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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 It runs on out-of-date Intel machines and 64-bit AMD chips, and it serves terabytes of files a day on some of the largest file servers on earth."
He didn't even flag it for the BSD section on the site. I guess this is a step up from that RAID article, though.
Simple, choice is good. As muck as I like Linux, I'm glad to see that there are viable, open alternative OS's.
I think I think, therefore I think I am.
"FreeBSD has always been the operating system that GNU/Linux-based operating systems should have been."
Can it get anymore flaimbaitish than this. Ironicaly enought it comes from I.B.M developer works.
P.S: Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one.
Skippy is the unknown giant among peanut butters. Starting out from George Washington Carver's project, it is an extremely creamy spreadable peanut product mostly for the "& Jelly" sandwich and its clones. In many ways, Skippy has always been the peanut butter that Peter Pan should have been. It spreads on Wonder Bread and artisan sourdough loafs fresh from the oven, and it serves terabites of children a day on some of the largest daycare centers on earth.
In general, it is rock solid; I've seen a FreeBSD server with a load of 80-something (process went nuts), and still been able to login and take corrective action without rebooting. I remember being quite shocked to find a console reporting that / was inaccessible due to a drive error - but server processes on other partitions continued to run just fine anyway. We've had a few hiccups with 5.x (although 5.4 fixed most of them), but our testing of 6-beta is going really well. FreeBSD is the masochist of operating systems: you hit it, and it just keeps asking for more!
There are other reasons to love it. The ports system is very solid, and it's been years since we had problems applying an upgrade due to dependency issues. The documentation is marvelous - man pages are useful, and the handbook covers most things. The community support mailing lists are very useful, too. Jails provide a convenient way to partition processes on a single server, although they are far from perfect at this point (they keep improving, though).
I really can't say enough good things about FreeBSD. It has been running most of our hosting setup, and many of our client's networks for years, and the only time we ever seem to run into problems is when hardware dies.
(For the record, I also use Debian - and it is good, but I prefer FreeBSD for servers that have to be trusted)
Lead developer, http://wisptools.net
One could also argue that Linux is what FreeBSD should have been, and cite the huge number of supercomputers using Linux, or the success of Linux on the mainframe. However, it would be nice if the poster realized that it's a pissing contest and both operating systems are impressive and have their uses, benefits, and drawbacks. Neither is what one "should have been". They both have their own, very different methodologies, so let's leave it at that.
Not that it's news anyways...
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
I've admin'd most every flavor of Unix at some point in my life and I really really like how FreeBSD is managed, from development to the ports tree.
Now that there is a push to support binary updates, my last major complaint has been addressed.
Anyone who has ever been stuck in the perl dependancy hell will absolutely love the ports tree - I really don't understand why there hasn't been more adoption of that concept in Linux.
Also, I am suprised that Linux is the platform of choice for all of these appliances that companies are pumping out, like wireless routers, security devices, etc, when the BSD license is so much more attractive to business.
The major stumbling block that FreeBSD has left is their development team. It seems like the way things are organized really creates a lot of opportunity for personality clashes.
Jerry
http://www.cyvin.org/
The first time I installed FreeBSD, I looked at the screen and kind of went "What do I do now?". After a bit of digging, my impression was that of a system that had all the kinks worked out of it. After trying many Linux distros, FreeBSD made more sense.
/usr/local, if I upgrade the system, cvsup is simple, the ports tree makes keeping software up to date a breeze, I'm not going to have to hunt for a distro specific rpm or a wierd library just to get something to work. The amount of software available for FreeBSD is astounding, chances are, if a project is in development, it's already in the ports tree.
If I install software, it's going to be in
I've used FreeBSD for about 6 years and I really don't see myself using Linux anymore. The community is very supportive, intelligent and open minded, I always seem to get things done with FreeBSD, I haven't found a problem I couldn't solve within a few hours, it just works, and works well. Try it, you might find that it works as well for you.
I work at a large internet organization that runs thousands of FreeBSD systems. When we need 64-bit though, we switch to Linux because it has a stable 64-bit distribution and FreeBSD does not. I've gone through all the kudo's about FreeBSD being stable, but are you using release 5? and are you using 64-bit? (and don't even get me started about threading support.)
Look, it's a giant troll posting thinly disguised as a news article!
BSD is great, but it's not the only game in town. Suggesting that it is what Linux should have been is nothing more than troll bait.
I disagree with much of what you said:
The Ports system is far superior to the rpm system. It actually tracks dependancies, and has a system to grab them for you. You are way off base on that statement.
FreeBSD is a full OS. I have no idea what you mean by your statement.
Yes, compiling from source does take a long time. Have you tried the pre-compiled package system? Same dependancy tracking but with pre-compiled binaries?
FreeBSD has the best documentation of any of the unix-like OS's that I have found. The handbook covers lots of cases.
FreeBSD also has softupdates... very much like Journaling. And that is on by default through the auto command in the installer.
And I think you are missing the point of FreeBSD, it is a server OS... I think most of your complaints come from the fact that there is no GUI by default. This is because you don't usually sit on the console on FreeBSD servers.
since I love both, I'll jump right in and give plus and minus to both FreeBSD and your friendly Linux distro of choice:
1. drivers: more devices supported in the Linux world
2. install: bsd install still primative, and disk partitioning is weird especially for novice, and multiple boot can be hard to set up
3. smp - scaling: 5.x freebsd is still having trouble with its spinlocks, and can still sieze up under heavy load (4.x version with giant lock doesn't have this problem). The core issue is that the freebsd folks don't seem to realize releasing locks in the same order they are applied makes things easy, while what they are doing can make trouble. This is why I use 4. in production.
4. filesystem - ext3 and reiserfs can get into inconsistent unrecoverable state, pure and simple. XFS and maybe some other Linux filesystems don't have that problem.
5. Linux GPL great for some things and horrible for others, BSD license ditto.
6. startup scripts easier to understand in BSD, getting pretty hairy in some Linux distros. My favorite commercial distro SuSE and RedHat are really getting tangled.
7. More Enterprise software available (and supported) on Linux, maybe not a big deal unless you're in big SAN environment or absolutely MUST use Oracle and such. I'm betting though you'll see more stuff popping up for Debian and friends now that Debian has bounded back into life.
FreeBSD is for people who hate Linux.
OpenBSD is for people who hate everyone.
sigs are for fools and trolls. no signature is *always* appropriate. you should turn them off in your preferences.
What about NetBSD? You forgot NetBSD!
NetBSD is like Poland - it keeps chugging along, but everyone forgets about it.
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
The company searched for someone with FreeBSD experience.
/etc and /usr/local/etc... and have you ever had to diagnose which one broke?),
That was a mistake. They should have earched for someone with mainstream UNIX experience. Anyone who's familiar with any commercial UNIX... Solaris, AIX, HPUX, whatever... will find FreeBSD a familiar environment. The details are different, but the BSD environment is baked into the genes of every commercial UNIX out there.
And there's lots of people who know UNIX who can pick up FreeBSD far far quicker than they can pick up Linux.
For example...
If FreeBSD had [...] a well-thought out directory structure (I have boot scripts in
That is a well-thought-out directory structure. You have the operating system, a fixed core that's evolved only gradually over the past 15 years, and add-on packages. You upgrade the OS, your packages don't get touched. You upgrade a package, the OS doesn't get touched. And your oldschool SunOS guys? They'll have no problem diagnosing which one broke.
I've used Red Hat versions since 2.1. Every major version has had a completely different structure. You don't have any border between the OS and add-ons, so when you go to upgrade you have to take all-or-nothing. Over the short term I can see the advantage of Red Hat's model, but over the long term you've got to start over again and again and again.