The Case for FreeBSD

essdodson writes "Scott Long of FreeBSD release engineering team describes some of the finer points where FreeBSD continues to innovate and display its mature development environment. Items such as netgraph, geom and incredible desktop support by way of Gnome and KDE." From the post: "While I strongly applaud the accomplishments of the NetBSD team and happily agree that NetBSD 2.0 is a strong step forward for them, I take a bit of exception to many of their claims and much of their criticisms of FreeBSD."

Comments

hmmm

[Quasar1999]

I just installed FreeBSD this morning... I must say, straight off the iso, a quick install had me up and running pretty darn fast... much quicker than any linux distro I've tried in the recent past... Now if only I could figure out how to get visual studio to run under it, I could ditch windows... stupid work... stupid requiring development on Windows...

One serious thing about FreeBSD over linux distro's... It feels like it has more of a structure, especially when installing utilities and apps... I find with linux distros, the stuff included feels like it's all over the place, hard to find where things end up installing... but I'm really a vxworks fan... so take what I say with a grain of salt... ;)

Re:hmmm

[Sentry21]

I find with linux distros, the stuff included feels like it's all over the place, hard to find where things end up installing... but I'm really a vxworks fan... so take what I say with a grain of salt... ;)

Generally this is true - this is the reason I restrict myself to Debian. With Debian, everything is packaged in the same manner, to the same standards, and it all makes sense. The structure makes it the only Linux distribution I'm willing to spend any time on.

When I tried FreeBSD, I felt that it had much more of a UNIX feel to it - I felt like I was dealing with something classic and powerful. I wasn't (there's only so much a P133 can do), and I had no use for FreeBSD whatsoever, but even just at the console, it felt more responsive and powerful. All subjective, but interesting.

Who cares about this battle?

[drinkypoo]

I don't see why people are so worried about advocacy. If you're not making money, what is the difference? Continue to refine the thing and get what you want out of it, and if other people don't get it, who loses? Personally I have a use for only a couple of operating systems now, and they are Linux and netbsd. netbsd because it runs on just about everything, and Linux because it's most supported. It's nothing against FreeBSD, which I simply don't need. The point is, I use whatever fits the job and if that was FreeBSD then I'd use that. The best fit is determined partially by functionality and partially by familiarity...

Re:Who cares about this battle?

[cperciva]

[If other people don't know about FreeBSD], who loses? Personally I have a use for only a couple of operating systems now, and they are Linux and netbsd.

To answer your question: You lose.

Linus Torvalds has said that the idea behind Linux is "do it yourself". The idea behind BSD -- coming, as it does, from an academic background -- is "there's lots of trash out there. Let's give people something better".

As far as providing people with a better alternative is concerned, writing FreeBSD doesn't accomplish much if everyone keeps on running the Linux distribution of the day.

More people need to try and use FreeBSD

[Kip Winger]

Repeat a lie enough, and it becomes true. That lie, mostly being, that FreeBSD is dying, or is some arcane system only to hack around on, similar to Plan9.

In fact, for those who haven't tried it, it's quite an excellent full-featured Unix, with everything you'd find under Linux. In fact, it's fully binary compatible with Linux.

The only difference is that it does things the old way -- vi is vi, not vim, and you get sh, csh or tcsh instead of bloated bash. It doesn't have anyone pushing for "ease of use," though it's about at the level of slackware, except with ports, the greatest package management system known to man. Gentoo's portage doesn't even come close to the flexibility and reliability of ports.

Internally, it runs great, because it's not doing things the kernel shouldn't do to boost benchmarks. It's not deeply involved in corporate America, but remains strong due to good management.

Plus it's far more secure. With how much Linux websites are hacked these days -- see http://zone-h.org/ and check out the statistics section, at least 70-80% of website hacks are Linux based -- I wouldn't run it on Linux. FreeBSD is the obvious choice, as it runs its services flawlessly.

I agree

[bogaboga]

Yes, because the BSDs continue to shine where Linux and Windows seem to fall short IMHO. This is software pakgage management. I am using Debian now and was shocked to find that even for Debian, with its much acclaimed apt tool, Debian got confused and made my system unstable when I decided to upgrade it.

I also heard that Windows used or at least used some BSD work in it's internet capability push years ago. One question will always dog me: Why aren't the BSD's as popular with their very good license at least in the eyes of the IBMs and HPs?

To be fair, 5.x has been botched

[Ars-Fartsica]

It has taken the FreeBSD team literally years to get 5.x to an acceptable stage, which is reminiscent of the 3.x issues. Contrary to popular myth, FreeBSD goes through sustained periods in which the latest release is a very weak product.

Also, the development is getting very political, this also scares off people.

Re:Not to mention...

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, give it time. The contest just started five days ago.

Still, from reading the mailing lists, creating a new logo is pretty unpopular in the FreeBSD community. That unpopularity stems from people thinking that this logo will *replace* Beastie, which isn't the case.

Getting defensive?

[idiotnot]

NetBSD 2.0 is a higher-quality release than FreeBSD 5.3 on the IA32 platform. There's just no other way to put it.

My experience with FreeBSD is that the 4.x branch is rock-solid stable, fast, and everything works as it's supposed to.

NetBSD has basically reached that level of quality, with better performance.

FreeBSD 5.x has been unstable for me at best. While the userland programs are pretty much the same, the kernel-level changes have killed reliability. Furthermore, some of the much-touted new features simply do not work yet. I'm sure the SMP performance is much better, but I don't have many SMP machines. I've had problems with hard lockups, just doing things like trying to combine vlan and pf. The bridge interface, afaik, also, still doesn't work with pf.

As far as packages go, ports has more packages, true. Still, rarely has there been something not in pkgsrc that I absolutely needed. Pkgsrc is also much easier to work with, and far more friendly when it comes time to upgrade things. Portupgrade is an abortion, especially compared to even *gack* portage from ricerloonix.

There are reasons there's a buzz around NetBSD these days -- and reasons FreeBSD isn't getting the love it used to. I don't know whether the FreeBSD developers bit off more than they can chew, or if they just are rushing things out the door. But until they get their act together and put out a 5.x-RELEASE that truly is release-quality (by which I mean, all the features *work*, and the drivers are supported the same way), I'm going to be using NetBSD and advising my friends to do the same.

Re:Getting defensive?

[krreagan]

All I know is that I use FreeBSD 5.3 on three different machines, A laptop, a server and a workstation and on all three they are _very_ rock solid.

I use the portupgrade facilities all the time and have not found anything else as easy to use. On several occations since 5.3 was released I'd set off my workstation to upgrade all userland ports (portupgrade -a) on Friday as I leave and have come to work on Monday and have a complete updated system. This is with both KDE and GNOME being updated along with many other ports. I also build my laptop stuff (kernel, world & ports) on my server and only install on my laptop. All of this with less then 5 minutes at the command line.
I have never tried NetBSD or OpenBSD but have a lot of respect for both of them. I find FreeBSD brain-dead simple to maintain and is as rock solid as ever FMP. I have not found 5.3 to be any less "solid" then 4.10, Which is the last 4.x that I used (also on all three of my machines).

We are BSD! lets not let the Linux factor creep in!

Re:Reliability of ports?

[cperciva]

A decent number of them are marked BROKEN.

If by "a decent number of them", you mean "1.5% of them" (192 / 12396 at last count), sure.

Gentoo has superior coverage in portage.

Gentoo may have fewer ports which are marked as BROKEN at any given time; but does it actually have fewer broken ports?

just to be clear

[mqx]

The NetBSD team were not criticising FreeBSD: basically, NetBSD stepped up their advocacy as part of NetBSD 2.0 release, including some whitepapers on performance comparision between NetBSD and FreeBSD. If anything, the BSD camps all have decent respect for each other, and honestly, Scott suggested that there was more animosity from the NetBSD camp that I think is the case in reality. All of the BSD camps could do with better advocacy, and Scott's post is more an indication that none of them are doing very good marketing, and as soon as NetBSD stepped up the marketing, the other camps (i.e. FreeBSD) felt they weren't getting a good rap: but really, the issue is, that FreeBSD guys just haven't been out there pushing their case as hard as they should really be.

I'm Trying OpenBSD...

[eno2001]

...due to the heavy trolling I got last week regarding my comment that OS security and usability are 50% admin skill and 50% OS distributor integrity.

I'm learning more and more that OpenBSD definitely needs an admin that is more highly skilled admin than most Windows or Linux admins. I've definitely made progress in my implementing of OpenBSD, but I still say that my axiom holds true (see my SIG): With most OSes, if you have a competent admin, then you can have a secure system. OpenBSD might up the ante with oddball features to ensure security, but until those are implemented in other mainstream systems, they don't apply. Additionally, you really need to have very strong Unix skill to use OpenBSD, so it flies right in the face of my theory. Where most OSes would have the admin skills required at 50% competency, OpenBSD requires something more on the order of 80% competency in order to get a usable box.

A one time try is all that's needed for success

[Zedrick]

I've been using Linux since around '96 something, first Redhat, then Slackware and recently Gentoo when I got my AMD64. I tried FreeBSD for the first time a few months ago when I had an old 200mhz machine that I just wanted to use for something, and since that seemed to work ok (a very basic install, no X or anything like that) I decided to give FreeBSD/AMD64 a try when I had to do a reinstallation due to hardware changes.

I downloaded a minimal boot CD, burned in, booted installed the base system over FTP and then X, KDE etc via ports...

After only a few hours I was totally confused. Everything just worked!! Well, almost everything. I had some problems with the soundcard, that was solved thanks to great documentation pointing me to a very logical solution.

I'm still a bit lightheaded. An operating system just can't be this good, I'm probably going to wake up soon.

Re:A one time try is all that's needed for success

[molnarcs]

Zedrick, you are not alone. I'm not a comp sci student (what I do is on my user page), but a few years ago I got curious about linux. So I installed rh 7.3 (which just came out fresh at that time). Later, I went through two mandrake releases (9.0 and 9.1). By that time, this whole nix thingy picked my interest, so I decided to learn the unix way - with the intent of setting up my first server. So I installed debian. Everytime I switched, I was presented with different sets of problems (different places for different setup files). I was dedicated to learning to use the command line and not rely on various frontends. One of the first concerns when one is intent to set up a server is the firewall. So I went to netfilter homepage, and bang! I tried and tried, and finally I went the frontend way: shorewall.

Downloaded documentation of shorewall, began reading it, noticed that it needs a newer kernel than the one installed (yeah, it was 2.4.18) with Debian. So I went on to pull that from the STABLE branch - which resulted in the disappearance of my /etc/networks. By that time I was so frustrated (by my attempts to get my usb mouse working) that I was beginning to look for alternatives. One sysadmin (knowing that my english is pretty good - not my native tongue mind you) recommended FreeBSD. I was pretty tentative at first, decided to try it out on a spare partition (luckily I had one primary) on my home computer, before putting it on my server. A week later, it was running my server (and instead of editing 3 separate files in shorewall, I could set up NAT + a pretty tight firewall in a few days). Two weeks later my linux partition was gone. A few months later I became active in the freebsd community at bsdforums. That was my second big surprise: it was the friendliest community I ever participated in (and I'm saying that coming from a mandrake background). And I've been happy ever since.

The reason for this longish post is that I think there is another potential user-base for FreeBSD: noobs who want to learn the unix way. It is one of the user-friendliest unix-like operating system. The entire layout, the configuration is so clean, elegant and easy (because it is logical) that learning it was a joyful activity, while I remember that I was quickly bored when trying to follow this or that howto or tutorial to learn linux. It is not for those who are looking for a quick replacement for windows (like I was at first) - but for anyone interest in the internals of a unix-like OS, FreeBSD is among the easier to understand and learn ones.

Have a nice stay in FreeBSD land :))))

Re:acpi

[Ecks]

I have S3 suspend/resume working on both a Gateway 450ROG and a Toshiba 4600. It was as simple as adding a few lines to /etc/sysctl.conf. I don't have any experience with Linux but the ACPI support in FreeBSD 5-STABLE is what convinced me to upgrade from 4-STABLE.

--Ecks

Re:Where's the Java

[ririarte]

Time is never free, neither mine nor anyone i know.
I prefer to go the extra mile when setting up a server to know that it will work exactly as i want it to, and for that, FreeBSD is a magnificent platform; you seem to advocate for a prepackaged solution. Who is right ?. If it gets the job done, both of us.
Don't get me wrong, i do appreciate Linux, especcialy lightweight non RPM distros á la Slackware, i will, as time permits, experiment with Solaris 10 as well.
Still, if there is one thing lacking from FreeBSD, it's not Java but a native Oracle port (Not FreeBSD's fault of course)

Re:Developer Laments: What Killed FreeBSD

[speedbump]

I feel your pain Mike, but you haven't gone into specifics. It just looks right now like you've not gotten your way about certain directions the core is going, and you've taken your marbles home.

Good luck to ya, I hope you can take your expertise with BSD and make Apple's offering that much better. I just am saying that your post is lacking specifics.

Re:Is it just me?

[evilviper]

Is it just me or do BSD people dole out more insults to each other than the Linux community does to them?

I certainly understand how it might look that way, but it's really not the case.

The BSD community at large are painfully honest. When somebody complains about some missing feature, you usually hear "Yeah, it's too bad we don't have that, you should use something else if it's important to you." Meanwhile, in the Linux world, even with practically the same complaint, you'd hear "You shouldn't be using that, and we don't want it in our system."

Now, that could be because a program is missing certain functionality, because the kernel is missing some feature, etc.

Unfortunately, what I've seen of Linux users bashing BSD, is always uninformed nonsense. I think the most popular one is complaints about the lack of a GUI installer from people who have probably never even used it. As if the BSD installers somehow aren't usable just because they don't have RedHat/SuSE logos for you to look at while your partitions are being formatted.

So, there is a huge difference between the criticisms you hear about BSD from BSDers, and the criticisms you hear about BSD from Linuxers.

misinformed

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha! That article is so misinformed. In fact, FreeBSD has the worst most buggy networking stack of all the BSDs due to the buggy "SACK" code which does not properly implement SACK, according to the authors of the SACK spec. FreeBSD 5.3 Release went out with a thoroughly buggy TCP stack. It's hilarious how FreeBSD is touting their SACK code when it's actually something to be ashamed of.

Ditto for the SMP locking they're touting as an achievement. They've been fumbling around for a year and it's still not right.