# Is it normal that you believe FreeBSD better?



## freezr (Oct 10, 2022)

Hello,

I have this naive feeling recently and I wonder if it is going change in the future as it has already changed in me recently.

I think, despite all my limitations, to be a 99% a BSD user now: my daily driver computers run FreeBSD and OpenBSD — I am appreciating FreeBSD more for the server side and OpenBSD for desktop side because the latter does less — my pet servers are FreeBSD...

However I still have to run Linux, I need it especially on my SCBs where the BSD support is still lacking if not totally missing, and every time I think this setup is easier on Free/OpenBSD, or it lesser convoluted, or is better, etc...

Now everything is new and I am on the peak of the learning curve but I wonder if ten years later I could change my mind again just because I became full of *BSD as it happened with Linux, which became unbearable for me after the Debian systemd debate. In FreeBSD and OpenBSD I still can find that desirable design approach that try make anything simple, exposing the complexity, not try to hidden behind a simple interface.

What's you thought? Thanks!


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## kpedersen (Oct 10, 2022)

freezr said:


> but I wonder if ten years later I could change my mind again


I suppose it isn't useful to get religious or anything like that (outside of having a little bit of fun and banter). However who knows what the future will bring; Linux might clean up its act.

To be fair, if a decent Linux distro came along that provided an actual concept of a "base" and even a fraction of the size of the FreeBSD community, I think that could tempt many ex-Linux guys back. I would even use it for some awkward hardware situations.

Simplicity is key. GNU-like projects consistently fail this every time. I.e User-friendly != simplicity and this is where they are hung up on at the moment. Weirdly almost every distro is; leading to very little true innovation.


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## freezr (Oct 10, 2022)

kpedersen said:


> [...] Simplicity is key. GNU-like projects consistently fail this every time. I.e User-friendly != simplicity and this is where they are hung up on at the moment. Weirdly almost every distro is; leading to very little true innovation.



Completely agreed!


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## SirDice (Oct 10, 2022)

freezr said:


> but I wonder if ten years later I could change my mind


It's been 25+ years ago for me. Still haven't changed my mind.


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## mer (Oct 10, 2022)

I'm about the same timeframe as SirDice and have not and don't foresee me changing my mind.

My position has always been:
It's the applications you need to run.  The OS underneath doesn't matter very much as long as it's stable and everything runs "fast enough".

Definitely don't fall into the "OS as religion" trap;  it simply makes you unable to have an honest discussion with others.
The OS is simply a tool, so just like everything else, pick the best tool for the job at hand.  You would never frame a house with a ball peen hammer, you use a proper framing hammer.  You would never do open heart surgery with a chainsaw, you use a scalpel (ok a chainsaw would be useful to get through the rib cage).
If FreeBSD is the best for your servers, run your servers on it.  OpenBSD for a desktop?  Sure use it.  If it has the applications you want, and runs good enough, I'd say that the default security policies on OpenBSD are good for a desktop.
I run some Linux because of $WORK, but I write the code on FreeBSD systems.

Biggest thing to me is don't fall into the OS as a religion.


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## Alain De Vos (Oct 10, 2022)

I'm dual booting with gentoo. As a user i cannot say which one is better. They both allow to compile from source and configure.
Also openrc is not very different from freebsd-rc.
Gentoo has a few more browsers...


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## freezr (Oct 10, 2022)

I am not a kind of a dogmatic person, I don't think I would fall into a religion war, but I have my principles however what I feel about FreeBSD is practical...

For instance I can't remember the IP flags on Linux, they tried to make it better but I feel is more convoluted. Speaking of configuring the *net interfaces, for me, is much more easier on FreeBSD and OpenBSD.

Full disk encryption requires lesser steps on FreeBSD and OpenBSD than Linux.

On FreeBSD you can setup a lot of stuff from rc.conf, on modern Linux you have to touch many more knobs if not worse create an obscure systemd-unit.

I have more examples to share...


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## Alain De Vos (Oct 10, 2022)

Linux does not impose systemd,
Eg,




__





						OpenRC - ArchWiki
					






					wiki.archlinux.org


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## Lady Serena Kitty (Oct 10, 2022)

FreeBSD Admewnistration hasn't changed since I startered usering and adminikittying it back in *1998*.  Much of the Pawbook from 4.x still applies in 13.x.  Linux, on the other paw, has been at least 3 completely different systems in that same timeframe, pawssibly even 4.

I've been a consistent FreeBSD-kitty.  Sometimes FreeBSD falls behind, but it always catches up.  Like hybrid graphics not working until 2021.  But hey, it worked (eventually).


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## Alain De Vos (Oct 10, 2022)

I want to state kubernetes/docker/openshift are less important then their 'show'.
Jails and in lesser way bhyve have their capabilities.


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## freezr (Oct 10, 2022)

Alain De Vos said:


> Linux does not impose systemd,
> Eg,
> 
> 
> ...



Gentoo was one the few that, back to time, didn't genuflect itself in front of RH to make systemd the (universal) default init system; if today we can still run Linux without systemd is because Gentoo, Guix and later Devuan forked all the pieces that were hardcoded, by Gnome and others, to run exclusively with systemd. Gentoo can run both openrc and systemd by the way.


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## vermaden (Oct 10, 2022)

Its just some features that FreeBSD has and other operating systems do not have:

- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2020/09/07/quare-freebsd/

For example ZFS Boot Environments originate from Solaris/Illumos ... but you will rather not use Solaris/Illumos on the laptop/desktop ... and Linux is nowhere near ZFS Boot Environments parity. When you take all FreeBSD posibilities and features together - it makes areally interesting Linux alternative that is simpler and more sane to use.


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## freezr (Oct 10, 2022)

vermaden said:


> Its just some features that FreeBSD has and other operating systems do not have [...]



I personally avoid it because it was too easy, even jails are a great features so easy to use...


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## Alain De Vos (Oct 10, 2022)

vermaden said:


> Its just some features that FreeBSD has and other operating systems do not have:
> 
> - https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2020/09/07/quare-freebsd/
> 
> For example ZFS Boot Environments originate from Solaris/Illumos ... but you will rather not use Solaris/Illumos on the laptop/desktop ... and Linux is nowhere near ZFS Boot Environments parity. When you take all FreeBSD posibilities and features together - it makes areally interesting Linux alternative that is simpler and more sane to use.


Boot environments are not that important.
I don't even use them. Why would I ?
I boot linux grub , towards ufs-freebsd-boot , towards zfs-freebsd-root.
But it is true zfs&linux don't go good together, I can't explain,is it a license thing ? [ You can expect always booting problems]
Anyway, even without boot-environments zfs has many very interesting features as filesystem.
And don't forget jails, or as many call it name-space.
These allow to run postgresql-X when the host runs postgresql-Y without any conflict.


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## vermaden (Oct 10, 2022)

Y


Alain De Vos said:


> Boot environments are not that important.
> I don't even use them. Why would I ?
> I boot linux grub , towards ufs-freebsd-boot , towards zfs-freebsd-root.
> But it is true zfs&linux don't go good together, I can't explain,is it a license thing ? [ You can expect always booting problems]
> ...


You jut do not understand how much _ZFS Boot Environments_ change the game ... and I do not have the time to explain it to you at the moment.

Seems I need to do a blog post about it ...


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## ralphbsz (Oct 10, 2022)

vermaden said:


> You jut do not understand how much _ZFS Boot Environments_ change the game ... and I do not have the time to explain it to you at the moment.
> 
> Seems I need to do a blog post about it ...


I agree, you need to do a blob post about it. Because I don't understand what boot environments will do. What problem that I actually have will it solve? Is it worth the effort, for example to learn how to operate it? In my usage pattern, what's the value proposition? I know roughly what it does and how it works, I just don't see the use for myself (YMMV).


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## ayleid96 (Oct 10, 2022)

Free


freezr said:


> Hello,
> 
> I have this naive feeling recently and I wonder if it is going change in the future as it has already changed in me recently.
> 
> ...


FreeBSD is indeed better and best unix system there is currently. Shame is that its underrated and lacks support for some things. It follows original unix idea that is not at all obsolete nor old.


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## mer (Oct 10, 2022)

My opinion only on Boot Environments.  For a home user, desktop, the use case is Upgrading.

How many times have folks upgraded a Windows machine and had things go bad?  System won't boot or applications that used to work, now they don't.

That is why I use Boot Environments, or root on ZFS.  
Upgrading either freebsd base or packages?  Create a new BE and do the upgrade.  If something fails, reboot and fall back to the previous one, the known good.  
Very easy system recovery.
Upgrading across releases, say 12.x to 13.x  Create a new BE, upgrade to 13.x and you have not lost your working 12.x.  Boot into the 13.x make sure it works, give it a bunch of soak time to feel it's good, then make it permanent.

Of course if you have 100% confidence in an upgrade, then yes ZFS and boot environments are a waste of time.


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## Lamia (Oct 10, 2022)

Alain De Vos said:


> Boot environments are not that important.


They are. I remember mentioning that a boot environment was automagically created during a major upgrade sometime ago. That was a saving grace; otherwise, life would have been hectic at that point. 

Indeed, somewhere in the FreeBSD documentation or a release note had it written that a BE would be automatically created (perhaps in changing from Releng<->Stable/Current or so). I hope that remains the norm.

One thing that I have not given so much thought is FreeBSD Update Server vs BE. They both can serve the same purpose to some extent. On the importance of BEs, one can test a major upgrade in a working or production environment without restarting. One can build and install ports/pkgs for another profile without booting into it. Such profile could serve another purpose e.g. different kernel options for a particular development environment. The importance of BE is endless; sadly, I have not been regularly using it.


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## gpw928 (Oct 11, 2022)

Horses for courses.  I have been a FreeBSD user at home for about 25 years.

However, after Sun fell to Larry, and the accumulated wisdom on Solaris moved behind a (poorly indexed) pay wall, I made a conscious decision to switch to Linux for work, and stayed there for a long time.  So, I'm pretty much completely comfortable with the penguin (systemd excluded).

Although I generally choose FreeBSD, I do use Linux where it's a better  solution for me.  In this context "better" generally means easier to implement, support, and use.  e.g. I have MythTV servers on Linux (because that's where it's developed and supported best).

I have embraced ZFS on FreeBSD, for the reasons enumerated by mer above.  The free disk space pool shared between all file systems in a pool is also worthy of special mention.

My Linux servers still have their root mirrors split into dual boot areas, for testing upgrades.  ZFS boot environments have relegated this practice to history on my FreeBSD systems.


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## Holger (Oct 11, 2022)

Lady Serena Kitty said:


> FreeBSD Admewnistration hasn't changed since I startered usering and adminikittying it back in *1998*.  Much of the Pawbook from 4.x still applies in 13.x.  Linux, on the other paw, has been at least 3 completely different systems in that same timeframe, pawssibly even 4.
> 
> I've been a consistent FreeBSD-kitty.  Sometimes FreeBSD falls behind, but it always catches up.  Like hybrid graphics not working until 2021.  But hey, it worked (eventually).


I think this is very important point you make!

Learning IT-stuff is hard. If knowledge you have acquired becomes obsolete just because of some hype, this is very frustrating. And I think this leads people into only scratching the surface of things and never dig deeper, because, hey, it'll become obsolete anyway!

Not a good trend, imho.


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## ralphbsz (Oct 11, 2022)

(Reply to "Boot environments are very important"...)



Lamia said:


> They are. I remember mentioning that a boot environment was automagically created during a major upgrade sometime ago. That was a saving grace; otherwise, life would have been hectic at that point.



Understand. But: One of the main 3 or 4 reasons I run FreeBSD is that upgrades are simply, fast, painless, and most importantly very very reliable. In about 15 years of running OpenBSD and FreeBSD, I've yet to see an upgrade go bad. So to me the ability to go back after a failed upgrade is a solution to a problem that I've never experienced, and I have reasonable statistics.

I know that sometimes upgrades "break" things. I have a reasonably good test battery for the server functions of my system. I have experienced having to spend an hour after an upgrade, getting things back to full function. The most recent one was a change in Apache that exposed an ancient (ridiculously old) .htaccess file I had on my web server becoming unsupported. But in such a case, completely reverting the upgrade would be way more work than just fighting my way out forward.

And if an upgrade really destroyed the system (such as the ability to boot), it would take me less than an hour to get the system back up and running (I do image backups of the boot disk, I think weekly). And it would take about a day of work to completely reinstall from scratch and restore from backups, with no data loss. Now, perhaps those functions could be better handled by BE.

Obviously, YMMV. For someone who wants to be on the bleeding edge, who performs lots of configuration changes, who runs a GUI/DE on their machine, the answer might come out very different. Similarly, for a production system without extra hardware (to switch between multiple servers), the ability to rapidly revert an upgrade might be useful.


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## mer (Oct 11, 2022)

ralphbsz "horses for courses" as the saying goes.  People have run on UFS for years and not needed BEs, but they have developed processes and procedures that limit or eliminate the need for BEs.

In the grand scheme of things one doesn't "need" BEs, but they are useful.


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## tux2bsd (Oct 11, 2022)

freezr said:


> Full disk encryption requires lesser steps on FreeBSD and OpenBSD than Linux.


This is wrong if it's from the installer.  Fedora, FreeBSD, Ubuntu, Debian all "tick box", OpenBSD some additional effort required.  Between the OSes there would be little difference in effort for adding full disk encryption to additional disks.


Alain De Vos said:


> But it is true zfs&linux don't go good together, I can't explain,is it a license thing ? [ You can expect always booting problems]


Considering ZFS is in recent Ubuntu installers you're still speaking from past knowledge, ZFS is being adopted...


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## freezr (Oct 11, 2022)

tux2bsd there are very few installers that allow full-disk encryption out-of-the-box and aren't 100% bullet proof, the majority can't do that cause because Grub don't how to read it encrypted partition (latest version can though) and you needo to reserve a partition for boot and EFI, therefore you can encrypt the disk partially and you must know what you are doing.


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## tux2bsd (Oct 12, 2022)

freezr said:


> tux2bsd there are very few installers that allow full-disk encryption out-of-the-box and aren't 100% bullet proof


Your hair-splitting nature sure is painful...  Boot loader, do decrypt step, OS starts, carry on.  If there is one disk some part of it has to be unencrypted so the bloody computer can begin the process...


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## forquare (Oct 12, 2022)

freezr said:


> Grub don't how to read it encrypted partition (latest version can though) and you needo to reserve a partition for boot and EFI


This is the same as FreeBSD?  EFI has to be unencrypted for the computer to boot, and EFI contains the boot loader...


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## Alain De Vos (Oct 12, 2022)

Indeed there has to be always an unencrypted part.
So way not unencrypt everything except your "private" file/directory.


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## drhowarddrfine (Oct 12, 2022)

It feels normal to believe FreeBSD is better when your experience dictates it so. And there's nothing wrong with that. Just like anything in life, your experience with a product gives you the answer.


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## Profighost (Oct 12, 2022)

freezr said:


> What's you thought?



It simply depends on what you need.

I personally wanted to get away from MS Windows since I started on this sh1t (95).
But I never became a real friend of Linux neither.

In my eyes Linux tries to manage the split between sneak peaks at unix ('old-school', yuck!) and becoming a better Windows (colorful, modern, cool, popular, successful, more GUI, less shell, must do.) If Linux actually ever had a clear concept (Linus Torvalds may had it on his mind to create some kind of a free unix when he started on it) it was lost a long time ago.
On the one hand it's having a large community of anarchists, arguing where to put the focus on.
To me Linux is mostly some kind of an anarchistic playground for computernerds not thinking about the real usage very much.
To me they are like vintage car tinkers: If everything runs smooth they are unhappy, because then there is nothing to tinker about.
Their primary target is to tinker, not using.
From that a few dictators picked the useful stuff and absolutic define their distri within strict limits.
Which in my eyes in most cases are an attempt to create a 'Better Windows': turnkey-os for computermorons who don't want to learn the least, don't want to know shit, don't care at all, just feel comfortable if everything runs automatically, looks familiar, best like an exploded candy-shop, and throws many annoying requesters containing incomprenhensible and useless verbiage, because this shows the computer is doing something, and it's portentous - the computer cares.

At the same time a user (me) does not know which distri stays, which one will die, or will radically be changed in what short time - what's worth to dig into, more and more unsatisfied Windows-refugees entering Linux-camp bringing more and more weight on the Windows side, which in my eyes is per se complete out of the line.
If you are unsatisfied with a jack-of-all-trades - and sooner or later you will - don't go to the next shop to find the jack-of-all-trades that perfectly suits you.
You will never succeed.
Sucking is the very nature of any jack-of-all-trades.
Take coffee-machines for example, or all-inclusive package computers, it's all the same cr#p.
They are always a very limited combination of modules others decided about. Besides the most selling module impresses with numbers on it's datasheet all are the cheapest scrap available.
They are not ment to satisfy you. Otherwise you wouldn't buy the next model.
And you do, because you still believe in '...but one day, there will be _the_ jack-of-all-trades...'.
Nope. Wake up!
Reconsider if it's not the individual jack-off-trades that sucks but the idea of jack-of-all-trades per se wherein the misbelief lies.

Bottom line:
To me Linux is unreliable, untrustworthy, took the wrong course, already way too much Windows like, anyway.
(At least the distros I know. And yes I know there are [few] exceptions, but those have other disadvantages I don't want to expose here [already too long].)

Since I knew nothing else for many years I had both systems, Windows and Linux, since you can do things with one system you cannot do with the other.
But I was never really satisfied.
(As I posted elsewhere, I knew Amiga OS and Solaris a bit, so I had an idea what a good os feels like.)

Then I found FreeBSD. 9something or so I started on it.
I simply didn't knew it even exists.
Everybody is using Windows (or maybe MacOS). And if even someone is talking something else it's Linux.
And from those who know there is FreeBSD some still think it's some kind of Linux.
For a complete newb used to turnkey-os, only, FreeBSD is a small hurdle to take in the first place.
But if you want to dig into a system - are actually interested in computers really - you want a system worth to dig into.
That's FreeBSD.

You have understood that there will be no jack-of-all-trades fully satisfy you, ever.
You want/need the modules, but you need to assemble them yourself.
That's FreeBSD.
The (almost) complete choice of all modules available, and a self-contained system to make it as easy and reliable as possible to assemble them.
Your job is to learn which modules you want, which there are, pick, and assemble them.

Above all to me the very most important values of FreeBSD are
that FreeBSD stays reliable loyal to its concept,
of being both a true and complete os, focus on practical usability, not on experimantle playground, being its own but a true kind of what could be named as a real and full unix (because that is the best idea of how to concept an os anyhow.)
I'm using FreeBSD exclusively on all my machines.
I still cannot do everything with it. E.g. I cannot play all games I want to - yet.
But besides I'm working on it (qemu, wine) this is not my primary target.
I decided for me to focus more on learning FreeBSD, and programming, and less on playing games.

However I agree with previous posters:
People tend to make a religion out of anything they learned is good.
Nothing good came out of any religion.


So as I said at the beginning:
It simply depends on what you want/need.


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## Alain De Vos (Oct 12, 2022)

vermaden said:


> Y
> 
> You jut do not understand how much _ZFS Boot Environments_ change the game ... and I do not have the time to explain it to you at the moment.
> 
> Seems I need to do a blog post about it ...


There are i think only  4 places when i could use boot-environments.
-make installkernel
-make installworld
-etc-update
-pkg upgrade
[Bootcode has to be done manual]


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## freezr (Oct 12, 2022)

Re-thinking about this, I guess what I am experiencing is the fact that BSDs are OSs with a clear separation between the system and the third parties software; when it is time to do any "internal" changes there are clear and documented knobs to use; on the Linux side we have collections of applications + kernel glue together by different parts that change from distro to distro, these special components (e.g.: init, package manager, etc...) tend to change often if not worse become obsolete, those components also overlap themselves in functionalities and hierarchies, therefore the inner behavior is constantly changing and the documentation often doesn't keep up with the changes. Eventually everything is more confused and lesser predictable...


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## hitest (Oct 15, 2022)

kpedersen said:


> To be fair, if a decent Linux distro came along that provided an actual concept of a "base" and even a fraction of the size of the FreeBSD community, I think that could tempt many ex-Linux guys back. I would even use it for some awkward hardware situations.


I've run Void Linux virtually and on bare metal.  It's a solid, designed from scratch, non-systemd distro that's worth a look.  It also has an interesting package manager that's unique.  These days for Linux I run Slackware.  I also run FreeBSD and OpenBSD.


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## meine (Oct 15, 2022)

Q: Is it normal that you believe FreeBSD better?
A: Yes

This system IS better.

I started here in October 2017 after using Fedora for eight years. The initial setup of FreeBSD first was a bit of a shock, until I realized that the way I install and use this OS is solely _my choice_. And you _have_ to make choices, it isn't done for you. That's more a psychologic journey than just installing software -- _you want to steer? OK, here's the helm!_

Choice (for me) is beyond the superficial frills. A personal computer should just work, do just what I need it to do and nothing more. Maintenance should in fact be as boring as possible, because It Works. FreeBSD maintenance on a well set up box _is_ boring. No surprises (OK, sometimes, but nothing disastrous).

My only comparison is to my boss' Wandows 10 laptop. The hardware is excellent, but the OS and company software is a disaster. Pending system updates slow down performance (nice indicator, but some taskbar icon would do fine). Updates overwrite user config. Telemetry and frills hijack bandwidth. The window manager isn't able to detect screen boundaries. Etc, etc. 

So YES, FreeBSD is better. It's not only belief, but more a Fact. It is By Far Better, because it lets me choose and doesn't interfere with my choices.

TNX !


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## bakul (Oct 15, 2022)

I used V7 then Sunos then 386bsd then netbsd then FreeBSD since 1994 or so. I think FreeBSD has become much too complex but I’m too lazy to switch now and there are no real alternatives anyway. And I think OS kernels matter less and less as time goes on.


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## alexseitsinger (Oct 19, 2022)

Lady Serena Kitty said:


> FreeBSD Admewnistration hasn't changed since I startered usering and adminikittying it back in *1998*.  Much of the Pawbook from 4.x still applies in 13.x.  Linux, on the other paw, has been at least 3 completely different systems in that same timeframe, pawssibly even 4.
> 
> I've been a consistent FreeBSD-kitty.  Sometimes FreeBSD falls behind, but it always catches up.  Like hybrid graphics not working until 2021.  But hey, it worked (eventually).



Pawbably unnecessary?

In a more related note: I usually forget where I am most of the time which makes the operating system I use pretty inconsequential. All that matters is tha tit s loads fast.


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## Alain De Vos (Oct 19, 2022)

You just can't have it all. But I think work is being done paralising boot order.


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