> behind [..] tool versions I run both Arch Linux and FreeBSD. It is not uncommon that FreeBSD's packages update faster than Arch Linux. Make sure you update y

> behind [..] tool versions I run both Arch Linux and FreeBSD. It is not uncommon that FreeBSD's packages update faster than Arch Linux. Make sure you update your pkg config to use the latest packages instead of the quarterly packages it uses by default. Also, I'd like to point out that FreeBSD has thousands of more packages than Fedora: https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/newest https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/newest > why would I consider FreeBSD ZFS: Since FreeBSD isn't encumbered by the GPL, it has fully integrated ZFS which is a far better experience than on Linux. On FreeBSD ZFS always works, whereas on Linux ZFS is an out-of-tree module and your dkms builds breaks frequently when the kernel updates. Also, a lot of software on FreeBSD takes advantage of the features of ZFS, whereas on Linux most software doesn't use the features of either btrfs or ZFS. PF: This firewall has a great config format. After using PF, Linux's iptables makes me want to walk into the ocean. poudriere: A great and easy-to-use package builder. I use this to build both my OS and all my software with CPU optimizations for my specific processor (but FreeBSD has official package repositories, so you don't need to build your own if you don't want to.) kqueue: FreeBSD uses the kqeueue syscall. Later Linux created their own syscall: epoll. But epoll is fundamentally broken: https://idea.popcount.org/2017-02-20-epoll-is-fundamentally-broken-12/ https://idea.popcount.org/2017-02-20-epoll-is-fundamentally-... jails: more secure than Linux containers despite being invented 7 years earlier. sysctl instead of /proc: On FreeBSD, when you're listing the running processes (for example, top, htop, or ps), it uses sysctl which gets an atomic snapshot of the running processes. On Linux, you have to crawl through the /proc filesystem which is MANY more syscalls and the contents of /proc are changing out from under you while you're crawling through it. ----- That being said, Linux has some wins over FreeBSD: systemd: As controversial as it is, I think systemd is nicer than FreeBSD's init system. systemd supports user services whereas the built-in FreeBSD service manager does not (3rd party ones do though). Systemd automatically captures stdout/stderr to a log whereas FreeBSD relies on each service invoking the daemon tool to redirect their stdout/stderr. FreeBSD still uses pidfiles for everything which is flawed. documentation: FreeBSD has much better man pages than Linux, but the Arch Linux wiki is the champion, no contest. wifi: FreeBSD's wifi support is definitely not great. There are efforts under way to make a shim that will allow FreeBSD to use the Linux wifi drivers (similar to what they did for graphics drivers) but where it stands today, the wifi support is not great. That being said, there is a package called "wifibox" that spins up a tiny Linux VM and has Linux drive your wifi card, bridging the connection back to FreeBSD. ------ Finally, this is a popular blog post on why someone would choose FreeBSD over Linux: <go see Vermaden's post at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41820161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41820161 > Edit: Vermaden himself has posted the link to his blog post at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41820161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41820161 so I am removing the link.