12 ms·

FreeBSD turns 21

412 points by tachion 12y ago

malkia 12y ago
PS4 runs on FreeBSD: http://www.scei.co.jp/ps4-license/ http://www.scei.co.jp/ps4-license/ (and many other oss) http://www.scei.co.jp/ps4-license/freebsd_kernel.html http://www.scei.co.jp/ps4-license/freebsd_kernel.html http://www.scei.co.jp/ps4-license/freebsd_fsck.html http://www.scei.co.jp/ps4-license/freebsd_fsck.html
- pjmlp 12y ago
  And so far as I am aware, Sony didn't gave any code back.
  - tedks 12y ago
    Why should they? If the FreeBSD project wanted code to be given back, they would have used the GPL. It's Sony's right as a corporate person to take BSD-licensed code and profit from it without any sort of "giving back."
  - stock_toaster 12y ago
    I vaguely recall hearing they did contribute some code to llvm/clang though, which FreeBSD uses.
  - eadler 12y ago
    sony has contributed patches. They are also involved in some of the BSD conferences.
ekn 12y ago
Happy Birthday, FreeBSD!
tachion 12y ago
For all those not familiar with it, FreeBSD[1] is a great Linux alternative, being rock solid, free and open operating system delivering some of the coolest new technologies out there, including out of the box support for ZFS filesystem, awesome debugging tool DTrace, hot new security layer in form of Capsicum, fresh and legacy free hypervisor Bhyve, one of the best documentation amongst any open source projects and much, much more! And now it can get legally drunk in every country on the Earth, where drinking is legal ;) Be nice and send it a birthday gift![2] [1] https://www.FreeBSD.org/ https://www.FreeBSD.org/ [2] https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/ https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/
- hiphopyo 12y ago
  That's the thing -- it's a testbed for a lot of experimental, some would even say unnecessary, technologies. Just like Linux taught me to appreciate FreeBSD, FreeBSD taught me to appreciate OpenBSD. OpenBSD -- the world's simplest and most secure Unix-like OS. Creator of the world's most used SSH implementation OpenSSH, the world's most elegant firewall PF, the world's most elegant mail server OpenSMTPD, and the OpenSSL rewrite LibreSSL. OpenBSD -- the cleanest kernel, the cleanest userland and the cleanest configuration syntax. Ref. http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=139321387226212 http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=139321387226212 http://itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/62641-crypto-freebsd-playing-catch-up-says-de-raadt http://itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/62641-crypto-...
  - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
    it's a testbed for a lot of experimental, some would even say unnecessary, technologies. Nope, that's DragonFly BSD. FreeBSD is far more conservative in comparison, occasionally integrating some more daring idea. In contrast, NetBSD used to silently innovate all the time (and I think still do, what with rump kernels) and even OpenBSD, despite being rather vanilla on the outside, is internally innovative in the area of security.
    - justincormack 12y ago
      I think it varies. FreeBSD does have a lot of stuff, like netmap, capsicum, that is quite experimental in some sense, although capsicum is a great design. NetBSD has rump kernel, but thats not much code, it is just(!) portability done right, some build fixes and a little code.
  - feld 12y ago
    Experimental ideas are almost always shot down by the developers
  - unethical_ban 12y ago
    You said a lot of nice and true things about OpenBSD, but you didn't back up your claim against FBSD: What unnecessary and experimental technologies are you referring to?
amelius 12y ago
FreeBSD has reached the legal drinking age! Cheers! I just hope that they don't change their license model into just "free as in beer" :) And I hope they one day implement all kernel functions that Linux supports, so that switching from Linux to FreeBSD becomes less painful.
- teekert 12y ago
  Hey, it reached legal beer-drinking age 5 years ago! 3 years ago it became legal for it to drink higher percentages of alcohol and to smoke weed (well actually it's not legal, they will just ignore you with under 5 grams in your pocket). ...Greetings from the Netherlands.
- tachion 12y ago
  There's already Linux compability layer in FreeBSD's kernel for years now, allowing you using linux binaries on FreeBSD. Anything in particular you'd be missing when migrating to FreeBSD?
  - feld 12y ago
    It doesn't support 64bit and some newer features (yet!)
    - justincormack 12y ago
      I think 64 bit support has had a lot of work recently. NetBSD has 64 bit Linux emulation support.
      - feld 12y ago
        See the FreeBSD lemul branch for 64bit support and newer features. Hoping to see it merged soon.
  - bcantrill 12y ago
    For whatever it's worth, we in the illumos community have been working on a complete Linux compatibility layer -- including 64-bit.[1][2] Our Linux emulation is relatively closely intertwined with some illumos abstractions like zones, but it would be great if the FreeBSD folks could make use of it -- we have a long history of technology exchange with FreeBSD, and we think it's made both systems better. Happy birthday, FreeBSD -- from your illumos cousins! [1] http://www.slideshare.net/bcantrill/illumos-lx http://www.slideshare.net/bcantrill/illumos-lx [2] https://twitter.com/sjorge/status/527937813568708608 https://twitter.com/sjorge/status/527937813568708608
johngd 12y ago
Forever grateful to FreeBSD as it was my first non-windows/mac distro that had installed on one of my own machines. I snagged a copy of FreeBSD 4 that was bundled in a book that they sold at BestBuy. I spent all of Christmas installing it on a old Packard Bell Pentium 1, several times if I recall correctly (disk partitioning was rough for a newbie). That one day set my path for the next ~15 years
jarcane 12y ago
FreeBSD is the OS I switched to after one Linux distro after another refused to run properly on my hardware. I don't boot it often, but if I want to do some good old fashioned Unix hacking, it's my first choice from here on out.
kleiba 12y ago
One of the biggest disadvantages Linux has over Windows is the lack of driver support from hardware manufactures. Is the situation with FreeBSD comparable, or better, or worse?
- gh02t 12y ago
  Comparable, but slightly worse. A large portion of the drivers that exist for Linux are relatively easily ported to FreeBSD, especially the big ones like Nvidia. But not all of them, so the situation is a bit worse. FreeBSD isn't as commonly used as a desktop/workstation though. People do it (I have one over in a corner), but support for every mouse and dongle under the sun isn't quite as high priority. Stuff like ethernet drivers that matter for servers have really good support in my experience.
  - ferrari8608 12y ago
    The FreeBSD Nvidia driver is written specifically for FreeBSD, not really ported from Linux. I would imagine they do share a lot of code, though, both being POSIX and all.
- tachion 12y ago
  I honestly dont think there's any other operating system in the universe that will have the same level of hardware makes support as Windows does, especially when it comes to desktop targeted hardware. You have to be aware that neither Linux nor FreeBSD were developed with desktop usage as a primary goal, so the drivers support focuses more on hardware related to professional usage. However, you can still use FreeBSD on the desktop/laptop if you pay some attention to what you're buying, and there is great FreeBSD distro called PC-BSD[1] dedicated to desktop users as well! Answering your question in one word: comparable. [1] http://www.pcbsd.org/ http://www.pcbsd.org/
  - hiphopyo 12y ago
    If you care about security, note that OpenBSD lets you run Xorg as non-root: http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20140223112426 http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20140223112426
pjmlp 12y ago
Happy birthday. Where would FreeBSD be, if Linux didn't shown up in the scene...
aperture 12y ago
Wow! I just realized FreeBSD is about as old as I am! FreeBSD is a great system, and going from Windows to Ubuntu to FreeBSD was a fun transition, one I recommend for anybody willing to learn more about computers. Recently a new book came out too for FreeBSD, I'll see if I can post it here without some sort of referral link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321968972/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321968972/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_nS_ttl... I managed to get one of my professors to purchase the book as well, and it was a nice piece of material for Intro to Operating Systems.
- profquail 12y ago
  I saw a promotion for Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System, 2nd. ed this morning, in case anyone is considering purchasing the book. If you buy it direct from the publisher[1], there is a coupon code [2] for 35% off -- bringing the price down to a very reasonable $36. [1] http://www.informit.com/store/design-and-implementation-of-the-freebsd-operating-9780321968975 http://www.informit.com/store/design-and-implementation-of-t... [2] https://twitter.com/MeetBSDCA/status/528659641106837504 https://twitter.com/MeetBSDCA/status/528659641106837504
teekert 12y ago
I was at Andrew Tanenbaum's goodbye Lecture where we once again were reminded of the stupid move by AT&T of suing BSD, which stalled the project for 3 years allowing Linux to flourish. Oh how different the landscape could have been.
- jbuzbee 12y ago
  I know those lawsuits made a difference to me. I recall back in '92 getting a 386sx 20Mhz PC with Windows 3.0 on it and being severely disappointed with its limited functionality. While looking for alternatives, I remember seeing that there were some "legal issues" with the BSDs, but Linux had none. So off I went, downloading a large stack of floppies which was a big commitment over a 1200 baud modem. 20+ years later, I've never looked back.
  - aidenn0 12y ago
    Still stuck with a 1200 baud modem in '92? That stinks. I think I was complaining about having to use my dad's hand-me-down 2400 at that point.
    - jbuzbee 12y ago
      Actually it could have been a 2400 - It's hard to remember the timing of upgrading from 1200, to 2400, to 33.6K to a blazingly fast 56K where I recall stalling for years until broadband finally came into our neighborhood. But regardless of the speed, downloading an entire SLS Linux floppy set over a modem was a painful process.
- DanBC 12y ago
  “I wouldn’t have to create Linux if there wasn’t any lawsuit against BSD in the early 90`s. It wouldn’t be necesary” Page 52 http://free.blackpatchpanel.com/pme/linux/history.pdf http://free.blackpatchpanel.com/pme/linux/history.pdf
- byuu 12y ago
  On the bright side ... there's a very concerted effort in the Linux world to transform the OS into something completely different; simplified for casual users, designed more for tablets and desktops, less modular, and non-portable. systemd, Weston, ALSA, Pulse, Gnome 3, Unity, Mir, etc. I'm quite relieved that these developers have Linux to focus on, and are sparing us their creations on the BSDs. And I'm not saying there's no place for whatever it is Redhat et al are creating, but I'm very happy that we still have a true Unix-like OS, and I'm not sure we would if all of these developers were focused solely on BSD in a hypothetical world without Linux.
ausjke 12y ago
Used freebsd, netbsd and openbsd in the past. FreeBSD for desktop, netbsd for embedded and openbsd for firewall. I'm happy to see more headlines on BSDs these days, and I can't stop thinking it has something to do with systemd.
- diltonm 12y ago
  I'm on Ubuntu 14.04 and had to stop to check if systemd is installed, it is. Ubuntu operates the same for me today as 12 did. I don't have any issues with it. I wrote a Java system service the other day and installed it with the usual update-rc.d command like I've done in 12 and it runs fine so for me systemd has nothing to do with my choice to stay with Linux, Ubuntu specifically. It certainly wouldn't drive me away, I wasn't aware it was even there. Like Ubuntu, and Linux overall...it just works (apparently).
  - feld 12y ago
    Desktop users won't notice or care. Those of us in the trenches doing sysadmin work will definitely notice.
  - nisa 12y ago
    If you run Ubuntu 14.04 you don't run systemd. You have a process called systemd-shim that is some kind of compatability glue for software that requires systemd. http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/systemd-shim http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/systemd-shim If you want to try a real systemd system use a recent Fedora or Arch release.
- vezzy-fnord 12y ago
  Or because the BSDs have been making a lot of milestones lately? That said, I'd honestly be very interested in any numbers confirming increased interest in the BSDs as a result of systemd integration into GNU/Linux. It's widely speculated, but is there anything concrete to suggest it?
  - feld 12y ago
    It's less about systemd and more about GPLv3 being rejected by companies -- startups included. The BSD ecosystem is much friendlier to businesses.
darka 12y ago
Happy birthday, FreeBSD! You were one of the many operating systems I experimented with back in my teenage years, along with countless Linux distributions. The popularity has waned [1] but good to know it is still active :) [1] http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F02ydx&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F02ydx&cmpt=q
- axaxs 12y ago
  I'm not sure that's a good indicator. Linux shows a similar decline (try it yourself). I'd wager it's more a result of the rise of the general population coming online, including smartphones. Us geeks searches became miniscule in comparison. That's my theory, at least, and I'm sticking to it :)
joshcanhelp 12y ago
How coincidental ... working on a FreeNAS home server this morning!
- gonzo 12y ago
  How coincidental, there is a developer/vendor summit that starts tomorrow. (MeetBSD yesterday and today.)
danbee 12y ago
I <3 FreeBSD! I run it on my HP Micro Server. Picked it for ZFS support and solid networking.
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whyenot 12y ago
Has Netcraft confirmed it? -- I first installed FreeBSD in 1997. You had to send away for the CDs. There was something so very cool about tinkering with the OS and then typing "make world" at a shell prompt and watching as the OS rebuilt itself. FreeBSD used Beastie[1] as their mascot, cuter than a penguin :) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_Daemon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_Daemon
diltonm 12y ago
For those commentators deriding Linux attempting to make FreeBSD sound better; you're doing your chosen OS a disservice. Instead, you should highlight why you like your OS and not try to denigrate Linux.
- vezzy-fnord 12y ago
  Where are all these anti-Linux commentators here that you speak of? In general, the opposite mentality (Linux users hating BSD) is far more common, particularly in places like /r/linux, Phoronix and even LWN. There's a certain brand of Linux user who just won't resist telling you that BSD is an irrelevant dinosaur-era operating system that keeps leeching off of Linux. BSD users tend to be much more humble and learned, in comparison. Largely because they don't live in a monoculture.
- byuu 12y ago
  > you should highlight why you like your OS I'd be happy to! ZFS, DTrace, pf, Bhyve, Capsicum, Jails, GEOM/geli, the userland is part of the base system, and the core team is elected. For the buzzwords: I like that my out-of-box install has AES-256 whole-disk encryption, software mirroring (that doesn't require identical disks) and snapshots; I really love pf for managing traffic and port remapping on my server; Jails are great added security for services exposed to the internet. Through and through, I just like the design more in nearly all cases. rc.d works great for my needs, I like devd, I agree with FreeBSD's philosophy difference on the behavior of /dev/random, I like the more laid back licensing, etc. And to flip things around ... I think Linux does a massively better job at out-of-the-box simplicity in setting up and running a desktop environment. The BSDs are server-oriented and that really shows.
  - X-Istence 12y ago
    I don't think that is so bad, use each one for their respective strengths. Linux for the desktop, FreeBSD on the server.
danieldk 12y ago
Let's not forget BSDs long-lasting influence. OS X uses a lot of code from Free/Net/OpenBSD. Many commercial operating systems initially based their TCP/IP stack on BSD. Cheers FreeBSD! I happy remember buying the 2.1.5 CD set from Walnut Creek and tinkering for weeks.
- justincormack 12y ago
  Android has a fair amount of BSD code, as it has no GPL code in userspace, eg NetBSD is upstream for much of bionic libc.
EGreg 12y ago
For someone looking to run a social network, and valuing rock solid reliability and efficiency, what would be the tradeoffs between, say: CentOS Linux Debian Linux FreeBSD
- nisa 12y ago
  > valuing rock solid reliability and efficiency Get someone that knows one of these systems well. It really does not matter that much. You can do almost everything with every system. The more important task is to design your website stack in a way that it works reliable.
- hhw 12y ago
  FreeBSD is or at least was capable of higher concurrent connections per server, which is presumably why Whatsapp uses it. FreeBSD also has a reputation for performing more consistently and being more responsive under duress. These might be important attributes for a social network. When comparing between CentOS and Debian, I'd say Debian's apt system is superior to the RedHat family's rpm system, both in terms of usability and when building your own packages. If you plan to run commercial software however, most are made for use on RedHat although that's starting to change with Ubuntu also being a target nowadays. So in general, I'd say go CentOS for commercial software, or Debian for open source software.
gonzo 12y ago
Yes, Jordan Hubbard stood up to announce same yesterday at MeetBSD.
pmoriarty 12y ago
The worst thing about FreeBSD is the license.
- dschuler 12y ago
  What don't you like about the BSD license? GPL proponents generally argue that since code must be contributed back if a program is distributed, it will cause the original source base to grow. On the other hand, from what I gather Apple has used a lot of code from FreeBSD and contributed a significant amount back to the project, which wouldn't have been possible without a BSD-style license. Native ZFS support wouldn't have been possible either, although Sun may have deliberately used a non-GPL compatible license in that case. In any event, it's possible for a BSD-licensed code base to grow as well. The other pro-GPL argument is that it provides more freedom than a BSD license, but I wonder if part of that is just a desire to prevent commercial use of something others created and gave away for free. I'm not sure why that bothers some GPL proponents. What's your take on that? Personally I'm more inclined to contribute to a BSD-licensed project because I can use parts of the code commercially. I don't see as many opportunities to work on GPL-licensed code outside of a very niche job working for someone else or doing it merely as a hobby.
riffraff 12y ago
something like ten years ago I did my very small part as a member of the FreeeBSD Italian Documentation Project, and translated parts of the handbook and other docs (the VM design thing[1] was super interesting!). The FreeBSD Handbook[0] was the single best thing about the OS, IMO: a cohesive, up to date reference to about everything in the system. Cheers, live long and prosper! [0] https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/ https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/ [1] https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/vm-design/article.html https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/vm-design/article.ht...
damm 12y ago
Damn I was running FreeBSD when Bill Clinton was getting over getting impeached. I feel /OLD/
profquail 12y ago
I keep hoping Travis-CI will add support for FreeBSD, but it seems there's some blocking issue due their use of OpenVZ as a containerization layer: https://github.com/travis-ci/travis-ci/issues/1818 https://github.com/travis-ci/travis-ci/issues/1818 Does anyone know if there's been more progress on this? It'd really be a boon to FreeBSD (and BSDs in general) if travis-ci supported it, since it'd make it easier for devs to write portable code (between Mac/Linux/BSD) from the get-go.
manish_gill 12y ago
Can someone who has used them both tell me what are the advantages of FreeBSD over something like OS X (desktop use)? I was turned off from linux after trying out several distress that kept melting down due to one issue or another. OS X has none of those issues and I get all the benefits of a unix system. How will FreeBSD be different if I try it out? Thanks.
Lammy 12y ago
FreeBSD won me over about 12 years ago when I was looking for a stable OS for a small dynamic DNS home server. OpenBSD kernel panicked on my AMD K6-2 machine, and I'd just been screwed by a Mandrake Linux upgrade that left my system unusable, so I installed FreeBSD 4.7 and slogged through a month of "help, this isn't Linux". It's impressive how both the feature set and community have grown since then and hard to imagine the OS now giant-locked or without ULE, ZFS, DTrace, PF, and a host of other things both homegrown and imported. I'm particularly excited to see BHyVe mature so there is a native VM option besides VirtualBox when I need more than a Jail. FreeBSD still struggles in some scenarios, especially desktop use and availability of BSD VPS hosting that would let people cheaply experiment with the OS like they can with Linux on Linode or DigitalOcean. I have a FreeBSD desktop and a VPS running in prgmr.com's Xen environment, but both took quite a bit of effort to set up: https://cooltrainer.org/a-freebsd-desktop-howto/ https://cooltrainer.org/a-freebsd-desktop-howto/ http://wiki.prgmr.com/mediawiki/index.php/FreeBSD_as_a_DomU http://wiki.prgmr.com/mediawiki/index.php/FreeBSD_as_a_DomU Happy birthday, FreeBSD!
- strmpnk 12y ago
  Most people don't seem to be aware that there is a well supported FreeBSD image supported for EC2 these days: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B00KSS55FY?sr=0-5&qid=1402079030897 https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B00KSS55FY?sr=0-5&qid=... GCE can also run FreeBSD fine if you don't mind messing with KVM images yourself (a quick search should show some threads on how to get started). Many other providers would probably maintain support for this as well if more people spoke about their interests. It's not hard to support on KVM based systems so it's a matter of winning new customers not technical limitations. Of course, it's worth pointing out that it's also easy (and cheap!) to rent hardware at places like Softlayer and Rackspace. Both of these provide support for FreeBSD on the metal. You could then run Jails (very mature and easy to use) or Bhyve (less mature but the guest support is growing at a reasonable pace) on top of this if you need to partition resources. EDIT: I should also note that I saw this company recently. It's a nice and cheap way to get a FreeBSD setup: https://www.vultr.com https://www.vultr.com
  - Lammy 12y ago
jeffdavis 12y ago
Linux has had vastly more resources poured into it just for the kernel than all of FreeBSD (and the other BSDs as well). Yet FreeBSD is still a nice operating system and kernel. Legitimate question: where have all those resource gone into Linux? What have we gotten out of it that's not in BSD?
- mburns 12y ago
  Hardware support in the form of many, many drivers.
  - shanth 12y ago
    Absolutely. I'm still looking for a BCM43142 driver :(
jstalin 12y ago
Honest question -- is FreeBSD as easy to administer as Debian? I love apt-get.
- Pephers 12y ago
  I'd say it's easier. You don't have to worry about backports to get packages of newer date or expired PGP keys when updating an old machine or anything like that.
- emaste 12y ago
  FreeBSD has made great strides in the last couple of years with binary package management tools. While there are a few things still to be done, in general if you're familiar with Debian you'll be right at home. Have a look at https://wiki.freebsd.org/PackageManagerRosettaStone https://wiki.freebsd.org/PackageManagerRosettaStone
hhw 12y ago
One thing to note about FreeBSD is the new pkg-ng package management system is a big step forward in terms of usability vs the old pkg_ commands. It does not lose to Debian's apt in any way when it comes to binary packages, and FreeBSD's ports system are still second to none when it comes to source based packages. I had been avoiding making the switch, having been used to using portupgrade since 2001, but as soon as portupgrade began supporting pkg-ng I started using it, and have found it a pleasure to use. I now do a pkg upgrade first, to pull all available binary packages from the official repositories, before doing my own upgrades from ports using portupgrade.
tete 12y ago
I like how they consider birth as "construction ready". Oh and a side note. Being based off the original BSD its roots go back to 1977 and even earlier. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Unix_history-simple.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Unix_his...
jestinjoy1 12y ago
I am from Debian, looking to test Unix. The demands/needs 1. Should be Free as Linux 2. For use in Desktop 3. Needs UI 4. Mainly for Development Which BSD is best fit for me?
- elektronjunge 12y ago
  PC-BSD is probably your best bet. Its a distro of FreeBSD with tools to make it easier to use as a desktop. If you don't mind wading through config files then any of the big 4 (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFlyBSD) should be good for you. I recommend FreeBSD or maybe OpenBSD. NetBSD will run everywhere but isn't the best for standard hardware. DragonFly is too experimental. FreeBSD is the easiest to setup and has the most hardware/package support. OpenBSD is nearly as good on this front but you may have more difficulty.
StevePerkins 12y ago
A decade ago, running FreeBSD on my main PC for a few years taught me half of what I now know about UNIX. Over time, I grew tired of having my machine in a near-constant state of compiling code (updates are built from source rather than through APT or RPM repos). So I drifted away and ended up with Ubuntu, where I wouldn't have to tinker with the OS so much. However, I miss the amazing documentation that came with FreeBSD, and the things that it encouraged me to learn along the way.
- jff 12y ago
  I finally started experimenting with the pkgng stuff and it seems pretty good. I too have been annoyed by the constant compilation, so I've been pleased that I'm getting along with the occasional "pkg upgrade", which will update all my packages, even the ones built from the ports tree. If you have custom compile options in some of your packages, you can simply lock them and pkg will leave them alone; you can then use portmaster or whatever you prefer to re-compile them yourself.

412 points by tachion 12y ago

PS4 runs on FreeBSD: http://www.scei.co.jp/ps4-license/ http://www.scei.co.jp/ps4-license/ (and many other oss) http://www.scei.co.jp/ps4-license/freebsd_kernel.html http://www.scei.co.jp/ps4-license/freebsd_kernel.html http://www.scei.co.jp/ps4-license/freebsd_fsck.html http://www.scei.co.jp/ps4-license/freebsd_fsck.html

pjmlp 12y ago
And so far as I am aware, Sony didn't gave any code back.
- tedks 12y ago
  Why should they? If the FreeBSD project wanted code to be given back, they would have used the GPL. It's Sony's right as a corporate person to take BSD-licensed code and profit from it without any sort of "giving back."
- stock_toaster 12y ago
  I vaguely recall hearing they did contribute some code to llvm/clang though, which FreeBSD uses.
- eadler 12y ago
  sony has contributed patches. They are also involved in some of the BSD conferences.

ekn 12y ago

Happy Birthday, FreeBSD!

tachion 12y ago

For all those not familiar with it, FreeBSD[1] is a great Linux alternative, being rock solid, free and open operating system delivering some of the coolest new technologies out there, including out of the box support for ZFS filesystem, awesome debugging tool DTrace, hot new security layer in form of Capsicum, fresh and legacy free hypervisor Bhyve, one of the best documentation amongst any open source projects and much, much more! And now it can get legally drunk in every country on the Earth, where drinking is legal ;) Be nice and send it a birthday gift![2] [1] https://www.FreeBSD.org/ https://www.FreeBSD.org/ [2] https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/ https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/

hiphopyo 12y ago
That's the thing -- it's a testbed for a lot of experimental, some would even say unnecessary, technologies. Just like Linux taught me to appreciate FreeBSD, FreeBSD taught me to appreciate OpenBSD. OpenBSD -- the world's simplest and most secure Unix-like OS. Creator of the world's most used SSH implementation OpenSSH, the world's most elegant firewall PF, the world's most elegant mail server OpenSMTPD, and the OpenSSL rewrite LibreSSL. OpenBSD -- the cleanest kernel, the cleanest userland and the cleanest configuration syntax. Ref. http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=139321387226212 http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=139321387226212 http://itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/62641-crypto-freebsd-playing-catch-up-says-de-raadt http://itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/62641-crypto-...
- vezzy-fnord 12y ago
  it's a testbed for a lot of experimental, some would even say unnecessary, technologies. Nope, that's DragonFly BSD. FreeBSD is far more conservative in comparison, occasionally integrating some more daring idea. In contrast, NetBSD used to silently innovate all the time (and I think still do, what with rump kernels) and even OpenBSD, despite being rather vanilla on the outside, is internally innovative in the area of security.
  - justincormack 12y ago
    I think it varies. FreeBSD does have a lot of stuff, like netmap, capsicum, that is quite experimental in some sense, although capsicum is a great design. NetBSD has rump kernel, but thats not much code, it is just(!) portability done right, some build fixes and a little code.
- feld 12y ago
  Experimental ideas are almost always shot down by the developers
- unethical_ban 12y ago
  You said a lot of nice and true things about OpenBSD, but you didn't back up your claim against FBSD: What unnecessary and experimental technologies are you referring to?

amelius 12y ago

FreeBSD has reached the legal drinking age! Cheers! I just hope that they don't change their license model into just "free as in beer" :) And I hope they one day implement all kernel functions that Linux supports, so that switching from Linux to FreeBSD becomes less painful.

teekert 12y ago
Hey, it reached legal beer-drinking age 5 years ago! 3 years ago it became legal for it to drink higher percentages of alcohol and to smoke weed (well actually it's not legal, they will just ignore you with under 5 grams in your pocket). ...Greetings from the Netherlands.
tachion 12y ago
There's already Linux compability layer in FreeBSD's kernel for years now, allowing you using linux binaries on FreeBSD. Anything in particular you'd be missing when migrating to FreeBSD?
- feld 12y ago
  It doesn't support 64bit and some newer features (yet!)
  - justincormack 12y ago
    I think 64 bit support has had a lot of work recently. NetBSD has 64 bit Linux emulation support.
    - feld 12y ago
      See the FreeBSD lemul branch for 64bit support and newer features. Hoping to see it merged soon.
- bcantrill 12y ago
  For whatever it's worth, we in the illumos community have been working on a complete Linux compatibility layer -- including 64-bit.[1][2] Our Linux emulation is relatively closely intertwined with some illumos abstractions like zones, but it would be great if the FreeBSD folks could make use of it -- we have a long history of technology exchange with FreeBSD, and we think it's made both systems better. Happy birthday, FreeBSD -- from your illumos cousins! [1] http://www.slideshare.net/bcantrill/illumos-lx http://www.slideshare.net/bcantrill/illumos-lx [2] https://twitter.com/sjorge/status/527937813568708608 https://twitter.com/sjorge/status/527937813568708608

johngd 12y ago

Forever grateful to FreeBSD as it was my first non-windows/mac distro that had installed on one of my own machines. I snagged a copy of FreeBSD 4 that was bundled in a book that they sold at BestBuy. I spent all of Christmas installing it on a old Packard Bell Pentium 1, several times if I recall correctly (disk partitioning was rough for a newbie). That one day set my path for the next ~15 years

jarcane 12y ago

FreeBSD is the OS I switched to after one Linux distro after another refused to run properly on my hardware. I don't boot it often, but if I want to do some good old fashioned Unix hacking, it's my first choice from here on out.

kleiba 12y ago

One of the biggest disadvantages Linux has over Windows is the lack of driver support from hardware manufactures. Is the situation with FreeBSD comparable, or better, or worse?

gh02t 12y ago
Comparable, but slightly worse. A large portion of the drivers that exist for Linux are relatively easily ported to FreeBSD, especially the big ones like Nvidia. But not all of them, so the situation is a bit worse. FreeBSD isn't as commonly used as a desktop/workstation though. People do it (I have one over in a corner), but support for every mouse and dongle under the sun isn't quite as high priority. Stuff like ethernet drivers that matter for servers have really good support in my experience.
- ferrari8608 12y ago
  The FreeBSD Nvidia driver is written specifically for FreeBSD, not really ported from Linux. I would imagine they do share a lot of code, though, both being POSIX and all.
tachion 12y ago
I honestly dont think there's any other operating system in the universe that will have the same level of hardware makes support as Windows does, especially when it comes to desktop targeted hardware. You have to be aware that neither Linux nor FreeBSD were developed with desktop usage as a primary goal, so the drivers support focuses more on hardware related to professional usage. However, you can still use FreeBSD on the desktop/laptop if you pay some attention to what you're buying, and there is great FreeBSD distro called PC-BSD[1] dedicated to desktop users as well! Answering your question in one word: comparable. [1] http://www.pcbsd.org/ http://www.pcbsd.org/
- hiphopyo 12y ago
  If you care about security, note that OpenBSD lets you run Xorg as non-root: http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20140223112426 http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20140223112426

pjmlp 12y ago

Happy birthday. Where would FreeBSD be, if Linux didn't shown up in the scene...

aperture 12y ago

Wow! I just realized FreeBSD is about as old as I am! FreeBSD is a great system, and going from Windows to Ubuntu to FreeBSD was a fun transition, one I recommend for anybody willing to learn more about computers. Recently a new book came out too for FreeBSD, I'll see if I can post it here without some sort of referral link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321968972/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321968972/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_nS_ttl... I managed to get one of my professors to purchase the book as well, and it was a nice piece of material for Intro to Operating Systems.

profquail 12y ago
I saw a promotion for Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System, 2nd. ed this morning, in case anyone is considering purchasing the book. If you buy it direct from the publisher[1], there is a coupon code [2] for 35% off -- bringing the price down to a very reasonable $36. [1] http://www.informit.com/store/design-and-implementation-of-the-freebsd-operating-9780321968975 http://www.informit.com/store/design-and-implementation-of-t... [2] https://twitter.com/MeetBSDCA/status/528659641106837504 https://twitter.com/MeetBSDCA/status/528659641106837504

teekert 12y ago

I was at Andrew Tanenbaum's goodbye Lecture where we once again were reminded of the stupid move by AT&T of suing BSD, which stalled the project for 3 years allowing Linux to flourish. Oh how different the landscape could have been.

jbuzbee 12y ago
I know those lawsuits made a difference to me. I recall back in '92 getting a 386sx 20Mhz PC with Windows 3.0 on it and being severely disappointed with its limited functionality. While looking for alternatives, I remember seeing that there were some "legal issues" with the BSDs, but Linux had none. So off I went, downloading a large stack of floppies which was a big commitment over a 1200 baud modem. 20+ years later, I've never looked back.
- aidenn0 12y ago
  Still stuck with a 1200 baud modem in '92? That stinks. I think I was complaining about having to use my dad's hand-me-down 2400 at that point.
  - jbuzbee 12y ago
    Actually it could have been a 2400 - It's hard to remember the timing of upgrading from 1200, to 2400, to 33.6K to a blazingly fast 56K where I recall stalling for years until broadband finally came into our neighborhood. But regardless of the speed, downloading an entire SLS Linux floppy set over a modem was a painful process.
DanBC 12y ago
“I wouldn’t have to create Linux if there wasn’t any lawsuit against BSD in the early 90`s. It wouldn’t be necesary” Page 52 http://free.blackpatchpanel.com/pme/linux/history.pdf http://free.blackpatchpanel.com/pme/linux/history.pdf
byuu 12y ago
On the bright side ... there's a very concerted effort in the Linux world to transform the OS into something completely different; simplified for casual users, designed more for tablets and desktops, less modular, and non-portable. systemd, Weston, ALSA, Pulse, Gnome 3, Unity, Mir, etc. I'm quite relieved that these developers have Linux to focus on, and are sparing us their creations on the BSDs. And I'm not saying there's no place for whatever it is Redhat et al are creating, but I'm very happy that we still have a true Unix-like OS, and I'm not sure we would if all of these developers were focused solely on BSD in a hypothetical world without Linux.

ausjke 12y ago

Used freebsd, netbsd and openbsd in the past. FreeBSD for desktop, netbsd for embedded and openbsd for firewall. I'm happy to see more headlines on BSDs these days, and I can't stop thinking it has something to do with systemd.

diltonm 12y ago
I'm on Ubuntu 14.04 and had to stop to check if systemd is installed, it is. Ubuntu operates the same for me today as 12 did. I don't have any issues with it. I wrote a Java system service the other day and installed it with the usual update-rc.d command like I've done in 12 and it runs fine so for me systemd has nothing to do with my choice to stay with Linux, Ubuntu specifically. It certainly wouldn't drive me away, I wasn't aware it was even there. Like Ubuntu, and Linux overall...it just works (apparently).
- feld 12y ago
  Desktop users won't notice or care. Those of us in the trenches doing sysadmin work will definitely notice.
- nisa 12y ago
  If you run Ubuntu 14.04 you don't run systemd. You have a process called systemd-shim that is some kind of compatability glue for software that requires systemd. http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/systemd-shim http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/systemd-shim If you want to try a real systemd system use a recent Fedora or Arch release.
vezzy-fnord 12y ago
Or because the BSDs have been making a lot of milestones lately? That said, I'd honestly be very interested in any numbers confirming increased interest in the BSDs as a result of systemd integration into GNU/Linux. It's widely speculated, but is there anything concrete to suggest it?
- feld 12y ago
  It's less about systemd and more about GPLv3 being rejected by companies -- startups included. The BSD ecosystem is much friendlier to businesses.

darka 12y ago

Happy birthday, FreeBSD! You were one of the many operating systems I experimented with back in my teenage years, along with countless Linux distributions. The popularity has waned [1] but good to know it is still active :) [1] http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F02ydx&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F02ydx&cmpt=q

axaxs 12y ago
I'm not sure that's a good indicator. Linux shows a similar decline (try it yourself). I'd wager it's more a result of the rise of the general population coming online, including smartphones. Us geeks searches became miniscule in comparison. That's my theory, at least, and I'm sticking to it :)

joshcanhelp 12y ago

How coincidental ... working on a FreeNAS home server this morning!

gonzo 12y ago
How coincidental, there is a developer/vendor summit that starts tomorrow. (MeetBSD yesterday and today.)

danbee 12y ago

I <3 FreeBSD! I run it on my HP Micro Server. Picked it for ZFS support and solid networking.

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whyenot 12y ago

Has Netcraft confirmed it? -- I first installed FreeBSD in 1997. You had to send away for the CDs. There was something so very cool about tinkering with the OS and then typing "make world" at a shell prompt and watching as the OS rebuilt itself. FreeBSD used Beastie[1] as their mascot, cuter than a penguin :) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_Daemon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_Daemon

diltonm 12y ago

For those commentators deriding Linux attempting to make FreeBSD sound better; you're doing your chosen OS a disservice. Instead, you should highlight why you like your OS and not try to denigrate Linux.

vezzy-fnord 12y ago
Where are all these anti-Linux commentators here that you speak of? In general, the opposite mentality (Linux users hating BSD) is far more common, particularly in places like /r/linux, Phoronix and even LWN. There's a certain brand of Linux user who just won't resist telling you that BSD is an irrelevant dinosaur-era operating system that keeps leeching off of Linux. BSD users tend to be much more humble and learned, in comparison. Largely because they don't live in a monoculture.
byuu 12y ago
> you should highlight why you like your OS I'd be happy to! ZFS, DTrace, pf, Bhyve, Capsicum, Jails, GEOM/geli, the userland is part of the base system, and the core team is elected. For the buzzwords: I like that my out-of-box install has AES-256 whole-disk encryption, software mirroring (that doesn't require identical disks) and snapshots; I really love pf for managing traffic and port remapping on my server; Jails are great added security for services exposed to the internet. Through and through, I just like the design more in nearly all cases. rc.d works great for my needs, I like devd, I agree with FreeBSD's philosophy difference on the behavior of /dev/random, I like the more laid back licensing, etc. And to flip things around ... I think Linux does a massively better job at out-of-the-box simplicity in setting up and running a desktop environment. The BSDs are server-oriented and that really shows.
- X-Istence 12y ago
  I don't think that is so bad, use each one for their respective strengths. Linux for the desktop, FreeBSD on the server.

danieldk 12y ago

Let's not forget BSDs long-lasting influence. OS X uses a lot of code from Free/Net/OpenBSD. Many commercial operating systems initially based their TCP/IP stack on BSD. Cheers FreeBSD! I happy remember buying the 2.1.5 CD set from Walnut Creek and tinkering for weeks.

justincormack 12y ago
Android has a fair amount of BSD code, as it has no GPL code in userspace, eg NetBSD is upstream for much of bionic libc.

EGreg 12y ago

For someone looking to run a social network, and valuing rock solid reliability and efficiency, what would be the tradeoffs between, say: CentOS Linux Debian Linux FreeBSD

nisa 12y ago
> valuing rock solid reliability and efficiency Get someone that knows one of these systems well. It really does not matter that much. You can do almost everything with every system. The more important task is to design your website stack in a way that it works reliable.
hhw 12y ago
FreeBSD is or at least was capable of higher concurrent connections per server, which is presumably why Whatsapp uses it. FreeBSD also has a reputation for performing more consistently and being more responsive under duress. These might be important attributes for a social network. When comparing between CentOS and Debian, I'd say Debian's apt system is superior to the RedHat family's rpm system, both in terms of usability and when building your own packages. If you plan to run commercial software however, most are made for use on RedHat although that's starting to change with Ubuntu also being a target nowadays. So in general, I'd say go CentOS for commercial software, or Debian for open source software.

gonzo 12y ago

Yes, Jordan Hubbard stood up to announce same yesterday at MeetBSD.

pmoriarty 12y ago

The worst thing about FreeBSD is the license.

dschuler 12y ago
What don't you like about the BSD license? GPL proponents generally argue that since code must be contributed back if a program is distributed, it will cause the original source base to grow. On the other hand, from what I gather Apple has used a lot of code from FreeBSD and contributed a significant amount back to the project, which wouldn't have been possible without a BSD-style license. Native ZFS support wouldn't have been possible either, although Sun may have deliberately used a non-GPL compatible license in that case. In any event, it's possible for a BSD-licensed code base to grow as well. The other pro-GPL argument is that it provides more freedom than a BSD license, but I wonder if part of that is just a desire to prevent commercial use of something others created and gave away for free. I'm not sure why that bothers some GPL proponents. What's your take on that? Personally I'm more inclined to contribute to a BSD-licensed project because I can use parts of the code commercially. I don't see as many opportunities to work on GPL-licensed code outside of a very niche job working for someone else or doing it merely as a hobby.

riffraff 12y ago

something like ten years ago I did my very small part as a member of the FreeeBSD Italian Documentation Project, and translated parts of the handbook and other docs (the VM design thing[1] was super interesting!). The FreeBSD Handbook[0] was the single best thing about the OS, IMO: a cohesive, up to date reference to about everything in the system. Cheers, live long and prosper! [0] https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/ https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/ [1] https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/vm-design/article.html https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/vm-design/article.ht...

damm 12y ago

Damn I was running FreeBSD when Bill Clinton was getting over getting impeached. I feel /OLD/

profquail 12y ago

I keep hoping Travis-CI will add support for FreeBSD, but it seems there's some blocking issue due their use of OpenVZ as a containerization layer: https://github.com/travis-ci/travis-ci/issues/1818 https://github.com/travis-ci/travis-ci/issues/1818 Does anyone know if there's been more progress on this? It'd really be a boon to FreeBSD (and BSDs in general) if travis-ci supported it, since it'd make it easier for devs to write portable code (between Mac/Linux/BSD) from the get-go.

manish_gill 12y ago

Can someone who has used them both tell me what are the advantages of FreeBSD over something like OS X (desktop use)? I was turned off from linux after trying out several distress that kept melting down due to one issue or another. OS X has none of those issues and I get all the benefits of a unix system. How will FreeBSD be different if I try it out? Thanks.

Lammy 12y ago

FreeBSD won me over about 12 years ago when I was looking for a stable OS for a small dynamic DNS home server. OpenBSD kernel panicked on my AMD K6-2 machine, and I'd just been screwed by a Mandrake Linux upgrade that left my system unusable, so I installed FreeBSD 4.7 and slogged through a month of "help, this isn't Linux". It's impressive how both the feature set and community have grown since then and hard to imagine the OS now giant-locked or without ULE, ZFS, DTrace, PF, and a host of other things both homegrown and imported. I'm particularly excited to see BHyVe mature so there is a native VM option besides VirtualBox when I need more than a Jail. FreeBSD still struggles in some scenarios, especially desktop use and availability of BSD VPS hosting that would let people cheaply experiment with the OS like they can with Linux on Linode or DigitalOcean. I have a FreeBSD desktop and a VPS running in prgmr.com's Xen environment, but both took quite a bit of effort to set up: https://cooltrainer.org/a-freebsd-desktop-howto/ https://cooltrainer.org/a-freebsd-desktop-howto/ http://wiki.prgmr.com/mediawiki/index.php/FreeBSD_as_a_DomU http://wiki.prgmr.com/mediawiki/index.php/FreeBSD_as_a_DomU Happy birthday, FreeBSD!

strmpnk 12y ago
Most people don't seem to be aware that there is a well supported FreeBSD image supported for EC2 these days: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B00KSS55FY?sr=0-5&qid=1402079030897 https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B00KSS55FY?sr=0-5&qid=... GCE can also run FreeBSD fine if you don't mind messing with KVM images yourself (a quick search should show some threads on how to get started). Many other providers would probably maintain support for this as well if more people spoke about their interests. It's not hard to support on KVM based systems so it's a matter of winning new customers not technical limitations. Of course, it's worth pointing out that it's also easy (and cheap!) to rent hardware at places like Softlayer and Rackspace. Both of these provide support for FreeBSD on the metal. You could then run Jails (very mature and easy to use) or Bhyve (less mature but the guest support is growing at a reasonable pace) on top of this if you need to partition resources. EDIT: I should also note that I saw this company recently. It's a nice and cheap way to get a FreeBSD setup: https://www.vultr.com https://www.vultr.com
- Lammy 12y ago

jeffdavis 12y ago

Linux has had vastly more resources poured into it just for the kernel than all of FreeBSD (and the other BSDs as well). Yet FreeBSD is still a nice operating system and kernel. Legitimate question: where have all those resource gone into Linux? What have we gotten out of it that's not in BSD?

mburns 12y ago
Hardware support in the form of many, many drivers.
- shanth 12y ago
  Absolutely. I'm still looking for a BCM43142 driver :(

jstalin 12y ago

Honest question -- is FreeBSD as easy to administer as Debian? I love apt-get.

Pephers 12y ago
I'd say it's easier. You don't have to worry about backports to get packages of newer date or expired PGP keys when updating an old machine or anything like that.
emaste 12y ago
FreeBSD has made great strides in the last couple of years with binary package management tools. While there are a few things still to be done, in general if you're familiar with Debian you'll be right at home. Have a look at https://wiki.freebsd.org/PackageManagerRosettaStone https://wiki.freebsd.org/PackageManagerRosettaStone

hhw 12y ago

One thing to note about FreeBSD is the new pkg-ng package management system is a big step forward in terms of usability vs the old pkg_ commands. It does not lose to Debian's apt in any way when it comes to binary packages, and FreeBSD's ports system are still second to none when it comes to source based packages. I had been avoiding making the switch, having been used to using portupgrade since 2001, but as soon as portupgrade began supporting pkg-ng I started using it, and have found it a pleasure to use. I now do a pkg upgrade first, to pull all available binary packages from the official repositories, before doing my own upgrades from ports using portupgrade.

tete 12y ago

I like how they consider birth as "construction ready". Oh and a side note. Being based off the original BSD its roots go back to 1977 and even earlier. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Unix_history-simple.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Unix_his...

jestinjoy1 12y ago

I am from Debian, looking to test Unix. The demands/needs 1. Should be Free as Linux 2. For use in Desktop 3. Needs UI 4. Mainly for Development Which BSD is best fit for me?

elektronjunge 12y ago
PC-BSD is probably your best bet. Its a distro of FreeBSD with tools to make it easier to use as a desktop. If you don't mind wading through config files then any of the big 4 (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFlyBSD) should be good for you. I recommend FreeBSD or maybe OpenBSD. NetBSD will run everywhere but isn't the best for standard hardware. DragonFly is too experimental. FreeBSD is the easiest to setup and has the most hardware/package support. OpenBSD is nearly as good on this front but you may have more difficulty.

StevePerkins 12y ago

A decade ago, running FreeBSD on my main PC for a few years taught me half of what I now know about UNIX. Over time, I grew tired of having my machine in a near-constant state of compiling code (updates are built from source rather than through APT or RPM repos). So I drifted away and ended up with Ubuntu, where I wouldn't have to tinker with the OS so much. However, I miss the amazing documentation that came with FreeBSD, and the things that it encouraged me to learn along the way.

jff 12y ago
I finally started experimenting with the pkgng stuff and it seems pretty good. I too have been annoyed by the constant compilation, so I've been pleased that I'm getting along with the occasional "pkg upgrade", which will update all my packages, even the ones built from the ports tree. If you have custom compile options in some of your packages, you can simply lock them and pkg will leave them alone; you can then use portmaster or whatever you prefer to re-compile them yourself.