11 ms·

A Love Letter to FreeBSD

435 points by rbanffy 1y ago

tuhgdetzhh 1y ago
A love letter to the last operating system that isn’t trying to gaslight you. FreeBSD really is the anti-hype choice: no mascot-as-a-service, no quarterly identity crisis, just a system that quietly works until the heat death of the universe.
- CalChris 1y ago
  Speaking of better vendor support, why doesn’t it support Apple Silicon yet? Obviously, Asahi has led the way on this and their m1n1 boot loader can be used out of the box. But OpenBSD has supported Apple Silicon for three years now.
  - movedx 1y ago
    Why does it have to? Why does everything have to supper everything? Why can’t a project have a focus on servers and that’s its “thing”? Also it’s OSS — contribute that support if you’re so passionate about it.
    - bigyabai 1y ago
      The original, unedited version of the grandparent was bemoaning the lack of vendor support behind FreeBSD so the parent's comment made a lot more sense in-context.
      - tuhgdetzhh 1y ago
        Yeah, sorry for removing that part. Changed my mind just minutes after posting, because I really like FreeBSD any my critique sounded a bit too harsh.
    - CalChris 1y ago
      > everything Firstly, FreeBSD already supports x86 Mac Minis. Servers? M-series Minis and Studios are very good servers. Lastly, FreeBSD has an Apple Silicon port which has stalled. https://wiki.freebsd.org/AppleSilicon https://wiki.freebsd.org/AppleSilicon I'll ignore your last point.
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    The why is simply: because nobody wants it enough to build it. Otherwise it would exist.
  - a96 1y ago
    FreeBSD has always been the non-portable one.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- movedx 1y ago
  Sigh. Yes. It’s the boring choice and therefore the better choice a lot of the time. Not all of the time, but most of the time. Impatience and lost skills is why it’s not a mainstream player.
adastra22 1y ago
I so wish that FreeBSD was GPL. I know this won't be a popular opinion, but I believe that success Linux has had is because of copyleft, and *BSD are riding on the coat tails of that. But I don't like Linux. I use it daily, but I don't like it. I wish FreeBSD held the position Linux does in the market today. That would be heaven.
- a-dub 1y ago
  freebsd didn't have the hardware support base that linux did and suffered a huge delay in rearchitecture when x86 smp hardware became widely available. (only one cpu could be in the kernel at a time, the "bkl", was a major impediment in the early 00s). freebsd had better resource scheduling at the time and a beloved networking stack, but linux caught up with cgroups etc. i think linux was also just a trendy vanguard of sorts as the world learned of open source software by and of the internet.
- CalChris 1y ago
  GCC vs LLVM. It isn’t the license.
  - blueflow 1y ago
    I think that's less because of the license and more because people found patching gcc to be a big pain.
    - CalChris 1y ago
      Correct, it’s not the license.
    - tom_alexander 1y ago
      To be fair, GCC's design was motivated by the same thing as the license. They intentionally didn't modularize GCC so that it couldn't be used by non-free code. > Anything that makes it easier to use GCC back ends without GCC front ends--or simply brings GCC a big step closer to a form that would make such usage easy--would endanger our leverage for causing new front ends to be free. https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2000-01/msg00572.html https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2000-01/msg00572.html
alex1138 1y ago
I know this is the noob perspective but they should try (yes, I'm already aware of GhostBSD) to make getting into the desktop a little bit easier, it can be very hard to bootstrap anything and learn if you're new to it
- shevy-java 1y ago
  That's where Linux fails too IMO. Both GNOME and KDE really suck in my opinion. Or perhaps suck is too strong a word. I find both to be hugely problematic. That does not mean they do not work, mind you - GNOME succeeds in dumbing things down that even 60 years old grandmas could use it (until they misclick and then are presented with 20 windows all put side to side). And KDE gives a lot of flexibility in tweaking it how you may want it (if we ignore Nate's donation widget). But it just is still waaaaaaay too complicated and convoluted to use. I am better off just describing my system in .yml files and then have ruby autogenerate any configuration value than struggle through annoying widgets to find some semi-random semi-new setting (or none such setting existing such as is the case in GNOME). I'd wish we could liberate these DEs from upstream developers and their dictatorship. I mean, we, can, e. g. patch out the code that shouldn't exist (like Nate's Robin Hood widget), but I mean on a global basis as-is. We as users should be in full control of EVERYTHING - every widget. Everything these widgets do, too. And everything they don't do right now but should do. Like in evince, I hate that I can't have tabs. That annoys me. I am aware that libpapers changes this, but boy ... just try to discuss this with GNOMEy devs. That's just a waste of time. I want to decide on everything here - upstream must not be able to cripple my system or influence it in no way I approve of.
  - jwrallie 1y ago
    Hmm... I am sure your yaml config files would also not please your grandma. Anyway if you don't like change, there are other DEs apart from those two are more fitting. Try XFCE or Mate, they will look and behave the same years after setting them up.
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    I love KDE. Especially because it gives me agency. I'm not stuck with the choices the developers made like with gnome that's super opinionated. And I find things easy to find and confuse. It's probably not for a grandma but I don't care. It doesn't have to be. For me the more software is suitable for the mainstream, the less suitable it is to me. Not sure what you mean by donation widget, I use KDE on FreeBSD as daily driver (and on the latest version) and I've never seen it. I donate monthly to KDE but it doesn't have any way of knowing that.
sapphirebreeze 1y ago
[flagged]
kosolam 1y ago
As a small user I find it hard to find a use case where I’d want a bsd for some reason. I even installed ghostbsd in a vm to try it but it seemed very similar to linux so I didn’t understand what’s the upside?
- cerved 1y ago
  ZFS and jails are two things FreeBSD does very well
  - sbseitz 1y ago
    ZFS on Linux and BSD share the same code now. Hope this helps.
    - mshroyer 1y ago
      Sure, but ZFS is much better integrated into FreeBSD. It supports ZFS on root with boot environments out of the box. And when running a Samba server, it's helpful that FreeBSD supports NFSv4 ACLs when sitting between ZFS and SMB clients; on Linux, Samba has to hack around the lack of NFSv4 ACL support by stashing them in xattrs. You can arguably get even better ZFS and SMB integration with an Illumos distribution, but for me FreeBSD hits the sweet spot between being nice to use and having the programs I need in its package library.
    - irusensei 1y ago
      But on Linux you need to load external modules. Before upgrading or changing kernels you need to check if ZFS supports it. Specially bad in rolling distros.
      - charcircuit 1y ago
        >you need to check This can be automated by whatever is updating your kernel.
  - waynesonfire 1y ago
    and pf.
keyle 1y ago
These rose tinted glasses are pretty strong. I found nothing but pain trying to run the BSDs on recent computers/setups. There is 'different' as in 'alternative/edgy', and then there is 'different' as in 'won't implement/yagni' which becomes highly subjective.
- cerved 1y ago
  Never had any issues but I've only ever tried to run it on supermicro boards
- movedx 1y ago
  I’ve been using it in VMs just fine. Used it on my desktop just fine for a year. Used it on laptops just fine. You might have just hit a bad hardware setup that’s outside the scope of support. It happens.
  - stackghost 1y ago
    >Used it on laptops just fine. Which laptop? Did you use the battery, touchpad, and the wifi? I find most BSD users who say they use it on a laptop are just using a laptop-form-factor machine like a thinkpad that is plugged in, with a mouse not the touchpad, and connected via ethernet 99.9% of the time. There's nothing wrong with this, but it bears little resemblance to what I consider "using a laptop". My experience with distros including Open- and FreeBSD on laptops has been universally negative. OpenBSD in particular is very slow compared to Linux on the same hardware, to say nothing of awful touchpad drivers and battery management.
    - mikem170 1y ago
      I'm using openbsd on a several laptops at the moment, a dell x55, a thinkpad x230, and a thinkpad x270. Everything works on all of them - sleep, hibernate, wifi, touchpad, colume and brightness buttons, cpu throttling, etc. On one of them I use a creative bt-w2 bluetooth dongle for audio output, openbsd removed software bluetooth support due to security concerns. The latest wifi standards are not supported on these models, which doesn't bother me. It's not the size of your network, it's what you do with it! I don't mind not having the latest flashy hardware - been there, done that. I have to pay attention when I purchase hardware, and am happy to do so, because openbsd aligns much better with my priorities. For me that includes simplicity, security, documentation and especially stability through time - I don't want to have to rearrange my working configs every two years cuz of haphazard changes to things like audio, systemd, wayland, binary blobs, etc.
mistyvales 1y ago
I run freeBSD for a NAS and a couple linux vm's under bhyve. Could I have just installed Ubuntu and been done with it? Probably. I did make some mistakes like setting a very low swap partition, forgetting to switch my RAID controller to IT mode which made me have to rebuild my raidz1 pool, changing my bhyves to UEFI so the internet works better. I made sure the jail I built for plex worked fine. It's been fun. At this point I should probably rebuild the whole damn thing, but I know it will run just fine as is.
- movedx 1y ago
  For years and years to come. You’ll never need to update that box, frankly.
knowknow 1y ago
It seems FreeBSD is becoming more talked about in enthusiast communities simply because Linux is a lot more mainstream now and there’s a joy in contrarianism rather than any real changes with either of the two operating systems.
- BrouteMinou 1y ago
  The desire to be different is strong with some people.
  - rixed 1y ago
    A well needed counterbalance when so much in tech is just a popularity contest.
  - shevy-java 1y ago
    That's fine. The thing is: I am different with Linux too. So I don't quite understand that FreeBSD focus. From the BSDs, I think only OpenBSD has a really unique selling point with its focus on security. People ask "why pick FreeBSD rather than Linux" and most will not find compelling arguments in favour of FreeBSD there.
    - movedx 1y ago
      I once upgraded a FreeBSD system from 8 to 12 with a single command. I don’t recall having to reboot — might have needed to. Can you give that shot for me on Linux? Could you spin up a Ubuntu 14 VM and do a full system update to 24.04 without problems? Let me know how you go. I once needed help with a userland utility and the handbook answered the question directly. More impressive was the conversation I had with a kernel developer, who also maintains the userland tools — not because they choose too but because the architecture dictates that the whole system is maintained as a whole. Can you say the same for Linux? You literally cannot. Only Arch and RedHat (if you can get passed the paywall) have anything that comes close to the FreeBSD Handbook. FreeBSD has a lot going for it. It just sits there and works forever. Linux can do the same, if you maintain it. You barely need to maintain a FreeBSD system outside of updating packages. Most people who use containers a lot won’t find a home in FreeBSD, and that’s fine. I hope containers never come to the BSD family. Most public images are gross and massive security concerns. But then, most people who use FreeBSD know you don’t need containers to run multiple software stacks on the same OS, regardless of needing multiple runtimes or library versions. This is a lost art because today you just go “docker compose up” and walk away because everything is taken care of for you… right? Guys? Everything is secure now, right?
arthurfirst 1y ago
I felt the same way in 1999.
- mbreese 1y ago
  And do you feel the same way now?
  - arthurfirst 1y ago
    Yes, but we have separated for a while on a few different occasions. FreeBSD chased me away for few years around version 7. I always came back though.
shevy-java 1y ago
> Culture matters too. One reason I stepped away from Linux was the noise, the debates that drowned out the joy of building. No clue what he is babbling about. LFS/BLFS is active. FreeBSD doesn't have that. I am sorry but Linux is the better tinker-toy. I understand this upsets the BSD folks, but it is simply how it is. Granted, systemd and the corporatification took a huge toll into the Linux ecosystem but even now as it is in some ruins (KDE devs recently decreed that xorg will die and they will aid in the process of killing off xorg, by forcing everyone into wayland), it is still much more active as a tinker-toy. That's simply how it is. I recall many years ago NetBSD on the mailing list pointed out that Linux now runs on more toasters than NetBSD. This is simply the power of tinkerification. > Please keep FreeBSD the kind of place where thoughtful engineering is welcome without ego battles K - for the three or four users worldwide. > There’s also the practical side: keep the doors open with hardware vendors like Dell and HPE, so FreeBSD remains a first-class citizen. Except that Linux supports more hardware. I am sorry FreeBSD people - there is reality. We can't offset and ignore it. > My hope is simple: that you stay different. Not in the way that shouts for attention, but in the way that earns trust. TempleOS also exists. I think it is much more different than any of the BSDs. > If someone wants hype or the latest shiny thing every month, they have Linux. Right - and you don't have to go that route either. Imagine there is choice on Linux. I can run Linux without systemd - there is no problem with that. I don't need GNOME or KDE asking-for-donation begging devs killing xorg either. (Admittedly GTK and QT seem to be the only really surviving oldschool desktop GUIs and GTK is really unusuable nowadays.) > the way the best of Unix always did, they should know they can find it here. Yeah ok ... 500 out of 500 supercomputers running Linux ... > And maybe, one day, someone will walk past a rack of servers, hear the steady, unhurried rhythm of a FreeBSD system still running I used FreeBSD for a while until a certain event made me go back to Linux - my computer was shut off when I returned home. When I left, it was still turned on. It ran FreeBSD. This is of course episodical, but I never had that problem with Linux. I think FreeBSD folks need to realise that Linux did some things better.
- movedx 1y ago
  > Yeah ok ... 500 out of 500 supercomputers running Linux ... So what? Big whoop.
- 1y ago
arthurfirst 1y ago
26 years of FreeBSD and counting... IIRC in about 99 I got sick of Mandrake and RH RPM deps hell and found FreeBSD 3 CD in a Walnut creek book. Ports and BSD packages were a revelation, to say nothing of the documentation which still sets it apart from the haphazard Linux. The comment about using a good SERVER mobo like supermicro is on point --- I managed many supermicro fbsd colo ack servers for almost 15 years and those boards worked well with it. Currently I run FreeBSD on several home machines including old mac minis repurposed as media machines throughout the house. They run kodi + linux brave and with that I can stream anything like live sports. Also OpenBSD for one firewall and PFSense (FreeBSD) for another.
- movedx 1y ago
  Lovely stuff. The industry would be so much better off if the family of BSDs had more attention and use. I run some EVE Online services for friends. They have manual install steps for those of use not using containers. Took me half a day to get the stack going on FBSD and that was mostly me making typos and mistakes. So pleased I was able to dodge the “docker compose up” trap.
  - BrouteMinou 1y ago
    Can you explain why "Docker compose" is a trap?
    - hakfoo 1y ago
      For my two cents, it discourages standardization. If you run bare-metal, and instructions to build a project say "you need to install libfoo-dev, libbar-dev, libbaz-dev", you're still sourcing it from your known supply chain, with its known lifecycles and processes. If there's a CVE in libbaz, you'll likely get the patch and news from the same mailing lists you got your kernel and Apache updates from. Conversely, if you pull in a ready-made Docker container, it might be running an entire Alpine or Ubuntu distribution atop your preferred Debian or FreeBSD. Any process you had to keep those packages up to date and monitor vulnerabilities now has to be extended to cover additional distributions.
RantyDave 1y ago
"a thousand-day uptime shouldn’t be folklore" I reboot a lot. Mostly I want to know that should the system need to reboot for whatever reason, that it will all come back up again. I run a very lightly loaded site and I highly doubt anybody notices the minute (or so) loss of service caused by rebooting. Pretty sure I don't feel bad about this.
- arthurfirst 1y ago
  Regularly (every 3 years or so) had 1000+ days of uptime with FreeBSD rack servers on Supermicro mobos. I built the servers myself and then shipped to colo half way around the world. I got over 1400 once and then I needed to add a new disk. They ran for almost 13 years with some disk replacements, CPU upgrades, and memory additions
  - kiwijamo 1y ago
    Genuine questions: Do you ever apply kernel patches? I also run FreeBSD and reboot for any kernel patches and never can get my uptimes to 1,000 days before that. Do you just run versions that don't get security patches? Security support EOL dates generally means I need to upgrade before 1,000 days too. For example the current stable release gets security patches only from June 10, 2025 to June 30, 2026 giving just over 360 days of active support. I get FreeBSD is stable and get days of uptime, and I could easily do the same if I didn't bother upgrading etc, it's just that I can't see how that's done without putting your machine at risk. Perhaps only for airgapped machines?
    - toast0 1y ago
      > Do you ever apply kernel patches? For my personal machines, I just run GENERIC kernels and that includes a lot, so I need to do a lot of updates. I also reboot every time I update the OS (even when it's an update that doesn't touch the kernel) so that I'm sure reboots will be fine... but I did setup my firewalls with carp and pfsync so I can reboot my firewall machines one at a time with minimal disruption. For work machines, I use a crafted kernel config that only includes stuff we use, although so far I've usually had one config for all boxes, because it's simpler. If there's a security update for part of the kernel that we don't use, we don't need to update. Security update in a driver we don't have, no update; security update in tcp, probably update. Some security updates include mitigation steps to consider instead of or until updating... Sometimes those are reasonable too. Sometimes you do need to upgrade the whole fleet. When there's an update that's useful but also has an effective mitigation, I would mitigate on all machines, run the update and reboot test on one or a few machines, and then typically install on the rest of the machines and if they reboot at some point, great, they don't need the mitigation anymore. If they are retired with 1000 days of uptime and a pending kernel update, that's fine too. I would not update a machine just because support for the minor release it was on timed out. Only if there was an actual need. Including a security issue found in a later release that probably affects the older one or at least can't be ruled out. Yes, there's a risk of unpublished security issues in unsupported releases; but a supported release also has a risk of unpublished security issues too.
bobanrocky 1y ago
Love the Sun E10k reference !! - ex Sun
- rhinoceraptor 1y ago
  The E10k reminds me of Bryan Cantrill's story about the motivation for dtrace. Sun engineers were working day and night, trying to debug what seemed to be a Solaris kernel networking bug, on a benchmarking cluster of E10k machines. I won't spoil the end, but it's great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTVfAMRj-7E&t=2640s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTVfAMRj-7E&t=2640s
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    Yeah if Sun had continued to exist, what wonderful things would we have now! But Oracle destroys everything it touches.
andrehacker 1y ago
As much as I love FreeBSD, the release schedule is a real challenge in production: each point release is only supported for about three months. Since every release includes all ports and packages, you end up having to recertify your main application constantly. Compare this to RedHat: yes, a paid subscription is expensive, but RedHat backports security fixes into the original code, so open source package updates don’t break your application, and critical CVEs are still addressed. Microsoft, for all its faults, provides remarkable stability by supporting backward compatibility to a sometimes ridiculous extent. Is FreeBSD amazing, stable, and an I/O workhorse? Absolutely: just ask Netflix. But is it a good choice for general-purpose, application-focused (as opposed to infrastructure-focused) large deployments? Hm, no ?
- crest 1y ago
  What you measured is just the overlap between minor releases of the same major release. It helps to think of them as service packs if you want a MicroSoft analogy. So each minor release is supported until it has be surplanted for 3 months by a new one on the same major release line or the whole major release line goes end of life.
  - andrehacker 1y ago
    Sure, but the point is that each minor release contains changes in all third party open source packages/ports by taking them to the head version. Open source packages often include breaking changes, all but guaranteeing your application to fail. With (a paid version of) RedHat Linux, RedHat modifies the open source packages to remediate CVEs by modifying the original version.
    - tw04 1y ago
      So why not use jails?
    - tete 1y ago
      > in all third party open source packages/ports by taking them to the head version. No it doesn't! You can totally stick with the old version of packages. You are NOT forced to switch third party version numbers. And as mentioned elsewhere I did switch eg. Postgres versions interdependently of the OS. What is being updated is the userland in the OS not in ports per se. According to the Release Notes of the latest FreeBSD release 14.3[1], OpenSSL, XZ, the file command, googletest, OpenSSH, less, expat, tzdata, zfs and spleen have been updated when it comes to third party applications as well. ps has been updated and some sysctl flags to filter for jails have been introduced. These are the kinds of updates you'll get from point releases, not the breaking kind. These go into major releases, which is exactly why the support strategy is "The latest do release + X months and at least that long". [1] Scroll down a bit: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.3R/relnotes/ https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.3R/relnotes/
rhinoceraptor 1y ago
I personally have been itching for a NixOS-style BSD or Illumos derivative. My main machine is currently NixOS with root on ZFS, but I would love to be running something where ZFS isn't an afterthought, I could use dtrace, the kernel has first class OS virtualization, and so on. I think that the declarative approach to package management is obviously the future, but I wish there were a non-Linux option.
- SirHumphrey 1y ago
  I would run something like that if it would exist - illumos zones sound quite appealing as does a more native support for ZFS.
- irusensei 1y ago
  The way nixos handles zfs seems overengineered while on FreeBSD you don't even need an fstab.
sharts 1y ago
Other than a few niche areas like Netflix and Playstation or even MacOS as some like to often put fourth as examples of how great it is… yeah.
- artyom 1y ago
  Or that niche app called Whatsapp
  - Gud 1y ago
    If I recall correctly, they’ve moved to Linux
  - f1shy 1y ago
    Also Redit started as "some BSD boxes" The problem is, when a project scales up, at some moment you will need "commodity" sys admins, so it is easier to just go for linux. Also as the project gets bigger, at some point somebody will come with the idea to move to linux.
- sixdonuts 1y ago
  The BSD/Illumos OSs are used quite frequently as the base OS for high end commercial/enterprise network, SAN, NAS etc. solutions. They are chosen for it's performance, stability and HA features.
bitwize 1y ago
More of a Net/Open guy myself, but the Qotom network appliance I mentioned a few posts back runs FreeBSD. I use it as a wifi bridge to provide backhaul for my office's wired LAN over the house wifi. There are gadgets you can buy for this, but I like my solution running stock FreeBSD + some configuration.
mshroyer 1y ago
These days I use it as a home file server because for my needs, FreeBSD the best tool for that job. But back in the early 2000s I got access to a free Unix shell account that included Apache hosting and Perl, and if I'm not misremembering, it was running on FreeBSD and hosted by an ISP in the UK using the domain names portland.co.uk and port5.com. That was formative for me: I learned all of Unix, Perl, and basic CGI web development on that server. I don't know who specifically was running that server, or whether they have any relation to the current owner of that domain. But if you're out there, thanks! Having access to FreeBSD was a huge help to a random high schooler in the U.S., who wouldn't have been able to afford a paid hosting account back then.
karlgkk 1y ago
> let administrators see longevity as a feature, not a gamble I get what you’re going for. But… Please god no. Immutable images, servers are cattle not pets.
- irusensei 1y ago
  I prefer pets. I also give my server silly names. I think the cattle not pets crowd art partly to blame in ruining the fun of computing.
  - karlgkk 1y ago
    I don’t think in terms of servers, I think in terms of applications Applications are my pets. Servers are the pens I keep them in. Pets are precious, pens are replaceable.
st3fan 1y ago
"If someone wants hype or the latest shiny thing every month, they have Linux." This is just such a bizarre view ... what do they think Linux really is? Maybe if you are on bleeding edge Arch as a hobbyist who follows the latest shiny windows managers or something like that. But those of us who run Linux in production do that on stable releases with proven tech that hasn't changed significantly in more than a decade. Or longer for some things. The FreeBSD folks need a reality check. They are so out of touch with what Linux really is. It is hard to take these kind of articles seriously.
- lmm 1y ago
  > But those of us who run Linux in production do that on stable releases with proven tech that hasn't changed significantly in more than a decade. Pretty sure the firewall commands have changed at least once in that time, and the device layer and maybe the init system. I hear the preferred sound system is changing again in the last few years too.
Klonoar 1y ago
> If someone wants hype or the latest shiny thing every month, they have Linux. Just. Run. Debian.
- nrhrjrjrjtntbt 1y ago
  And then install Postgres
- BoredomIsFun 1y ago
  FreeBSD has very different from Debian package update policy, essentally delayed rolling release. The only one other system I can think of is OpenSUSE Slowroll.
bluGill 1y ago
Last time I entountered a mainframe they religiously rebooted - full power cycle every six months. a few years before their power backup failed in an emergency and for months aftrewards they were trying to figure out what all was running on that thing and how to get it started. By rebooting people starting a process remember to get it in the startup sequence - or at least only a few moths have passed so odds are they remember how it works.
jeffjeffbear 1y ago
I would still use it but NVIDIA abandoned it, so I can't. I wish they still had some support for modern CUDA.
Quranakh 1y ago
[dead]
tombert 1y ago
Nothing "against" FreeBSD, but I've never been able to really use it as a desktop OS. Don't get me wrong: ports is pretty cool and jails are cool, but every time I've tried running FreeBSD on a laptop I end up spending a day chasing problems with drivers or getting things like brightness or volume controls working. Basically, FreeBSD on laptops (as of the last time I tried it about two years ago) feels like Linux on laptops about fifteen years ago. Linux on laptops nowadays generally works out of the box, at least with AMD stuff. I didn't have much issue getting NixOS working on my current laptop, but I am not sure that would be the case with FreeBSD, even still. That said, FreeBSD on servers is pretty sweet. Very stable, and ports is pretty awesome. I ran FreeBSD on a server for about a year.
- nesarkvechnep 1y ago
  Well, take the corporate and user interest which Linux sees into account. FreeBSD is a niche desktop OS. We can’t expect everything to work. The easiest way is for me and you to start contributing and things might change for the better.
  - tombert 1y ago
    I don’t disagree with that, but I don’t see why this matters to the end user.
js-j 1y ago
I like freebsd a lot, too. In production we use debian (without systemd!), and here's the uptime of one of our servers: $ uname -a Linux deb2 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt25-2 (2016-04-08) x86_64 GNU/Linux $ uptime 08:50:41 up 2512 days, 17:15, 1 user, load average: 18.70, 20.46, 21.43
- hybrid_study 1y ago
  so last security patch was over 7 years ago?
nickdothutton 1y ago
FBSD user since the mid 90s. It (and BSDi) often outperformed "big UNIX" vendors, and was far ahead in terms of bang per buck... if only good server grade rack-mount x86 hardware had been available at the time we'd have made more use of it. Now I have returned to it for server workloads. Good documentation, consistent release schedule, reliability even under extreme load.
BoredomIsFun 1y ago
To me biggest selling point of freebsd is delayed rolling release package policy - every 3 month you get a bulk of new packages, and security updates in between I wish Debian was like that.
rwaksmunski 1y ago
I got over 20 years of sane, reliable and consistent computing from the FreeBSD Project, thank you.
vogon_laureate 1y ago
BSDs taught me how to Unix in a way that I just wasn't able to manage with Linux before. This was during the early RedHat 5.x days and I just found so many pain points with the RPMs and odd file hierarchy inconsistencies for different packages. I tried to setup a firewall for my office network and struggled with iptables (or was it ipchains back then?) and found the documentation confusing. I tried OpenBSD to setup a firewall system and fell in love. Everything just made more sense and felt more cohesive. PF rules syntax was just so much easier to work with and flexible. I loved the ports system and the emphasis on code correctness and security. The Man pages were a revelation! I could find everything I needed in the command line. I tried all the BSDs, and each have their own strengths and weaknesses. FreeBSD had the most ports and seemed to also have good hardware support, NetBSD had the most platform support, DragonflyBSD was focused on parallel computing, etc. They all borrow and learn from each other. BSDs are great and I heartily recommend people give them a whirl. This article in The Register is also worth a read: https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/switching_from_linux_to_bsd/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/switching_from_linux_...
Annatar 1y ago
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MisterTea 1y ago
I've been running home servers in one form or another for some time. Win NT4 briefly, FreeBSD, Win2k server for a while, then to Linux for quite some time. I tried FreeNAS but learned to hate the webui churn and outdated/scattered docs but liked ZFS. Went back to Linux using Mint (yeah, weird choice...) and had issues with Mint and my hardware was crap. I wanted ZFS so I decided to go back to my roots and run FreeBSD again. I realized the right way to start is with GOOD hardware. So I went on eBay (I know, I know...) and found a nice Supermicro uATX server board and a 65 watt quad core Xeon in the 1151(?) socket then bought a fresh set of Kingston 16 GB ECC DIMMs, and 4x 8TB enterprise CMR SATA disks. I read the docs and read a few how-to's from blogs and personal sites. In a day I had a everything setup, accounts, Raid-Z5 data store, samba and nfs exporting the data store. It was so damn easy. It's been running solid ever since. It's so reliable it's boring. I have to remind myself its even there so I can run updates and check on the thing to make sure its not full of dust or snakes or whatever.
alan-jordan13 1y ago
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Ericson2314 1y ago
I hope that someday that https://github.com/nixos-bsd/nixbsd https://github.com/nixos-bsd/nixbsd will be upstreamed into NixOS, and it will allow much easier switching between Linux and FreeBSD.
jandrusk 1y ago
What is love? Baby don't reboot me, baby don't reboot me :) Truly a rock solid OS and I use it for my personal DNS servers and never had any issue, it just run and runs and runs with minimal bloat. I think it's way more stable than Linux, but obviously has some work to be a comptetive desktop. I've recently developed the philosophy of using Omarchy as my desktop and servers are FreeBSD unless there's some reason it doesn't fit my use case.
fridder 1y ago
I'm really enjoying the uptick in interest in FreeBSD I'm starting to see as well as the really exciting 15.0 release.

435 points by rbanffy 1y ago

A love letter to the last operating system that isn’t trying to gaslight you. FreeBSD really is the anti-hype choice: no mascot-as-a-service, no quarterly identity crisis, just a system that quietly works until the heat death of the universe.

CalChris 1y ago
Speaking of better vendor support, why doesn’t it support Apple Silicon yet? Obviously, Asahi has led the way on this and their m1n1 boot loader can be used out of the box. But OpenBSD has supported Apple Silicon for three years now.
- movedx 1y ago
  Why does it have to? Why does everything have to supper everything? Why can’t a project have a focus on servers and that’s its “thing”? Also it’s OSS — contribute that support if you’re so passionate about it.
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    The original, unedited version of the grandparent was bemoaning the lack of vendor support behind FreeBSD so the parent's comment made a lot more sense in-context.
    - tuhgdetzhh 1y ago
      Yeah, sorry for removing that part. Changed my mind just minutes after posting, because I really like FreeBSD any my critique sounded a bit too harsh.
  - CalChris 1y ago
    > everything Firstly, FreeBSD already supports x86 Mac Minis. Servers? M-series Minis and Studios are very good servers. Lastly, FreeBSD has an Apple Silicon port which has stalled. https://wiki.freebsd.org/AppleSilicon https://wiki.freebsd.org/AppleSilicon I'll ignore your last point.
- wkat4242 1y ago
  The why is simply: because nobody wants it enough to build it. Otherwise it would exist.
- a96 1y ago
  FreeBSD has always been the non-portable one.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
movedx 1y ago
Sigh. Yes. It’s the boring choice and therefore the better choice a lot of the time. Not all of the time, but most of the time. Impatience and lost skills is why it’s not a mainstream player.

adastra22 1y ago

I so wish that FreeBSD was GPL. I know this won't be a popular opinion, but I believe that success Linux has had is because of copyleft, and *BSD are riding on the coat tails of that. But I don't like Linux. I use it daily, but I don't like it. I wish FreeBSD held the position Linux does in the market today. That would be heaven.

a-dub 1y ago
freebsd didn't have the hardware support base that linux did and suffered a huge delay in rearchitecture when x86 smp hardware became widely available. (only one cpu could be in the kernel at a time, the "bkl", was a major impediment in the early 00s). freebsd had better resource scheduling at the time and a beloved networking stack, but linux caught up with cgroups etc. i think linux was also just a trendy vanguard of sorts as the world learned of open source software by and of the internet.
CalChris 1y ago
GCC vs LLVM. It isn’t the license.
- blueflow 1y ago
  I think that's less because of the license and more because people found patching gcc to be a big pain.
  - CalChris 1y ago
    Correct, it’s not the license.
  - tom_alexander 1y ago
    To be fair, GCC's design was motivated by the same thing as the license. They intentionally didn't modularize GCC so that it couldn't be used by non-free code. > Anything that makes it easier to use GCC back ends without GCC front ends--or simply brings GCC a big step closer to a form that would make such usage easy--would endanger our leverage for causing new front ends to be free. https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2000-01/msg00572.html https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2000-01/msg00572.html

alex1138 1y ago

I know this is the noob perspective but they should try (yes, I'm already aware of GhostBSD) to make getting into the desktop a little bit easier, it can be very hard to bootstrap anything and learn if you're new to it

shevy-java 1y ago
That's where Linux fails too IMO. Both GNOME and KDE really suck in my opinion. Or perhaps suck is too strong a word. I find both to be hugely problematic. That does not mean they do not work, mind you - GNOME succeeds in dumbing things down that even 60 years old grandmas could use it (until they misclick and then are presented with 20 windows all put side to side). And KDE gives a lot of flexibility in tweaking it how you may want it (if we ignore Nate's donation widget). But it just is still waaaaaaay too complicated and convoluted to use. I am better off just describing my system in .yml files and then have ruby autogenerate any configuration value than struggle through annoying widgets to find some semi-random semi-new setting (or none such setting existing such as is the case in GNOME). I'd wish we could liberate these DEs from upstream developers and their dictatorship. I mean, we, can, e. g. patch out the code that shouldn't exist (like Nate's Robin Hood widget), but I mean on a global basis as-is. We as users should be in full control of EVERYTHING - every widget. Everything these widgets do, too. And everything they don't do right now but should do. Like in evince, I hate that I can't have tabs. That annoys me. I am aware that libpapers changes this, but boy ... just try to discuss this with GNOMEy devs. That's just a waste of time. I want to decide on everything here - upstream must not be able to cripple my system or influence it in no way I approve of.
- jwrallie 1y ago
  Hmm... I am sure your yaml config files would also not please your grandma. Anyway if you don't like change, there are other DEs apart from those two are more fitting. Try XFCE or Mate, they will look and behave the same years after setting them up.
- wkat4242 1y ago
  I love KDE. Especially because it gives me agency. I'm not stuck with the choices the developers made like with gnome that's super opinionated. And I find things easy to find and confuse. It's probably not for a grandma but I don't care. It doesn't have to be. For me the more software is suitable for the mainstream, the less suitable it is to me. Not sure what you mean by donation widget, I use KDE on FreeBSD as daily driver (and on the latest version) and I've never seen it. I donate monthly to KDE but it doesn't have any way of knowing that.

sapphirebreeze 1y ago

[flagged]

kosolam 1y ago

As a small user I find it hard to find a use case where I’d want a bsd for some reason. I even installed ghostbsd in a vm to try it but it seemed very similar to linux so I didn’t understand what’s the upside?

cerved 1y ago
ZFS and jails are two things FreeBSD does very well
- sbseitz 1y ago
  ZFS on Linux and BSD share the same code now. Hope this helps.
  - mshroyer 1y ago
    Sure, but ZFS is much better integrated into FreeBSD. It supports ZFS on root with boot environments out of the box. And when running a Samba server, it's helpful that FreeBSD supports NFSv4 ACLs when sitting between ZFS and SMB clients; on Linux, Samba has to hack around the lack of NFSv4 ACL support by stashing them in xattrs. You can arguably get even better ZFS and SMB integration with an Illumos distribution, but for me FreeBSD hits the sweet spot between being nice to use and having the programs I need in its package library.
  - irusensei 1y ago
    But on Linux you need to load external modules. Before upgrading or changing kernels you need to check if ZFS supports it. Specially bad in rolling distros.
    - charcircuit 1y ago
      >you need to check This can be automated by whatever is updating your kernel.
- waynesonfire 1y ago
  and pf.

keyle 1y ago

These rose tinted glasses are pretty strong. I found nothing but pain trying to run the BSDs on recent computers/setups. There is 'different' as in 'alternative/edgy', and then there is 'different' as in 'won't implement/yagni' which becomes highly subjective.

cerved 1y ago
Never had any issues but I've only ever tried to run it on supermicro boards
movedx 1y ago
I’ve been using it in VMs just fine. Used it on my desktop just fine for a year. Used it on laptops just fine. You might have just hit a bad hardware setup that’s outside the scope of support. It happens.
- stackghost 1y ago
  >Used it on laptops just fine. Which laptop? Did you use the battery, touchpad, and the wifi? I find most BSD users who say they use it on a laptop are just using a laptop-form-factor machine like a thinkpad that is plugged in, with a mouse not the touchpad, and connected via ethernet 99.9% of the time. There's nothing wrong with this, but it bears little resemblance to what I consider "using a laptop". My experience with distros including Open- and FreeBSD on laptops has been universally negative. OpenBSD in particular is very slow compared to Linux on the same hardware, to say nothing of awful touchpad drivers and battery management.
  - mikem170 1y ago
    I'm using openbsd on a several laptops at the moment, a dell x55, a thinkpad x230, and a thinkpad x270. Everything works on all of them - sleep, hibernate, wifi, touchpad, colume and brightness buttons, cpu throttling, etc. On one of them I use a creative bt-w2 bluetooth dongle for audio output, openbsd removed software bluetooth support due to security concerns. The latest wifi standards are not supported on these models, which doesn't bother me. It's not the size of your network, it's what you do with it! I don't mind not having the latest flashy hardware - been there, done that. I have to pay attention when I purchase hardware, and am happy to do so, because openbsd aligns much better with my priorities. For me that includes simplicity, security, documentation and especially stability through time - I don't want to have to rearrange my working configs every two years cuz of haphazard changes to things like audio, systemd, wayland, binary blobs, etc.

mistyvales 1y ago

I run freeBSD for a NAS and a couple linux vm's under bhyve. Could I have just installed Ubuntu and been done with it? Probably. I did make some mistakes like setting a very low swap partition, forgetting to switch my RAID controller to IT mode which made me have to rebuild my raidz1 pool, changing my bhyves to UEFI so the internet works better. I made sure the jail I built for plex worked fine. It's been fun. At this point I should probably rebuild the whole damn thing, but I know it will run just fine as is.

movedx 1y ago
For years and years to come. You’ll never need to update that box, frankly.

knowknow 1y ago

It seems FreeBSD is becoming more talked about in enthusiast communities simply because Linux is a lot more mainstream now and there’s a joy in contrarianism rather than any real changes with either of the two operating systems.

BrouteMinou 1y ago
The desire to be different is strong with some people.
- rixed 1y ago
  A well needed counterbalance when so much in tech is just a popularity contest.
- shevy-java 1y ago
  That's fine. The thing is: I am different with Linux too. So I don't quite understand that FreeBSD focus. From the BSDs, I think only OpenBSD has a really unique selling point with its focus on security. People ask "why pick FreeBSD rather than Linux" and most will not find compelling arguments in favour of FreeBSD there.
  - movedx 1y ago
    I once upgraded a FreeBSD system from 8 to 12 with a single command. I don’t recall having to reboot — might have needed to. Can you give that shot for me on Linux? Could you spin up a Ubuntu 14 VM and do a full system update to 24.04 without problems? Let me know how you go. I once needed help with a userland utility and the handbook answered the question directly. More impressive was the conversation I had with a kernel developer, who also maintains the userland tools — not because they choose too but because the architecture dictates that the whole system is maintained as a whole. Can you say the same for Linux? You literally cannot. Only Arch and RedHat (if you can get passed the paywall) have anything that comes close to the FreeBSD Handbook. FreeBSD has a lot going for it. It just sits there and works forever. Linux can do the same, if you maintain it. You barely need to maintain a FreeBSD system outside of updating packages. Most people who use containers a lot won’t find a home in FreeBSD, and that’s fine. I hope containers never come to the BSD family. Most public images are gross and massive security concerns. But then, most people who use FreeBSD know you don’t need containers to run multiple software stacks on the same OS, regardless of needing multiple runtimes or library versions. This is a lost art because today you just go “docker compose up” and walk away because everything is taken care of for you… right? Guys? Everything is secure now, right?

arthurfirst 1y ago

I felt the same way in 1999.

mbreese 1y ago
And do you feel the same way now?
- arthurfirst 1y ago
  Yes, but we have separated for a while on a few different occasions. FreeBSD chased me away for few years around version 7. I always came back though.

shevy-java 1y ago

> Culture matters too. One reason I stepped away from Linux was the noise, the debates that drowned out the joy of building. No clue what he is babbling about. LFS/BLFS is active. FreeBSD doesn't have that. I am sorry but Linux is the better tinker-toy. I understand this upsets the BSD folks, but it is simply how it is. Granted, systemd and the corporatification took a huge toll into the Linux ecosystem but even now as it is in some ruins (KDE devs recently decreed that xorg will die and they will aid in the process of killing off xorg, by forcing everyone into wayland), it is still much more active as a tinker-toy. That's simply how it is. I recall many years ago NetBSD on the mailing list pointed out that Linux now runs on more toasters than NetBSD. This is simply the power of tinkerification. > Please keep FreeBSD the kind of place where thoughtful engineering is welcome without ego battles K - for the three or four users worldwide. > There’s also the practical side: keep the doors open with hardware vendors like Dell and HPE, so FreeBSD remains a first-class citizen. Except that Linux supports more hardware. I am sorry FreeBSD people - there is reality. We can't offset and ignore it. > My hope is simple: that you stay different. Not in the way that shouts for attention, but in the way that earns trust. TempleOS also exists. I think it is much more different than any of the BSDs. > If someone wants hype or the latest shiny thing every month, they have Linux. Right - and you don't have to go that route either. Imagine there is choice on Linux. I can run Linux without systemd - there is no problem with that. I don't need GNOME or KDE asking-for-donation begging devs killing xorg either. (Admittedly GTK and QT seem to be the only really surviving oldschool desktop GUIs and GTK is really unusuable nowadays.) > the way the best of Unix always did, they should know they can find it here. Yeah ok ... 500 out of 500 supercomputers running Linux ... > And maybe, one day, someone will walk past a rack of servers, hear the steady, unhurried rhythm of a FreeBSD system still running I used FreeBSD for a while until a certain event made me go back to Linux - my computer was shut off when I returned home. When I left, it was still turned on. It ran FreeBSD. This is of course episodical, but I never had that problem with Linux. I think FreeBSD folks need to realise that Linux did some things better.

movedx 1y ago
> Yeah ok ... 500 out of 500 supercomputers running Linux ... So what? Big whoop.
1y ago

arthurfirst 1y ago

26 years of FreeBSD and counting... IIRC in about 99 I got sick of Mandrake and RH RPM deps hell and found FreeBSD 3 CD in a Walnut creek book. Ports and BSD packages were a revelation, to say nothing of the documentation which still sets it apart from the haphazard Linux. The comment about using a good SERVER mobo like supermicro is on point --- I managed many supermicro fbsd colo ack servers for almost 15 years and those boards worked well with it. Currently I run FreeBSD on several home machines including old mac minis repurposed as media machines throughout the house. They run kodi + linux brave and with that I can stream anything like live sports. Also OpenBSD for one firewall and PFSense (FreeBSD) for another.

movedx 1y ago
Lovely stuff. The industry would be so much better off if the family of BSDs had more attention and use. I run some EVE Online services for friends. They have manual install steps for those of use not using containers. Took me half a day to get the stack going on FBSD and that was mostly me making typos and mistakes. So pleased I was able to dodge the “docker compose up” trap.
- BrouteMinou 1y ago
  Can you explain why "Docker compose" is a trap?
  - hakfoo 1y ago
    For my two cents, it discourages standardization. If you run bare-metal, and instructions to build a project say "you need to install libfoo-dev, libbar-dev, libbaz-dev", you're still sourcing it from your known supply chain, with its known lifecycles and processes. If there's a CVE in libbaz, you'll likely get the patch and news from the same mailing lists you got your kernel and Apache updates from. Conversely, if you pull in a ready-made Docker container, it might be running an entire Alpine or Ubuntu distribution atop your preferred Debian or FreeBSD. Any process you had to keep those packages up to date and monitor vulnerabilities now has to be extended to cover additional distributions.

RantyDave 1y ago

"a thousand-day uptime shouldn’t be folklore" I reboot a lot. Mostly I want to know that should the system need to reboot for whatever reason, that it will all come back up again. I run a very lightly loaded site and I highly doubt anybody notices the minute (or so) loss of service caused by rebooting. Pretty sure I don't feel bad about this.

arthurfirst 1y ago
Regularly (every 3 years or so) had 1000+ days of uptime with FreeBSD rack servers on Supermicro mobos. I built the servers myself and then shipped to colo half way around the world. I got over 1400 once and then I needed to add a new disk. They ran for almost 13 years with some disk replacements, CPU upgrades, and memory additions
- kiwijamo 1y ago
  Genuine questions: Do you ever apply kernel patches? I also run FreeBSD and reboot for any kernel patches and never can get my uptimes to 1,000 days before that. Do you just run versions that don't get security patches? Security support EOL dates generally means I need to upgrade before 1,000 days too. For example the current stable release gets security patches only from June 10, 2025 to June 30, 2026 giving just over 360 days of active support. I get FreeBSD is stable and get days of uptime, and I could easily do the same if I didn't bother upgrading etc, it's just that I can't see how that's done without putting your machine at risk. Perhaps only for airgapped machines?
  - toast0 1y ago
    > Do you ever apply kernel patches? For my personal machines, I just run GENERIC kernels and that includes a lot, so I need to do a lot of updates. I also reboot every time I update the OS (even when it's an update that doesn't touch the kernel) so that I'm sure reboots will be fine... but I did setup my firewalls with carp and pfsync so I can reboot my firewall machines one at a time with minimal disruption. For work machines, I use a crafted kernel config that only includes stuff we use, although so far I've usually had one config for all boxes, because it's simpler. If there's a security update for part of the kernel that we don't use, we don't need to update. Security update in a driver we don't have, no update; security update in tcp, probably update. Some security updates include mitigation steps to consider instead of or until updating... Sometimes those are reasonable too. Sometimes you do need to upgrade the whole fleet. When there's an update that's useful but also has an effective mitigation, I would mitigate on all machines, run the update and reboot test on one or a few machines, and then typically install on the rest of the machines and if they reboot at some point, great, they don't need the mitigation anymore. If they are retired with 1000 days of uptime and a pending kernel update, that's fine too. I would not update a machine just because support for the minor release it was on timed out. Only if there was an actual need. Including a security issue found in a later release that probably affects the older one or at least can't be ruled out. Yes, there's a risk of unpublished security issues in unsupported releases; but a supported release also has a risk of unpublished security issues too.

bobanrocky 1y ago

Love the Sun E10k reference !! - ex Sun

rhinoceraptor 1y ago
The E10k reminds me of Bryan Cantrill's story about the motivation for dtrace. Sun engineers were working day and night, trying to debug what seemed to be a Solaris kernel networking bug, on a benchmarking cluster of E10k machines. I won't spoil the end, but it's great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTVfAMRj-7E&t=2640s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTVfAMRj-7E&t=2640s
- wkat4242 1y ago
  Yeah if Sun had continued to exist, what wonderful things would we have now! But Oracle destroys everything it touches.

andrehacker 1y ago

As much as I love FreeBSD, the release schedule is a real challenge in production: each point release is only supported for about three months. Since every release includes all ports and packages, you end up having to recertify your main application constantly. Compare this to RedHat: yes, a paid subscription is expensive, but RedHat backports security fixes into the original code, so open source package updates don’t break your application, and critical CVEs are still addressed. Microsoft, for all its faults, provides remarkable stability by supporting backward compatibility to a sometimes ridiculous extent. Is FreeBSD amazing, stable, and an I/O workhorse? Absolutely: just ask Netflix. But is it a good choice for general-purpose, application-focused (as opposed to infrastructure-focused) large deployments? Hm, no ?

crest 1y ago
What you measured is just the overlap between minor releases of the same major release. It helps to think of them as service packs if you want a MicroSoft analogy. So each minor release is supported until it has be surplanted for 3 months by a new one on the same major release line or the whole major release line goes end of life.
- andrehacker 1y ago
  Sure, but the point is that each minor release contains changes in all third party open source packages/ports by taking them to the head version. Open source packages often include breaking changes, all but guaranteeing your application to fail. With (a paid version of) RedHat Linux, RedHat modifies the open source packages to remediate CVEs by modifying the original version.
  - tw04 1y ago
    So why not use jails?
  - tete 1y ago
    > in all third party open source packages/ports by taking them to the head version. No it doesn't! You can totally stick with the old version of packages. You are NOT forced to switch third party version numbers. And as mentioned elsewhere I did switch eg. Postgres versions interdependently of the OS. What is being updated is the userland in the OS not in ports per se. According to the Release Notes of the latest FreeBSD release 14.3[1], OpenSSL, XZ, the file command, googletest, OpenSSH, less, expat, tzdata, zfs and spleen have been updated when it comes to third party applications as well. ps has been updated and some sysctl flags to filter for jails have been introduced. These are the kinds of updates you'll get from point releases, not the breaking kind. These go into major releases, which is exactly why the support strategy is "The latest do release + X months and at least that long". [1] Scroll down a bit: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.3R/relnotes/ https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.3R/relnotes/

rhinoceraptor 1y ago

I personally have been itching for a NixOS-style BSD or Illumos derivative. My main machine is currently NixOS with root on ZFS, but I would love to be running something where ZFS isn't an afterthought, I could use dtrace, the kernel has first class OS virtualization, and so on. I think that the declarative approach to package management is obviously the future, but I wish there were a non-Linux option.

SirHumphrey 1y ago
I would run something like that if it would exist - illumos zones sound quite appealing as does a more native support for ZFS.
irusensei 1y ago
The way nixos handles zfs seems overengineered while on FreeBSD you don't even need an fstab.

sharts 1y ago

Other than a few niche areas like Netflix and Playstation or even MacOS as some like to often put fourth as examples of how great it is… yeah.

artyom 1y ago
Or that niche app called Whatsapp
- Gud 1y ago
  If I recall correctly, they’ve moved to Linux
- f1shy 1y ago
  Also Redit started as "some BSD boxes" The problem is, when a project scales up, at some moment you will need "commodity" sys admins, so it is easier to just go for linux. Also as the project gets bigger, at some point somebody will come with the idea to move to linux.
sixdonuts 1y ago
The BSD/Illumos OSs are used quite frequently as the base OS for high end commercial/enterprise network, SAN, NAS etc. solutions. They are chosen for it's performance, stability and HA features.

bitwize 1y ago

More of a Net/Open guy myself, but the Qotom network appliance I mentioned a few posts back runs FreeBSD. I use it as a wifi bridge to provide backhaul for my office's wired LAN over the house wifi. There are gadgets you can buy for this, but I like my solution running stock FreeBSD + some configuration.

mshroyer 1y ago

These days I use it as a home file server because for my needs, FreeBSD the best tool for that job. But back in the early 2000s I got access to a free Unix shell account that included Apache hosting and Perl, and if I'm not misremembering, it was running on FreeBSD and hosted by an ISP in the UK using the domain names portland.co.uk and port5.com. That was formative for me: I learned all of Unix, Perl, and basic CGI web development on that server. I don't know who specifically was running that server, or whether they have any relation to the current owner of that domain. But if you're out there, thanks! Having access to FreeBSD was a huge help to a random high schooler in the U.S., who wouldn't have been able to afford a paid hosting account back then.

karlgkk 1y ago

> let administrators see longevity as a feature, not a gamble I get what you’re going for. But… Please god no. Immutable images, servers are cattle not pets.

irusensei 1y ago
I prefer pets. I also give my server silly names. I think the cattle not pets crowd art partly to blame in ruining the fun of computing.
- karlgkk 1y ago
  I don’t think in terms of servers, I think in terms of applications Applications are my pets. Servers are the pens I keep them in. Pets are precious, pens are replaceable.

st3fan 1y ago

"If someone wants hype or the latest shiny thing every month, they have Linux." This is just such a bizarre view ... what do they think Linux really is? Maybe if you are on bleeding edge Arch as a hobbyist who follows the latest shiny windows managers or something like that. But those of us who run Linux in production do that on stable releases with proven tech that hasn't changed significantly in more than a decade. Or longer for some things. The FreeBSD folks need a reality check. They are so out of touch with what Linux really is. It is hard to take these kind of articles seriously.

lmm 1y ago
> But those of us who run Linux in production do that on stable releases with proven tech that hasn't changed significantly in more than a decade. Pretty sure the firewall commands have changed at least once in that time, and the device layer and maybe the init system. I hear the preferred sound system is changing again in the last few years too.

Klonoar 1y ago

> If someone wants hype or the latest shiny thing every month, they have Linux. Just. Run. Debian.

nrhrjrjrjtntbt 1y ago
And then install Postgres
BoredomIsFun 1y ago
FreeBSD has very different from Debian package update policy, essentally delayed rolling release. The only one other system I can think of is OpenSUSE Slowroll.

bluGill 1y ago

Last time I entountered a mainframe they religiously rebooted - full power cycle every six months. a few years before their power backup failed in an emergency and for months aftrewards they were trying to figure out what all was running on that thing and how to get it started. By rebooting people starting a process remember to get it in the startup sequence - or at least only a few moths have passed so odds are they remember how it works.

jeffjeffbear 1y ago

I would still use it but NVIDIA abandoned it, so I can't. I wish they still had some support for modern CUDA.

Quranakh 1y ago

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tombert 1y ago

Nothing "against" FreeBSD, but I've never been able to really use it as a desktop OS. Don't get me wrong: ports is pretty cool and jails are cool, but every time I've tried running FreeBSD on a laptop I end up spending a day chasing problems with drivers or getting things like brightness or volume controls working. Basically, FreeBSD on laptops (as of the last time I tried it about two years ago) feels like Linux on laptops about fifteen years ago. Linux on laptops nowadays generally works out of the box, at least with AMD stuff. I didn't have much issue getting NixOS working on my current laptop, but I am not sure that would be the case with FreeBSD, even still. That said, FreeBSD on servers is pretty sweet. Very stable, and ports is pretty awesome. I ran FreeBSD on a server for about a year.

nesarkvechnep 1y ago
Well, take the corporate and user interest which Linux sees into account. FreeBSD is a niche desktop OS. We can’t expect everything to work. The easiest way is for me and you to start contributing and things might change for the better.
- tombert 1y ago
  I don’t disagree with that, but I don’t see why this matters to the end user.

js-j 1y ago

I like freebsd a lot, too. In production we use debian (without systemd!), and here's the uptime of one of our servers: $ uname -a Linux deb2 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt25-2 (2016-04-08) x86_64 GNU/Linux $ uptime 08:50:41 up 2512 days, 17:15, 1 user, load average: 18.70, 20.46, 21.43

hybrid_study 1y ago
so last security patch was over 7 years ago?

nickdothutton 1y ago

FBSD user since the mid 90s. It (and BSDi) often outperformed "big UNIX" vendors, and was far ahead in terms of bang per buck... if only good server grade rack-mount x86 hardware had been available at the time we'd have made more use of it. Now I have returned to it for server workloads. Good documentation, consistent release schedule, reliability even under extreme load.

BoredomIsFun 1y ago

To me biggest selling point of freebsd is delayed rolling release package policy - every 3 month you get a bulk of new packages, and security updates in between I wish Debian was like that.

rwaksmunski 1y ago

I got over 20 years of sane, reliable and consistent computing from the FreeBSD Project, thank you.

vogon_laureate 1y ago

BSDs taught me how to Unix in a way that I just wasn't able to manage with Linux before. This was during the early RedHat 5.x days and I just found so many pain points with the RPMs and odd file hierarchy inconsistencies for different packages. I tried to setup a firewall for my office network and struggled with iptables (or was it ipchains back then?) and found the documentation confusing. I tried OpenBSD to setup a firewall system and fell in love. Everything just made more sense and felt more cohesive. PF rules syntax was just so much easier to work with and flexible. I loved the ports system and the emphasis on code correctness and security. The Man pages were a revelation! I could find everything I needed in the command line. I tried all the BSDs, and each have their own strengths and weaknesses. FreeBSD had the most ports and seemed to also have good hardware support, NetBSD had the most platform support, DragonflyBSD was focused on parallel computing, etc. They all borrow and learn from each other. BSDs are great and I heartily recommend people give them a whirl. This article in The Register is also worth a read: https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/switching_from_linux_to_bsd/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/switching_from_linux_...

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MisterTea 1y ago

I've been running home servers in one form or another for some time. Win NT4 briefly, FreeBSD, Win2k server for a while, then to Linux for quite some time. I tried FreeNAS but learned to hate the webui churn and outdated/scattered docs but liked ZFS. Went back to Linux using Mint (yeah, weird choice...) and had issues with Mint and my hardware was crap. I wanted ZFS so I decided to go back to my roots and run FreeBSD again. I realized the right way to start is with GOOD hardware. So I went on eBay (I know, I know...) and found a nice Supermicro uATX server board and a 65 watt quad core Xeon in the 1151(?) socket then bought a fresh set of Kingston 16 GB ECC DIMMs, and 4x 8TB enterprise CMR SATA disks. I read the docs and read a few how-to's from blogs and personal sites. In a day I had a everything setup, accounts, Raid-Z5 data store, samba and nfs exporting the data store. It was so damn easy. It's been running solid ever since. It's so reliable it's boring. I have to remind myself its even there so I can run updates and check on the thing to make sure its not full of dust or snakes or whatever.

alan-jordan13 1y ago

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Ericson2314 1y ago

I hope that someday that https://github.com/nixos-bsd/nixbsd https://github.com/nixos-bsd/nixbsd will be upstreamed into NixOS, and it will allow much easier switching between Linux and FreeBSD.

jandrusk 1y ago

What is love? Baby don't reboot me, baby don't reboot me :) Truly a rock solid OS and I use it for my personal DNS servers and never had any issue, it just run and runs and runs with minimal bloat. I think it's way more stable than Linux, but obviously has some work to be a comptetive desktop. I've recently developed the philosophy of using Omarchy as my desktop and servers are FreeBSD unless there's some reason it doesn't fit my use case.

fridder 1y ago

I'm really enjoying the uptick in interest in FreeBSD I'm starting to see as well as the really exciting 15.0 release.