the bastardized Linux ecosystem, instead of targeting all the Unixes still out there (including FreeBSD and OpenBSD). Thankfully due to the unfathomably big number of Linux containers / virtual machines being spun on and off and the need for utmost speed of these, systemd ain't much of a thing in the Linux container world. And Linux is still the kernel and it's still possible to have both systemd-less containers and systemd-less distros. I'm not sure how long that'll last though seen how systemd is spreading its tentacles everywhere. For people who love Microsoft INI files and who love the rube-goldberg monstrosity that Windows is, systemd Linux distros with snap and whatnots are just fine. To them Linux is just basically a Windows a tiny bit more secure and crashing a tiny bit less. And don't worry: Microsoft employees are hard at work making sure Linux gets shittier by the day, emulating the mistakes of the biggest turd of an OS ever made (that'd be Windows). For others, thankfully the BSDs do still exists.
  - myaccountonhn 2y ago
    There’s also Void, Alpine and Guix if you don’t want to use systemd. What I personally really like about the BSDs are that they are very hackable with great documentation. The code base is much smaller and building your own kernel is very straightforward. I was able to even fix some of my own drivers and learnt a ton in the process.
nils-m-holm 2y ago
I have used FreeBSD for work and play since version 1.1.5. Never had any trouble with it. Since more than 10 years I am also running it on notebook computers. Back in the days a friend visited and we talked about fork bombs. I fetched a spare FreeBSD box and ran the infamous shell script on it. System performance went down to a crawl, but I was still able to log in on a different virtual console and shut the machine down. Many systems back then would not have recovered from that.
- thowawatp302 2y ago
  What won me over is how it treats an NFS share going away. Linux gets so weird you need to reboot but FreeBSD is usable to the point I can fix the issue. Honestly it’s the same with out of memory issues too. I just can think about my FreeBSD boxes less.
- BSDobelix 2y ago
  Yep, you can test this right now, do a "stress -c 320" (that's 10 times the number of cores I have), a linuxbox starts to stutter massively (sometimes even audio), with FreeBSD no stuttering at all, just a bit less responsive.
- ghostpepper 2y ago
  This is fascinating. I always assumed the susceptibility to fork bombs was an inevitable consequence of the Unix process model optimizing for speed of fork. Do you know why/how BSD handles it better?
  - chungy 2y ago
    I can't really speak to what FreeBSD is (or was?) doing special, but even on Linux these days with proper ulimits, fork bombs are pretty far from the disaster they once were.
    - treadmill 2y ago
      If I recall correctly, a certain amount of CPU, memory and processes has been reserved for root for a long time on FreeBSD. This would prevent the from bomb from exhausting all resources.
kjrfghslkdjfl 2y ago
[dead]
0xcde4c3db 2y ago
Are the (non-Nvidia) GPU drivers still years behind mainline Linux? I might be misinterpreting the release scheme, but it seems like FreeBSD 14's drivers correspond to Linux 5.15 and FreeBSD 15's will correspond to at least Linux 6.1. Is that right? 5.15 should be new enough to have decent support for my GPU (which "worked" out of the box on Linux but didn't really stabilize until 5.12 or so).
- BSDobelix 2y ago
  You can install drm-6.1: https://www.freshports.org/graphics/drm-61-kmod/ https://www.freshports.org/graphics/drm-61-kmod/ It even in the quarterly repo.
  - 0xcde4c3db 2y ago
    Thanks. I think I was somehow looking at an outdated description for drm-61-kmod that said it was only for -CURRENT, and only found mentions of the needed linuxkpi changes possibly being merged into 14-STABLE in the future. Judging by the drm-kmod git repo, it looks like they're currently working on bringing it up to 6.6.
commandersaki 2y ago
I like FreeBSD but I had serious issues that didn't occur in Linux. I had a Supermicro server running FreeBSD. After about a month of operating I would run into an issue where the network interface (e1000) would cease working due to mbuf exhaustion after about a month of operation. I submitted a bug report to Bugzilla but never got to the bottom of the issue. I later upgraded to another Supermicro server that was a couple of generations newer but still had an Intel e1000 NIC and the same issue persisted. Again submitted a bug report but the issue was never fixed and never got to the bottom of it. It was hard to also troubleshoot because the network drops would happen after about a month, so it was hard to reproduce. Fed up, I switched to Linux and never had these issues. There's a lot of issues on bugzilla with e1000 related to mbuf issues, so my guess is its just a low quality driver issue.

87 points by BSDobelix 2y ago

Love seeing all this FreeBSD press! Maybe people will give it a try and hopefully Linux developers will once again start believing portability is a good thing :)

7speter 2y ago
I'm glad to see a FreeBSD user welcoming others to try the OS. I always see FreeBSD users shooing others away from the OS, it's really disheartening.

KnowtheRopes 2y ago

FreeBSD is a cool OS, especially as a work machine. Once, I almost joined a company where my first assignment was to install FreeBSD on my work computer. It worked really well, and I actually liked using xfce. What a time! I was young, the grass was green, and the skies were blue.

omani 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
cruffle_duffle 2y ago
Typing “man $something” and getting actual good documentation rather than “use infodoc you uncultured swine” was always a bonus too. Back when such things were my deal, the FreeBSD docs were a breath of fresh air. It was like the whole platform was designed intentionally rather than the pile of cobbled together components that most Linux distros felt like.
- jmclnx 2y ago
  >“use infodoc you uncultured swine” Quote of the year. I see you hate info almost as much as I do.
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    Ha yes let me just agree with you both that info is trash. It's the GNU way to make things unnecessarily difficult. If it was easy then any commoner could do it. By making things difficult they ensure that only the most dedicated acolytes can succeed, and everyone else is unworthy and pitiable.
    - musicale 2y ago
      man should just handle info transparently.

ramon156 2y ago

As a fedora user, why would I consider FreeBSD? I don't know enough about the differences. All I know is that FreeBSD is currently behind on features and tool versions

TacticalCoder 2y ago
> As a fedora user, why would I consider FreeBSD? The vid talks about how big Linux vendor, like Red Hat, betrayed the Linux community (their words, not mine). If you're fine with the "microsoftization" of Linux, then you're all good and set with Fedora or Ubuntu. For many users Linux is just "Windows but sucking a bit less than Windows". But others do feel the betrayal they talk about in the vid. For me for example systemd and systemd's author now officially being on Microsoft' payroll is a very hard pill to swallow. Same for many non-portable things now targeting only the bastardized Linux ecosystem, instead of targeting all the Unixes still out there (including FreeBSD and OpenBSD). Thankfully due to the unfathomably big number of Linux containers / virtual machines being spun on and off and the need for utmost speed of these, systemd ain't much of a thing in the Linux container world. And Linux is still the kernel and it's still possible to have both systemd-less containers and systemd-less distros. I'm not sure how long that'll last though seen how systemd is spreading its tentacles everywhere. For people who love Microsoft INI files and who love the rube-goldberg monstrosity that Windows is, systemd Linux distros with snap and whatnots are just fine. To them Linux is just basically a Windows a tiny bit more secure and crashing a tiny bit less. And don't worry: Microsoft employees are hard at work making sure Linux gets shittier by the day, emulating the mistakes of the biggest turd of an OS ever made (that'd be Windows). For others, thankfully the BSDs do still exists.
- myaccountonhn 2y ago
  There’s also Void, Alpine and Guix if you don’t want to use systemd. What I personally really like about the BSDs are that they are very hackable with great documentation. The code base is much smaller and building your own kernel is very straightforward. I was able to even fix some of my own drivers and learnt a ton in the process.

nils-m-holm 2y ago

I have used FreeBSD for work and play since version 1.1.5. Never had any trouble with it. Since more than 10 years I am also running it on notebook computers. Back in the days a friend visited and we talked about fork bombs. I fetched a spare FreeBSD box and ran the infamous shell script on it. System performance went down to a crawl, but I was still able to log in on a different virtual console and shut the machine down. Many systems back then would not have recovered from that.

thowawatp302 2y ago
What won me over is how it treats an NFS share going away. Linux gets so weird you need to reboot but FreeBSD is usable to the point I can fix the issue. Honestly it’s the same with out of memory issues too. I just can think about my FreeBSD boxes less.
BSDobelix 2y ago
Yep, you can test this right now, do a "stress -c 320" (that's 10 times the number of cores I have), a linuxbox starts to stutter massively (sometimes even audio), with FreeBSD no stuttering at all, just a bit less responsive.
ghostpepper 2y ago
This is fascinating. I always assumed the susceptibility to fork bombs was an inevitable consequence of the Unix process model optimizing for speed of fork. Do you know why/how BSD handles it better?
- chungy 2y ago
  I can't really speak to what FreeBSD is (or was?) doing special, but even on Linux these days with proper ulimits, fork bombs are pretty far from the disaster they once were.
  - treadmill 2y ago
    If I recall correctly, a certain amount of CPU, memory and processes has been reserved for root for a long time on FreeBSD. This would prevent the from bomb from exhausting all resources.

kjrfghslkdjfl 2y ago

[dead]

0xcde4c3db 2y ago

Are the (non-Nvidia) GPU drivers still years behind mainline Linux? I might be misinterpreting the release scheme, but it seems like FreeBSD 14's drivers correspond to Linux 5.15 and FreeBSD 15's will correspond to at least Linux 6.1. Is that right? 5.15 should be new enough to have decent support for my GPU (which "worked" out of the box on Linux but didn't really stabilize until 5.12 or so).

BSDobelix 2y ago
You can install drm-6.1: https://www.freshports.org/graphics/drm-61-kmod/ https://www.freshports.org/graphics/drm-61-kmod/ It even in the quarterly repo.
- 0xcde4c3db 2y ago
  Thanks. I think I was somehow looking at an outdated description for drm-61-kmod that said it was only for -CURRENT, and only found mentions of the needed linuxkpi changes possibly being merged into 14-STABLE in the future. Judging by the drm-kmod git repo, it looks like they're currently working on bringing it up to 6.6.

commandersaki 2y ago

I like FreeBSD but I had serious issues that didn't occur in Linux. I had a Supermicro server running FreeBSD. After about a month of operating I would run into an issue where the network interface (e1000) would cease working due to mbuf exhaustion after about a month of operation. I submitted a bug report to Bugzilla but never got to the bottom of the issue. I later upgraded to another Supermicro server that was a couple of generations newer but still had an Intel e1000 NIC and the same issue persisted. Again submitted a bug report but the issue was never fixed and never got to the bottom of it. It was hard to also troubleshoot because the network drops would happen after about a month, so it was hard to reproduce. Fed up, I switched to Linux and never had these issues. There's a lot of issues on bugzilla with e1000 related to mbuf issues, so my guess is its just a low quality driver issue.