Why FreeBSD

An anonymous reader writes "The FreeBSD operating system is the unknown giant among free operating systems. Starting out from the 386BSD project, it is an extremely fast UNIX-like operating system mostly for the Intel chip and its clones. In many ways, FreeBSD has always been the operating system that GNU/Linux-based operating systems should have been. It runs on out-of-date Intel machines and 64-bit AMD chips, and it serves terabytes of files a day on some of the largest file servers on earth."

Comments

Seriously.

[dotdan]

This is news?

What about man-pages?

[flowerHercules]

It is unusual to mention operating system documentation that comes with UNIX systems because such documentation tends to be as unreadable as it is intrinsically interesting and useful.

NAME
xine - a free video player
SYNOPSIS
xine [options] [MRL] ...
DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents briefly the xine audio/video player.

...

-f, --fullscreen
Switch xine to fullscreen mode on start (just like pressing "F")
-g, --hide-gui
Hide all GUI windows (except the video window) on start. This is the same as pressing "G" within xine.

...

I guess if you want a fluffy story to cuddle up with at night, FreeBSD is for you. If you want to get a man-page that tells you what you want to know without complicated characters and a twisting plot...(L)Unix is the way to go. I can't imagine what I would want option parameters listed in the documentation for?

Re:What about man-pages?

[drsquare]

Parent is a Linux troll.

BSD is renowned for having better documentation than Linux. Unlike on Linux where the man pages are a half-arsed effort, an after-thought, brief, confusing and full of errors, on BSD they're done properly, with skill and expertise.

They leave nothing to chance, they explain everything simply and easily, with plenty of intuitive examples and useful explanations. Yes, with BSD, you know exactly where you are and what to do.

Some of the Linux developers might think that documentation is for losers (or lusers as they like to call the people who use their software), but on BSD they realise that people might not necessarily know everything about their system, every command, every option or every file, so they treat the user with respect, explaining things which need explaining. This means that BSD is easier to use and configure, a great user experience.

So the next time you're frustrated trying to fix Linux, and the IRC channels tell you to RTFM, the newsgroups call you a Microsoft shill, and you wonder why TFM is so poor, or why no-one cares, remember that just around the corner is an operating system where the user comes first. BSD.

Here are some useful links:
http://freebsd.org/
http://openbsd.org/
http://netbsd.org/

Er...

[Sr. Pato]

It runs on out-of-date Intel machines

That's because BSD is dead! Geez! Get a clue!

"Tell a joke; speak humorously; 'He often jokes even when he appears serious'"

Re:FreeBSD

[Erik Hensema]

Why not:

• You need to track security updates for kernel, base and ports and apply them in different manners
• Package management is a decade behind what rpm and dpkg have to offer
• It's essentially a DIY kit to build an OS. I just want an OS.
• Building ports takes ages, time I don't have
• Building ports takes resources. Resources I want to use for the server's core buisiness. Which is not compiling ports.
• Bad documentation. The official freebsd manual often explains the most time consuming, error prone way of doing things. Later you'll find out there are many convienient ports to perform common tasks.
• No journalled filesystems. Yeah, it's really scary to remotely kill the power of a crashed machine.

The only really good thing of freebsd seems to be the kernel. The userspace is really amateurish though.

Typical Slashdot

[spudchucker]

Smells like an advertisement.
Follow the money,
the path ain't long.

Re:FreeBSD is nice and clean

[drsquare]

Unfortuanately, whilst superficially Gentoo may be similar to FreeBSD, the systems are completely different. BSD is built from the ground up to be secure, powerful and reliable. Gentoo is a hack which attempts to make something of the mess than is Linux. At the end of the day, Linux is an amateurist effort, with uncooperative developers who argue and pull in different directions. The kernel is made by one group, the libraries by another, the distribution by another etc. All different, all disorganised.

On BSD it's a team effort, it's the full package, it all works together well. With BSD, the developers think about how to make it better, with Linux they think about how to make things more broken.

Re:*Rolls eyes*

[G-Licious!]

Tune in next week for another episode of "Why (.*)", featuring GNU HURD!

I ask the same question "Why"

[codepunk]

Sorry all I have is big iron boxes that require clustered file systems, so yes I do wonder "Why?".

woo, hoo

[benjamindees]

as he can close the software without having to worry about the lawyers coming round complaining about your code violating some obscure GPL snippet.

Sorry, but when you said "use" there I guess you really meant "close". Which is really more like "prevent others from using". Which is exactly what I was saying to begin with.

The GPL gives you freedom as long as you respect the freedom of others, ie. "the little guy".

it forces you to release software which doesn't even contain GPL code

This, of course, is complete bullshit. I can't even imagine how you could concoct such an idiocy. If you're not just trolling, why don't you tell us?

Re:FreeBSD

[Erik Hensema]

• rpm and dpkg are package formats. Formats don't track anything. It's the tools which track dependencies. Tools such as apt, yast, yum and urpmi. All these tools install a package including all its dependencies. Maybe you're confused with the 'rpm' tool, which is just a lowlevel interface to the rpm package format. Nobody really wants or needs to use the rpm command.
• FreeBSD is not a full OS. You really have to build large parts of it in order to become useful.
• Even with softupdates on I had to manually fsck the root fs twice on a server I rebooted using the power switch.
• The docs only document the 'official' freebsd. On order to make freebsd actually useful you'll have to install a lot of ports (such as portautit). The official documentation doesn't mention this. You'll have to fall back to unofficial docs, docs which are as good or bad as the Linux HOWTO collection.
• I don't need a GUI, thank you. A nice ncursus interface will do just fine.

Unix-LIKE??

[jefp]

FreeBSD is not Unix-LIKE, it *is* Unix, in the same sense that Linux is NOT Unix and never will be. FreeBSD is in direct line of descent from the original Unix versions, with continuity of both code and contributors. Linix is a bad re-implementation by a bunch of clueless n00bs who have been re-capitulating all of real Unix's old bugs, twenty years later.