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Do we really need FreeBSD anymore when we already have Linux? I am genuinely curious from a technical point of view what important differentiators there are in

Do we really need FreeBSD anymore when we already have Linux? I am genuinely curious from a technical point of view what important differentiators there are in FreeBSD,i m not interested in license or philosophy differences.

pestaa 14y ago
We need FreeBSD the most because of both license and philosophy points of view, and Linux has still a lot to learn from the BSDs from a technical perspective, too. The only thing that keeps me using Linux is that nowadays a significant portion of self-proclaimed Unix software is in fact mostly Linux software with absolutely no interest being compatible with other Unix systems. And let me add that the community around BSDs are far far greater than any of the Linux ones I've come across.
killahpriest 14y ago
Why the downvotes? The dude is genuinely curious.
- beagle3 14y ago
  I guess a) because he disqualifies the license as a reason, even though it is actually the reason GNU came to be, without which what most people call "Linux", that is - GNU/Linux would have had little to stand on. So license on its own is an interesting enough reason. b) because one second of googling would have shown that FreeBSD has numerous technical (his criterion) things that Linux does not yet at a comparable level, including (from the top of my head) ZFS, jails, dtrace. d) because there are also things which are not license or technical details which matter (project management style, for example) Comments like the GP can alternatively be phrased: "I'm a bigot about reasons things happen in the real world, and also I'm too lazy to look up if what I believe is actually true. Lazyweb, prove me wrong", and it would get about as many downvotes.
  - brass9 14y ago
    2 of the advantages you've mentioned (zfs,dtrace) are actually gifts from Sun Solaris. IIRC, linux had lost out on these gems due to licensing issues. Oracle seemed quite keen on developing the zfs-clone btrfs - but after they had gobbled up sun, interest in btrfs seemed to have waned.
    - X-Istence 14y ago
      Gifts that required quite some man hours of work to port over.
  - yxhuvud 14y ago
    The license would live on without any BSDs around though - most new big projects seem to use BSD or a similar permissive license.
  - jasonlotito 14y ago
    WRT b: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=freebsd+v.s+linux http://duckduckgo.com/?q=freebsd+v.s+linux (and g! doesn't help any more) The "best" resource I could find between those two searches resulted in: http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/FreeBSD_vs_Linux http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/FreeBSD_vs_Linux I'm not sure of the quality of the results of that page. Regardless, we've gone well beyond "a second of googling." > Comments like the GP can alternatively be phrased... Comments like yours can be phrased "I'm a hateful liar who reasons that unless you blindly accept certain opinions as fact, I'm going to assume that any questions is bigoted. I'll also knowingly require that you search using Google, claiming that you'll find an answer there, though when someone does search, it will immediately discredit my comment. After all, if it only took a second, I could have provided the link that answered the question." So, by all means, provide the search we should have used that explains what and why the technical advantages of FreeBSD over various Linux distros. It only takes a second.
    - adbge 14y ago
      http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/01 http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/01
    - beagle3 14y ago
      Well, it took me all of 3 seconds to google "why choose freebsd over linux", and a few more to verify that most of the results I get on this page are relevant. Your google-fu may be weak, or duckduckgo may be. Tip: if you are in search of information, rather than self-confirmation, try to prove the opposite of what you believe, rather than search for confirmation to your ideas, or even "balanced" info (because you are ALREADY biased, and you need to counter that bias). Don't attribute your own faults to others. You seem to do a lot of that in your post above.
- darkandbrooding 14y ago
  I was tempted to reply to the original question because it implies that there is (only) one correct way to build an operating system, and once you've arrived at the correct answer any duplication of effort is pointless. I find that a quizzical approach. I suspect the downvotes come from the way 'diminish' phrased the question. Linux is implicitly being used as the standard against which FreeBSD is measured, but the question implies ignorance of FreeBSD. Imagine the tone of the responses if the OP has written, "I know linux but not FreeBSD. From a technical perspective, where do they not overlap?"
- protomyth 14y ago
  I get the feeling[1] some of the down votes probably come from people who would rather not have every BSD topic plagued by HN's version of the slashdot.org "BSD is dying" meme. It subtracts from the discussion at hand and given "i m not interested in license or philosophy differences" part - the poster didn't really want an honest answer anyway. 1) as in I didn't down vote but assume...
dscrd 14y ago
I'll focus on the positive. FreeBSD is a more centralized and more methodically developed operating system. It shows in a few important aspects: just about everything in the core system has a high quality man page -- the most significant difference being the kernel drivers, which have near to no accessible documentation in Linux. The kernel and the core user space are developed together, which leads to better compatibility between these two. FreeBSD usually supports 1-2 old major releases, which is an obvious good thing for servers. ZFS and jails. BSD license. Competition. The open source world will be a lot poorer if it will consist of only GNU and Linux. If I may be a bit less serious, I feel that there's a competition between two philosophies of software projects in the OSS world: one is "lets hack lol" and the other one is a more methodological, thoughtful way. Examples: MySQL & Postgres; ruby & python; Linux & BSD. It seems obvious that neither way is absolutely superiour.
kryptiskt 14y ago
There is no such thing as a vanilla Linux you can run, you can only install one or another of all the distros that have varying degrees of incompabilities and infelicities between each other. And every now and then some figure who knows which political strings to pull uses that clout to load your favorite distro with pre-beta crapware.
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  Okay, really, GP asks a genuine question, and you respond with this kind of misinformation? On the off chance that you're actually this confused - or on the likelier chance that someone else comes by and takes your comment seriously - let me make some corrections for you. > There is no such thing as a vanilla Linux you can run The phrase "vanilla Linux" doesn't even make sense. Linux is a kernel, not an operating system. If you're talking about the entire GNU/Linux operating system, it doesn't make sense to talk about a "vanilla" version, because there are thousands of different utilities that can comprise a GNU/Linux-based operating system, and there are combinatorially many ways to create a Linux distribution. That's like saying that there's no "vanilla" BSD - only [Open|Free|Net]BSD - except worse, because some of the Linux "distributions" are really no more different than adding an extra package (eg, KDE) to an existing distribution and giving it a different name. It's as if you called BSD by two different names depending on whether or not you pre-installed Emacs. > All the distros that have varying degrees of incompabilities and infelicities between each other. This is vastly exaggerated. A properly compiled binary or a compatible source file should run on any distro - not just any modern distro, but any older one as well (assuming that it has the correct dependencies installed, etc.). > And every now and then some figure who knows which political strings to pull uses that clout to load your favorite distro with pre-beta crapware. If I wanted to get really snarky here, I'd say that the same thing could happen to BSD too and point to OS X. This is just ridiculous - Linux is open source and free-as-in-freedom, so just because somebody else packages your favorite distro with some stuff you don't like doesn't mean that anybody else has to as well - you can just as easily remove it and create your own "distro" as a fork.
  - beagle3 14y ago
    I disagree that the GGP asked a genuine question (I've posted about this earlier), but just wanted to point out that the "genuine" question was about FreeBSD in particular, not BSD, and you're replying about BSD vs. Linux, rather than FreeBSD vs. Linux, so a bit of your answer is misdirected. That said: > If you're talking about the entire GNU/Linux operating system, it doesn't make sense to talk about a "vanilla" version, because there are thousands of different utilities that can comprise a GNU/Linux-based operating system, and there are combinatorially many ways to create a Linux distribution. That exactly WAS the GP's point about the difference, I think, and exactly what he said: There's no "vanilla Linux" you can run. There is a "vanilla FreeBSD" you can run. That's a huge difference. > > All the distros that have varying degrees of incompabilities and infelicities between each other. > This is vastly exaggerated. A properly compiled binary or a compatible source file should run on any distro That's NOT vastly exaggerated. While it is usually possible to do so, it is usually painful unless you start from a source package. If you have a binary rpm or deb and want to install it on a distro it was not intended for (not easy even if its the same format, often hard if it's a different format), you have to be very familiar with both package standards to make it work. "alien" helps, but if your package has lots of dependencies, you really need to know what you are doing.
hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
The philosophy differences are exactly why we need FreeBSD (e.g., it can support things like ZFS without getting into licensing issues).
- gillianseed 14y ago
  Well the ZFS is a particular case as it was deliberately licenced to be incompatible with Linux licencing as Solaris was suffering from competetion with Linux and Sun obviously didn't want to give away a competitive advantage to it's main competitor.
hazov 14y ago
Different projects can have different objectives and I think this is good, that's a good reason to have more than one project in every major area of software.
skriticos2 14y ago
I'm a primary Linux user myself, but I think it's a good that we have other alternatives too. Competition is what makes the world go around, having alternatives is good. Also, if there are more targets, people tend to write more portable code.
dpkendal 14y ago
A comparison of Linux and FreeBSD is a legitimate, interesting question, but I don't think this is the place to raise that issue. The open-source community is strengthened by its diversity. Linux may be more popular, but that's no reason to weaken another, similar project by not supporting it financially. Personally, I use FreeBSD and I like it. I also know that Linux is available as an alternative, and I like to know that should I ever become dissatisfied, I have alternatives I can switch to. Supporting the FreeBSD Foundation is one way that you can feel safe in the knowledge that there'll always be an alternative to Linux should you become dissatisfied. Please don't let one project be hindered by another project's success.
billsix 14y ago
http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/01 http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/01
- axk 14y ago
  Don't be discouraged by the age of this article, it's still the best answer to the GP's question.
profquail 14y ago
There's a nice brochure (PDF) on the Foundation's website: http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/documents/FBSDF_3-fold_2012102201.pdf http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/documents/FBSDF_3-fold_2012... Key points: * Robustness * Networking * Security * Scalability
- SEJeff 14y ago
  Define scalability please. If we are talking about single system image scaling up, such as a SGI Altix monster, nothing but Linux will run on it. I'm sure ill be proven wrong, but I'm unaware of a modern general purpose operating system that runs on > 2048 CPU beasts other than Linux. Certainly not Solaris. If we are talking about scaling out horizontally, Linux is the defacto tool for most supercomputer clusters in the top 500 supercomputer list. Heck, solid SMP is still a relatively new thing compared to Linux. When I see "scalability" touted as a feature any of the other 'nix or bsds have over Linux, I really question the other person's definition of scalability. It likely is not the same as mine.
Adaptive 14y ago
The pfSense project http://pfsense.org/ http://pfsense.org/ which I use in my own router - https://medium.com/look-what-i-made/84152c1476d0 https://medium.com/look-what-i-made/84152c1476d0 ) uses FreeBSD for the stable and robust packet filtering option provided by BSD's pfctl. I've been under the impression that Linux's packet filtering options weren't as capable as BSD pf in years past but I know that, particularly as of 3.0, a lot of work has been done in this area. Would be worth researching but I haven't done it yet.
cmccabe 14y ago
OK. If you just want the technical details: * FreeBSD supports ZFS, whereas Linux can't really due to license issues. (Although people have tried-- please don't reply to me saying "but XYZ got it to run!" It's a legal issue that's not going away.) However, Linux has btrfs, which delivers a lot of the benefits of zfs. However, btrfs is not really at the same level of stability yet (although it may get there soon.) * For its audio drivers, FreeBSD uses a descendant of OSS, whereas Linux moved to ALSA and later PulseAudio-over-ALSA. I have heard claims that OSS4 provides lower audio latency. I am not an expert so I cannot evaluate those claims. On the other hand, Linux also has JACK, an alternative sound API which is supposed to fix some of the latency issues of PA+ALSA. * The original version of Rubberhose (the deniable encryption filesystem) was written for FreeBSD by one Julian Assange. I don't think it's still maintained, though. There was a version for Linux 2.2 at some point, but good luck getting that to compile in this day and age. * Linux in general has a lot more APIs between kernel-space and user-space. In Linux, you've got procfs, sysfs, debugfs, netlink, and so forth. BSD was a lot more conservative about adding APIs. * The FreeBSD jail mechanism is pretty good. Linux has seccomp, SELinux, SMACK, Tomoyo, cgroups, and so forth, but none of them are as easy to use as jails.
- SEJeff 14y ago
  Disagree. I can create a Linux container (lxc) using virt-sandbox in fedora to bring up a container to run a single command with very ver little effort. It is roughly equal or less work to build a chroot
  - lifeisstillgood 14y ago
    I am biased but BSD jails are waaay more sophisticated than LXC - but even so I see myself renting vas in backspace rather than building my own vas
    - SEJeff 14y ago
      With very new Linux kernels that have almost all of the user namespace patches merged, there is very little difference. I am curious the technical and not assumed differences however. Note that I donated to the FBSD foundation not because I ever use FBSD, but because in the open source ecosystem, diversity is important. Also, I'm a huge fan of pcc and clang/llvm
sliverstorm 14y ago
I know OpenSSH and OpenSSL come from OpenBSD, and are widely used for sshd and SSL, respectively. FreeBSD may contribute to the greater environment in a similar fashion?
- tquai 14y ago
  OpenSSH is produced by the OpenBSD Project, but OpenSSL is not. That's a different organization.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
The only thing I like better about Linux than I do about FreeBSD is that usually there is a package available for many things, no compiling, just apt-get install and you're done.
- X-Istence 14y ago
  Preliminary support for pkgng is going to be in FreeBSD 9.1, but FreeBSD 10 it is going to be the default: http://wiki.freebsd.org/pkgng http://wiki.freebsd.org/pkgng pkgng is basically the next upgrade from the current package system/ports tree to having the possibility of having a full binary only system. pkg allows you to manage your packages using repositories that can provide your software, much like apt-get. On the plus side, you also get the power of the ports tree, so you can very easily compile newer packages yourself and host them as a repository, especially if you have to manage multiple FreeBSD systems.
gavinatkinson 14y ago
You may not be interested in license differences, but many downstream vendors are. Several have a "No GPL-3 code past the front door" policy, and others would even like to not have GPL-2 code near their products. FreeBSD's active progress towards being entirely GPL free is very appealing to these people. FreeBSD has made significant progress here, and 10.0 is on-track to be GPL-free for all tier-1 platforms, including: * Clang/LLVM rather than GCC * New BSD licensed toolchain * New text processing tools (sort, grep, etc) * bsdtar - since picked up and used by several other operating systems

pestaa 14y ago

We need FreeBSD the most because of both license and philosophy points of view, and Linux has still a lot to learn from the BSDs from a technical perspective, too. The only thing that keeps me using Linux is that nowadays a significant portion of self-proclaimed Unix software is in fact mostly Linux software with absolutely no interest being compatible with other Unix systems. And let me add that the community around BSDs are far far greater than any of the Linux ones I've come across.

killahpriest 14y ago

Why the downvotes? The dude is genuinely curious.

beagle3 14y ago
I guess a) because he disqualifies the license as a reason, even though it is actually the reason GNU came to be, without which what most people call "Linux", that is - GNU/Linux would have had little to stand on. So license on its own is an interesting enough reason. b) because one second of googling would have shown that FreeBSD has numerous technical (his criterion) things that Linux does not yet at a comparable level, including (from the top of my head) ZFS, jails, dtrace. d) because there are also things which are not license or technical details which matter (project management style, for example) Comments like the GP can alternatively be phrased: "I'm a bigot about reasons things happen in the real world, and also I'm too lazy to look up if what I believe is actually true. Lazyweb, prove me wrong", and it would get about as many downvotes.
- brass9 14y ago
  2 of the advantages you've mentioned (zfs,dtrace) are actually gifts from Sun Solaris. IIRC, linux had lost out on these gems due to licensing issues. Oracle seemed quite keen on developing the zfs-clone btrfs - but after they had gobbled up sun, interest in btrfs seemed to have waned.
  - X-Istence 14y ago
    Gifts that required quite some man hours of work to port over.
- yxhuvud 14y ago
  The license would live on without any BSDs around though - most new big projects seem to use BSD or a similar permissive license.
- jasonlotito 14y ago
  WRT b: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=freebsd+v.s+linux http://duckduckgo.com/?q=freebsd+v.s+linux (and g! doesn't help any more) The "best" resource I could find between those two searches resulted in: http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/FreeBSD_vs_Linux http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/FreeBSD_vs_Linux I'm not sure of the quality of the results of that page. Regardless, we've gone well beyond "a second of googling." > Comments like the GP can alternatively be phrased... Comments like yours can be phrased "I'm a hateful liar who reasons that unless you blindly accept certain opinions as fact, I'm going to assume that any questions is bigoted. I'll also knowingly require that you search using Google, claiming that you'll find an answer there, though when someone does search, it will immediately discredit my comment. After all, if it only took a second, I could have provided the link that answered the question." So, by all means, provide the search we should have used that explains what and why the technical advantages of FreeBSD over various Linux distros. It only takes a second.
  - adbge 14y ago
    http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/01 http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/01
  - beagle3 14y ago
    Well, it took me all of 3 seconds to google "why choose freebsd over linux", and a few more to verify that most of the results I get on this page are relevant. Your google-fu may be weak, or duckduckgo may be. Tip: if you are in search of information, rather than self-confirmation, try to prove the opposite of what you believe, rather than search for confirmation to your ideas, or even "balanced" info (because you are ALREADY biased, and you need to counter that bias). Don't attribute your own faults to others. You seem to do a lot of that in your post above.
darkandbrooding 14y ago
I was tempted to reply to the original question because it implies that there is (only) one correct way to build an operating system, and once you've arrived at the correct answer any duplication of effort is pointless. I find that a quizzical approach. I suspect the downvotes come from the way 'diminish' phrased the question. Linux is implicitly being used as the standard against which FreeBSD is measured, but the question implies ignorance of FreeBSD. Imagine the tone of the responses if the OP has written, "I know linux but not FreeBSD. From a technical perspective, where do they not overlap?"
protomyth 14y ago
I get the feeling[1] some of the down votes probably come from people who would rather not have every BSD topic plagued by HN's version of the slashdot.org "BSD is dying" meme. It subtracts from the discussion at hand and given "i m not interested in license or philosophy differences" part - the poster didn't really want an honest answer anyway. 1) as in I didn't down vote but assume...

dscrd 14y ago

I'll focus on the positive. FreeBSD is a more centralized and more methodically developed operating system. It shows in a few important aspects: just about everything in the core system has a high quality man page -- the most significant difference being the kernel drivers, which have near to no accessible documentation in Linux. The kernel and the core user space are developed together, which leads to better compatibility between these two. FreeBSD usually supports 1-2 old major releases, which is an obvious good thing for servers. ZFS and jails. BSD license. Competition. The open source world will be a lot poorer if it will consist of only GNU and Linux. If I may be a bit less serious, I feel that there's a competition between two philosophies of software projects in the OSS world: one is "lets hack lol" and the other one is a more methodological, thoughtful way. Examples: MySQL & Postgres; ruby & python; Linux & BSD. It seems obvious that neither way is absolutely superiour.

kryptiskt 14y ago

There is no such thing as a vanilla Linux you can run, you can only install one or another of all the distros that have varying degrees of incompabilities and infelicities between each other. And every now and then some figure who knows which political strings to pull uses that clout to load your favorite distro with pre-beta crapware.

chimeracoder 14y ago
Okay, really, GP asks a genuine question, and you respond with this kind of misinformation? On the off chance that you're actually this confused - or on the likelier chance that someone else comes by and takes your comment seriously - let me make some corrections for you. > There is no such thing as a vanilla Linux you can run The phrase "vanilla Linux" doesn't even make sense. Linux is a kernel, not an operating system. If you're talking about the entire GNU/Linux operating system, it doesn't make sense to talk about a "vanilla" version, because there are thousands of different utilities that can comprise a GNU/Linux-based operating system, and there are combinatorially many ways to create a Linux distribution. That's like saying that there's no "vanilla" BSD - only [Open|Free|Net]BSD - except worse, because some of the Linux "distributions" are really no more different than adding an extra package (eg, KDE) to an existing distribution and giving it a different name. It's as if you called BSD by two different names depending on whether or not you pre-installed Emacs. > All the distros that have varying degrees of incompabilities and infelicities between each other. This is vastly exaggerated. A properly compiled binary or a compatible source file should run on any distro - not just any modern distro, but any older one as well (assuming that it has the correct dependencies installed, etc.). > And every now and then some figure who knows which political strings to pull uses that clout to load your favorite distro with pre-beta crapware. If I wanted to get really snarky here, I'd say that the same thing could happen to BSD too and point to OS X. This is just ridiculous - Linux is open source and free-as-in-freedom, so just because somebody else packages your favorite distro with some stuff you don't like doesn't mean that anybody else has to as well - you can just as easily remove it and create your own "distro" as a fork.
- beagle3 14y ago
  I disagree that the GGP asked a genuine question (I've posted about this earlier), but just wanted to point out that the "genuine" question was about FreeBSD in particular, not BSD, and you're replying about BSD vs. Linux, rather than FreeBSD vs. Linux, so a bit of your answer is misdirected. That said: > If you're talking about the entire GNU/Linux operating system, it doesn't make sense to talk about a "vanilla" version, because there are thousands of different utilities that can comprise a GNU/Linux-based operating system, and there are combinatorially many ways to create a Linux distribution. That exactly WAS the GP's point about the difference, I think, and exactly what he said: There's no "vanilla Linux" you can run. There is a "vanilla FreeBSD" you can run. That's a huge difference. > > All the distros that have varying degrees of incompabilities and infelicities between each other. > This is vastly exaggerated. A properly compiled binary or a compatible source file should run on any distro That's NOT vastly exaggerated. While it is usually possible to do so, it is usually painful unless you start from a source package. If you have a binary rpm or deb and want to install it on a distro it was not intended for (not easy even if its the same format, often hard if it's a different format), you have to be very familiar with both package standards to make it work. "alien" helps, but if your package has lots of dependencies, you really need to know what you are doing.

hcarvalhoalves 14y ago

The philosophy differences are exactly why we need FreeBSD (e.g., it can support things like ZFS without getting into licensing issues).

gillianseed 14y ago
Well the ZFS is a particular case as it was deliberately licenced to be incompatible with Linux licencing as Solaris was suffering from competetion with Linux and Sun obviously didn't want to give away a competitive advantage to it's main competitor.

hazov 14y ago

Different projects can have different objectives and I think this is good, that's a good reason to have more than one project in every major area of software.

skriticos2 14y ago

I'm a primary Linux user myself, but I think it's a good that we have other alternatives too. Competition is what makes the world go around, having alternatives is good. Also, if there are more targets, people tend to write more portable code.

dpkendal 14y ago

A comparison of Linux and FreeBSD is a legitimate, interesting question, but I don't think this is the place to raise that issue. The open-source community is strengthened by its diversity. Linux may be more popular, but that's no reason to weaken another, similar project by not supporting it financially. Personally, I use FreeBSD and I like it. I also know that Linux is available as an alternative, and I like to know that should I ever become dissatisfied, I have alternatives I can switch to. Supporting the FreeBSD Foundation is one way that you can feel safe in the knowledge that there'll always be an alternative to Linux should you become dissatisfied. Please don't let one project be hindered by another project's success.

billsix 14y ago

http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/01 http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/01

axk 14y ago
Don't be discouraged by the age of this article, it's still the best answer to the GP's question.

profquail 14y ago

There's a nice brochure (PDF) on the Foundation's website: http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/documents/FBSDF_3-fold_2012102201.pdf http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/documents/FBSDF_3-fold_2012... Key points: * Robustness * Networking * Security * Scalability

SEJeff 14y ago
Define scalability please. If we are talking about single system image scaling up, such as a SGI Altix monster, nothing but Linux will run on it. I'm sure ill be proven wrong, but I'm unaware of a modern general purpose operating system that runs on > 2048 CPU beasts other than Linux. Certainly not Solaris. If we are talking about scaling out horizontally, Linux is the defacto tool for most supercomputer clusters in the top 500 supercomputer list. Heck, solid SMP is still a relatively new thing compared to Linux. When I see "scalability" touted as a feature any of the other 'nix or bsds have over Linux, I really question the other person's definition of scalability. It likely is not the same as mine.

Adaptive 14y ago

The pfSense project http://pfsense.org/ http://pfsense.org/ which I use in my own router - https://medium.com/look-what-i-made/84152c1476d0 https://medium.com/look-what-i-made/84152c1476d0 ) uses FreeBSD for the stable and robust packet filtering option provided by BSD's pfctl. I've been under the impression that Linux's packet filtering options weren't as capable as BSD pf in years past but I know that, particularly as of 3.0, a lot of work has been done in this area. Would be worth researching but I haven't done it yet.

cmccabe 14y ago

OK. If you just want the technical details: * FreeBSD supports ZFS, whereas Linux can't really due to license issues. (Although people have tried-- please don't reply to me saying "but XYZ got it to run!" It's a legal issue that's not going away.) However, Linux has btrfs, which delivers a lot of the benefits of zfs. However, btrfs is not really at the same level of stability yet (although it may get there soon.) * For its audio drivers, FreeBSD uses a descendant of OSS, whereas Linux moved to ALSA and later PulseAudio-over-ALSA. I have heard claims that OSS4 provides lower audio latency. I am not an expert so I cannot evaluate those claims. On the other hand, Linux also has JACK, an alternative sound API which is supposed to fix some of the latency issues of PA+ALSA. * The original version of Rubberhose (the deniable encryption filesystem) was written for FreeBSD by one Julian Assange. I don't think it's still maintained, though. There was a version for Linux 2.2 at some point, but good luck getting that to compile in this day and age. * Linux in general has a lot more APIs between kernel-space and user-space. In Linux, you've got procfs, sysfs, debugfs, netlink, and so forth. BSD was a lot more conservative about adding APIs. * The FreeBSD jail mechanism is pretty good. Linux has seccomp, SELinux, SMACK, Tomoyo, cgroups, and so forth, but none of them are as easy to use as jails.

SEJeff 14y ago
Disagree. I can create a Linux container (lxc) using virt-sandbox in fedora to bring up a container to run a single command with very ver little effort. It is roughly equal or less work to build a chroot
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  I am biased but BSD jails are waaay more sophisticated than LXC - but even so I see myself renting vas in backspace rather than building my own vas
  - SEJeff 14y ago
    With very new Linux kernels that have almost all of the user namespace patches merged, there is very little difference. I am curious the technical and not assumed differences however. Note that I donated to the FBSD foundation not because I ever use FBSD, but because in the open source ecosystem, diversity is important. Also, I'm a huge fan of pcc and clang/llvm

sliverstorm 14y ago

I know OpenSSH and OpenSSL come from OpenBSD, and are widely used for sshd and SSL, respectively. FreeBSD may contribute to the greater environment in a similar fashion?

tquai 14y ago
OpenSSH is produced by the OpenBSD Project, but OpenSSL is not. That's a different organization.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

The only thing I like better about Linux than I do about FreeBSD is that usually there is a package available for many things, no compiling, just apt-get install and you're done.

X-Istence 14y ago
Preliminary support for pkgng is going to be in FreeBSD 9.1, but FreeBSD 10 it is going to be the default: http://wiki.freebsd.org/pkgng http://wiki.freebsd.org/pkgng pkgng is basically the next upgrade from the current package system/ports tree to having the possibility of having a full binary only system. pkg allows you to manage your packages using repositories that can provide your software, much like apt-get. On the plus side, you also get the power of the ports tree, so you can very easily compile newer packages yourself and host them as a repository, especially if you have to manage multiple FreeBSD systems.

gavinatkinson 14y ago

You may not be interested in license differences, but many downstream vendors are. Several have a "No GPL-3 code past the front door" policy, and others would even like to not have GPL-2 code near their products. FreeBSD's active progress towards being entirely GPL free is very appealing to these people. FreeBSD has made significant progress here, and 10.0 is on-track to be GPL-free for all tier-1 platforms, including: * Clang/LLVM rather than GCC * New BSD licensed toolchain * New text processing tools (sort, grep, etc) * bsdtar - since picked up and used by several other operating systems