3 ms·

No real reason to as an end user. Maybe better ZFS integration out of the box is appealing for a NAS or something like that. But the desktop user experience o

by loeg 2y ago

No real reason to as an end user. Maybe better ZFS integration out of the box is appealing for a NAS or something like that. But the desktop user experience on FreeBSD is not great. Lots of regressions in things you might care about (wifi, kde/gnome, chrome web browser) relative to Linux.

IWeldMelons 2y ago
Did you actually use it for desktop? Yes it has some regressions and rough edges, but it has very nice release cycle for packages - quarterly (much like ubuntu but twice as fast), and separate schedule for the base system; the makes borking OS more difficult. Packages are fresh, security updates frequents, what not to like? Hardware support is abysmal though.
- loeg 2y ago
  > Did you actually use it for desktop? Yes.
  - IWeldMelons 2y ago
    I personally use it frequently in a VM, and I find it nicer than Ubuntu as I get fresh packages, without risk of borking os itself, ass base and packages separate. Other than that, chrome/kde works about same.
hnlmorg 2y ago
What sort of regressions are there in KDE and Chrome?
- loeg 2y ago
  A variety of things don't work or break frequently. Google does not support Chrome on BSD at all and refuses to upstream any BSD support patches in chromium, so ports maintainers struggle to re-port new chromium releases to BSD (there is a giant stack of patches that keeps growing bigger). Updates lag upstream, often by a long time. Chrome's core security sandboxing features are broken on BSD (it just runs un-sandboxed!), which is kind of a major issue that no one talks about.
  - skydhash 2y ago
    Is chrome a web requirement these days? I'd say use Firefox and be done with it.
    - loeg 2y ago
      Lots of people seem to prefer Chrome to Firefox, possibly some for good reasons: https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/browser-market-share https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/browser-market-share Firefox may work better on FreeBSD, or not -- I don't have as much personal experience with it. (It's not like there are a huge number of BSD Firefox developers, either.)
      - timeon 2y ago
        > possibly some for good reasons Can you help me? I didn't find any in that article. Maybe I missed in the flood of term 'market share'.
  - hnlmorg 2y ago
    Firefox has always worked well for me on FreeBSD and OpenSolaris derivatives. I get why some people might prefer Chrome but I’d have thought Firefox would have aligned better with ideals of the average BSD user. Interesting to know that Google are rejecting BSD patches; that’s a great pity. What about desktop environments though? I always thought KDE and GNOME were first class citizens on FreeBSD.
pxc 2y ago
Seeing this kind of attitude in the Linux community saddens me. We should remember that Linux too has been small, and incomplete, and difficult— and it still is at least some of those things within the wider desktop world. So are a great many Linux distros, including fabulous ones that should not be overlooked. I hope that the Linux community will long retain at least some echo of that exploratory spirit, and extend that to projects like FreeBSD.
- grakker 2y ago
  I tried FreeBSD for a few months about 15 years ago. I liked it. Clean filesystem and just "felt" better on a few levels. But the reason I started using Linux 25 years ago was 100% for the philosophy of the GPL and because of that, I never felt comfortable with myself using FreeBSD. I have suggested it to many people over the years, I think it's a great OS, just not for me.
- loeg 2y ago
  > I hope that the Linux community will long retain at least some echo of that exploratory spirit, and extend that to projects like FreeBSD. In that exploratory spirit, I ran FreeBSD for years. It has a number of every-day shortcomings compared to Linux. If Linux users want to be annoyed and inconvenienced regularly in the spirit of exploration, sure, they can give it a shot.
timeon 2y ago
> you might care about (wifi, kde/gnome, chrome web browser) It is 2024. I do not care about the browser functionality for ~15 years.

by loeg 2y ago

IWeldMelons 2y ago

Did you actually use it for desktop? Yes it has some regressions and rough edges, but it has very nice release cycle for packages - quarterly (much like ubuntu but twice as fast), and separate schedule for the base system; the makes borking OS more difficult. Packages are fresh, security updates frequents, what not to like? Hardware support is abysmal though.

loeg 2y ago
> Did you actually use it for desktop? Yes.
- IWeldMelons 2y ago
  I personally use it frequently in a VM, and I find it nicer than Ubuntu as I get fresh packages, without risk of borking os itself, ass base and packages separate. Other than that, chrome/kde works about same.

hnlmorg 2y ago

What sort of regressions are there in KDE and Chrome?

loeg 2y ago
A variety of things don't work or break frequently. Google does not support Chrome on BSD at all and refuses to upstream any BSD support patches in chromium, so ports maintainers struggle to re-port new chromium releases to BSD (there is a giant stack of patches that keeps growing bigger). Updates lag upstream, often by a long time. Chrome's core security sandboxing features are broken on BSD (it just runs un-sandboxed!), which is kind of a major issue that no one talks about.
- skydhash 2y ago
  Is chrome a web requirement these days? I'd say use Firefox and be done with it.
  - loeg 2y ago
    Lots of people seem to prefer Chrome to Firefox, possibly some for good reasons: https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/browser-market-share https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/browser-market-share Firefox may work better on FreeBSD, or not -- I don't have as much personal experience with it. (It's not like there are a huge number of BSD Firefox developers, either.)
    - timeon 2y ago
      > possibly some for good reasons Can you help me? I didn't find any in that article. Maybe I missed in the flood of term 'market share'.
- hnlmorg 2y ago
  Firefox has always worked well for me on FreeBSD and OpenSolaris derivatives. I get why some people might prefer Chrome but I’d have thought Firefox would have aligned better with ideals of the average BSD user. Interesting to know that Google are rejecting BSD patches; that’s a great pity. What about desktop environments though? I always thought KDE and GNOME were first class citizens on FreeBSD.

pxc 2y ago

Seeing this kind of attitude in the Linux community saddens me. We should remember that Linux too has been small, and incomplete, and difficult— and it still is at least some of those things within the wider desktop world. So are a great many Linux distros, including fabulous ones that should not be overlooked. I hope that the Linux community will long retain at least some echo of that exploratory spirit, and extend that to projects like FreeBSD.

grakker 2y ago
I tried FreeBSD for a few months about 15 years ago. I liked it. Clean filesystem and just "felt" better on a few levels. But the reason I started using Linux 25 years ago was 100% for the philosophy of the GPL and because of that, I never felt comfortable with myself using FreeBSD. I have suggested it to many people over the years, I think it's a great OS, just not for me.
loeg 2y ago
> I hope that the Linux community will long retain at least some echo of that exploratory spirit, and extend that to projects like FreeBSD. In that exploratory spirit, I ran FreeBSD for years. It has a number of every-day shortcomings compared to Linux. If Linux users want to be annoyed and inconvenienced regularly in the spirit of exploration, sure, they can give it a shot.

timeon 2y ago

> you might care about (wifi, kde/gnome, chrome web browser) It is 2024. I do not care about the browser functionality for ~15 years.