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I loved FreeBSD all through the late 90s / early 2000s in high school and college. I was working for a small ISP that ran 100% FreeBSD and cut my teeth on *nix

I loved FreeBSD all through the late 90s / early 2000s in high school and college. I was working for a small ISP that ran 100% FreeBSD and cut my teeth on *nix in general on the platform. My first foray into Linux (Debian) felt sloppy and discombobulated comparatively. Why? FreeBSD is an entire OS, not a menagerie of tools wrapped around a common kernel. FreeBSD always felt much more polished, complete and predictable. Unfortunately our team made the choice to migrate to Debian for ease of upgrades and security patches (no more building world). Back in the day the limited resources from a processing perspective made those upgrades much longer than an apt-get upgrade. I love Linux (Arch / Debian), but I still have a soft spot for FreeBSD. I have flashbacks to the network install via a floppy that remind me of the simpler time of the Internet. I need to re-engage with 10. Lots of great platforms I use are still based on it - FreeNAS and PFSense. If you've never tried it, I encourage you to learn the system.

emaste 13y ago
The need for binary updates is certainly understandable, and was a reasonably common complaint. Binary updates have now largely become a "solved problem" on FreeBSD, through freebsd-update (ca. 2007, for the base system) and pkgng (ca. today, for third party software).
- dman 13y ago
  I dont think theyre a solved problem yet. Strangely enough the ports system appears to be too flexible. Which one should I be using in 2013 to install packages - pkg_add, pkgng, portmaster, portupgrade, running make install from within the ports source tree? Could someone who knows more about FreeBSD than I do comment on whats state of the art in terms of installing / upgrading packages?
  - oscargrouch 13y ago
    for binary packages; pkgng: "$ pkg add ..." for source code install; ports pkg_add and pkg_delete are becoming obsolete by pkgng
  - haroldp 13y ago
    ports - `cd /usr/ports/mail/postfix && make install` compiles postfix from source, as an example. It allows you tremendous and easy control over compile time options. No hunting down just the right package for the features you need. No waiting for some long lost maintainer to update their package. Everything is compiled against the libraries you have installed. pkg_add - Installs a binary package that someone else compiled directly from the port. Fast and easy. These may lag behind a little bit behind bleeding edge, and you don't get to choose compile-time options. You can (mostly) mix and match software installed from pkg_add and ports. pkgng - is the new binary package management system. It is pretty great, but still teething a bit. PC-BSD is offering the most up to date pkgng style package repository was twice-monthly updates. You have to set your system up as old style package (still default) or the new pgkng, and you can't mix and match different package types. portmaster - is a software upgrade tool, and I think the most popular at this time. It just uses the ports tree (or optionally packages) to do the magic. portupgrade - the former favorite, works much like portmaster to upgrade software (and perform other tricks) on top of the ports/packages system. poudriere - Another ports upgrade tool. It has many fans. Harder for Americans to spell. At this time, I would recommend using ports to install things, and portmaster for upgrades. Keep your eye on pkgng as the package repositories come up to speed and the supporting tools (portmaster, etc) mature their support for the new format.
    - dman 13y ago
      Thanks for taking the time to write this up. I really appreciate it.
    - Wilya 13y ago
      poudriere isn't a ports upgrade tool (afaik), it's a tool to roll your own binary package repository. It's mostly useful for building a pkgng repository, since there wasn't any official one out.
lbenes 13y ago
After working Solaris and AIX for years, I still prefer BSD's userland to Linux's, but Linux's overwhelming HW support eventually won me over. Would anyone else here be interested in a distro with a Linux kernel with FreeBSD's userland? I've experimented with Starch Linux and MirOS, but both are pre-alpha.
- chubot 13y ago
  What's better about the FreeBSD userland? Are you talking about the shell tools like coreutils/diffutils/etc., or more about daemons like DNS/mail/etc.? I am actually thinking of doing the opposite: using GNU user land tools (coreutils etc.) with the FreeBSD kernel. I know there are some projects already in this direction -- Debian/BSD, Arch/BSD, and I think Gentoo has some relation to BSD. Reason: I want some BSD kernel features but don't want to waste time porting shell scripts and so forth.
  - GalacticDomin8r 13y ago
    > What's better about the FreeBSD userland? For one example, take networking tasks: Task / BSD / Linux set ip / ifconfig / ifconfig or now "ip" which is confusing wifi / ifconfig / iwconfig speed / ifconfig / miitool or ethtool duplex / ifconfig / miitool or ethtool vlan / ifconfig / vlan wol / ifconfig / miitool or ethtool bridge / ifconfig / brctl link aggregation / ifconfig / flags while loading module OR use distro network config scripts and restart all networking or reboot server Want find out which nic is occupying ethX perhaps for tuning or scripting etc? Linux = complicated, by distro/version FreeBSD = nic by device eg em0
    - ajross 13y ago
      Most of your list is just the fact that FreeBSD has a giant ifconfig binary instead of separate tools for different features. That's mostly a taste issue. Certainly dumping everything in the same tool is no less "confusing". I just googled the FreeBSD man page for ifconfig -- yikes! The last bit is unfair. Yes, Linux distros have recently diverged on network device naming. But that's for a good reason: the old scheme wasn't robust against probe order, the new systemd one is, and FreeBSD's isn't either. The systemd naming (while ugly) is better, period. That's a feature for Linux, not a confusing problem with its userland.
asdasf 13y ago
People won't get that same sense trying it now. FreeBSD has gone so far towards the random bloated complexity of linux distros that you really don't feel much of a difference at all. To get that feeling now someone would need to try out one of the other BSDs.
- haroldp 13y ago
  What do you think is an example of FreeBSD bloat?

emaste 13y ago

The need for binary updates is certainly understandable, and was a reasonably common complaint. Binary updates have now largely become a "solved problem" on FreeBSD, through freebsd-update (ca. 2007, for the base system) and pkgng (ca. today, for third party software).

dman 13y ago
I dont think theyre a solved problem yet. Strangely enough the ports system appears to be too flexible. Which one should I be using in 2013 to install packages - pkg_add, pkgng, portmaster, portupgrade, running make install from within the ports source tree? Could someone who knows more about FreeBSD than I do comment on whats state of the art in terms of installing / upgrading packages?
- oscargrouch 13y ago
  for binary packages; pkgng: "$ pkg add ..." for source code install; ports pkg_add and pkg_delete are becoming obsolete by pkgng
- haroldp 13y ago
  ports - `cd /usr/ports/mail/postfix && make install` compiles postfix from source, as an example. It allows you tremendous and easy control over compile time options. No hunting down just the right package for the features you need. No waiting for some long lost maintainer to update their package. Everything is compiled against the libraries you have installed. pkg_add - Installs a binary package that someone else compiled directly from the port. Fast and easy. These may lag behind a little bit behind bleeding edge, and you don't get to choose compile-time options. You can (mostly) mix and match software installed from pkg_add and ports. pkgng - is the new binary package management system. It is pretty great, but still teething a bit. PC-BSD is offering the most up to date pkgng style package repository was twice-monthly updates. You have to set your system up as old style package (still default) or the new pgkng, and you can't mix and match different package types. portmaster - is a software upgrade tool, and I think the most popular at this time. It just uses the ports tree (or optionally packages) to do the magic. portupgrade - the former favorite, works much like portmaster to upgrade software (and perform other tricks) on top of the ports/packages system. poudriere - Another ports upgrade tool. It has many fans. Harder for Americans to spell. At this time, I would recommend using ports to install things, and portmaster for upgrades. Keep your eye on pkgng as the package repositories come up to speed and the supporting tools (portmaster, etc) mature their support for the new format.
  - dman 13y ago
    Thanks for taking the time to write this up. I really appreciate it.
  - Wilya 13y ago
    poudriere isn't a ports upgrade tool (afaik), it's a tool to roll your own binary package repository. It's mostly useful for building a pkgng repository, since there wasn't any official one out.

lbenes 13y ago

After working Solaris and AIX for years, I still prefer BSD's userland to Linux's, but Linux's overwhelming HW support eventually won me over. Would anyone else here be interested in a distro with a Linux kernel with FreeBSD's userland? I've experimented with Starch Linux and MirOS, but both are pre-alpha.

chubot 13y ago
What's better about the FreeBSD userland? Are you talking about the shell tools like coreutils/diffutils/etc., or more about daemons like DNS/mail/etc.? I am actually thinking of doing the opposite: using GNU user land tools (coreutils etc.) with the FreeBSD kernel. I know there are some projects already in this direction -- Debian/BSD, Arch/BSD, and I think Gentoo has some relation to BSD. Reason: I want some BSD kernel features but don't want to waste time porting shell scripts and so forth.
- GalacticDomin8r 13y ago
  > What's better about the FreeBSD userland? For one example, take networking tasks: Task / BSD / Linux set ip / ifconfig / ifconfig or now "ip" which is confusing wifi / ifconfig / iwconfig speed / ifconfig / miitool or ethtool duplex / ifconfig / miitool or ethtool vlan / ifconfig / vlan wol / ifconfig / miitool or ethtool bridge / ifconfig / brctl link aggregation / ifconfig / flags while loading module OR use distro network config scripts and restart all networking or reboot server Want find out which nic is occupying ethX perhaps for tuning or scripting etc? Linux = complicated, by distro/version FreeBSD = nic by device eg em0
  - ajross 13y ago
    Most of your list is just the fact that FreeBSD has a giant ifconfig binary instead of separate tools for different features. That's mostly a taste issue. Certainly dumping everything in the same tool is no less "confusing". I just googled the FreeBSD man page for ifconfig -- yikes! The last bit is unfair. Yes, Linux distros have recently diverged on network device naming. But that's for a good reason: the old scheme wasn't robust against probe order, the new systemd one is, and FreeBSD's isn't either. The systemd naming (while ugly) is better, period. That's a feature for Linux, not a confusing problem with its userland.

asdasf 13y ago

People won't get that same sense trying it now. FreeBSD has gone so far towards the random bloated complexity of linux distros that you really don't feel much of a difference at all. To get that feeling now someone would need to try out one of the other BSDs.

haroldp 13y ago
What do you think is an example of FreeBSD bloat?