# FreeBSD Haters



## nackpere (Nov 9, 2011)

I'm not sure if someone else has posted about this already, but a story was posted on Slashdot about using FreeBSD as a desktop:

http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/11/11/08/1332241/in-favor-of-freebsd-on-the-desktop

The original story wasn't even specific to running FreeBSD as a desktop, it was a more general discussion of reasons to consider using FreeBSD for any purpose.  However, I'm amazed by how much hate was expressed against FreeBSD (and the other BSDs as well) based on the comments in the original article and the comments on Slashdot.  You can check out other similar comments at OSNews as well.  It seems utterly hypocritical of Linux users to persecute another open source OS since it wasn't too long ago that Linux was considered a "toy" OS.  Can't they objectively acknowledge the merits of FreeBSD?  Isn't it a good thing to have other good choices in the OSS world?  I just don't understand the constant hate FreeBSD receives whenever it's mentioned on tech sites.


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## ikreos (Nov 9, 2011)

I saw that article. I was kind of annoyed by the comments. As a former GNU/Linux user I found FreeBSD to be better in every way.


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## DutchDaemon (Nov 9, 2011)

It's like bullying the clever kid in class. The kid that shows up to the reunion twenty years later in the biggest car of all.


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## mylux (Nov 9, 2011)

Well, about "bullying", as said by DutchDaemon, it is not only against BSD's by Linux users.
I saw BSD users saying that Linux sucks and Linuxers are noobs in one or other tech forum.
It is like the Linuxers say about "windowsers": it is not so hard to found "Windows sucks", "Microsoft sucks" and etc.
The most attacked Linux distros by these "bullyings" are Ubuntu and SuSE because they are easy to use and configure.
There are radical people everywhere and the lack of respect as well...
That's what I think...


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## bbzz (Nov 9, 2011)

BSD > Linux.
Thread.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 9, 2011)

Flipping through it, if you remove the posts by the clueless, misinformed and downright stupid, they really have nothing bad to say at all and say very little.


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## Alt (Nov 10, 2011)

Try to ask any serious question on almost any linux forum and you will see who those users are.


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## YZMSQ (Nov 10, 2011)

Just ignore their words utterly, and code as we should do. Anyway, one line elegant code is more than a thousand tons of bullshit.


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## Crivens (Nov 10, 2011)

There are many reasons for such behavior. One may be this, or that. Mayhaps it is simply that in admitting that ${DIFFERENT_OPINION} is better in some respect would be like admitting that you yourself follow a inferior path. That is much to ask from anybody. And these points may also all be bull, because I think there is more than one reason and no one knows it all.

That said, I am happy that after a long time in the Linux camp I returned to *BSD and feel good there. Maybe it has a smaller user base, maybe it supports not the latest gizzmo, even maybe all the cool d00dz don't use it and happily hack away on their turf. But _*I*_ like it and *I* am happy with it. It is not required that someone else is, thank you very much. 

And someone who needs to have other people to follow his lead to feel good should join some cult, but leave me alone. A lot of anger may be explained by this, as attempts to persuade each other are answered with rejection, which may be rejection to the attempt to convert your feeling about what is good for you, not the arguments.


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## Dies_Irae (Nov 10, 2011)

Crivens said:
			
		

> There are many reasons for such behavior. One may be this, or that.



I'm strongly inclined to support the first hypothesis.

As we all know, every OS has his strengths and his weaknesses, and every OS have, in his "community", many highly competent and skilled people. These are very important factors that contributes to the "fame" of an OS.

But I think that the behavior of the so-called "community" of an OS plays an important role in assessing the seriousness of the OS.

I've always despised those people that childishly elect themselves as a model and then point their finger towards anyone who thinks differently from them.

I've always had the feeling that most of the "Linux user base" were - and still are - only a bunch of irritating and arrogant adolescents who saw, for the first time, an OS different from their "Windows-X-Ultra-Shiny-Edition full of Gamez" and they felt suddenly like Uber-Hacker because they have learned new words like "segmentation fault" and "kernel panic".

I said this not because I hate them - I have been a Linux user for 10 years - but because this is the image that they give of themselves.

I've seen many of them pose themeselves as "experts" in various newsgroups and forums, and then miserably admit that they were not even able to configure the network when someone pointed out that the headers of their messages show clearly that they were using Outlook Express.

And I've seen many of them assert that "*BSD sucks because... Linux is better because..." and then, when contradicted and cornered by someone more skilled than them, they humbly admit that "I've never used *BSD".

And I've seen many of them who wants to use a really complex OS (not complicated, there is a huge difference) like Linux and *BSD, but they want to do everything with a single point-and-click. (Well, they are right: why sould I waste my time recompiling the sources and learn how my loved OS works, when with 1 single click - and sometimes not even that - I can blindly update/upgrade my system and continue to rest in ignorance?)

So, despite the fact that there are many skilled and competent people in their community, since the beginning I have always had the feeling that most of them do not even know what they are talking about.

On the contrary, the first few times that I have read something in the *BSD forums and mailing lists I felt somehow "scared" by the sobriety and the competence of this community.


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## bbzz (Nov 10, 2011)

There is nothing wrong with preferring another OS. In fact, most of the arguments I read had to do with easy of installation, driver support, and straight out-of-box experience. Which are all valid reasons to prefer one OS over another. Not everyone has time to devote to actually learning all the intricacies of a system. I don't consider BSD or any other OS superior. Windows is a perfect OS for majority of people. 

However, arguing that one OS is superior over the next _because_ of those things, at the same time not realizing how little one in fact knows is childish.

I was always under belief that one shouldn't form strong opinions or arguments about things they truly know very little, or nothing at all. At least not talk aloud of them.


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## anomie (Nov 10, 2011)

nackpere said:
			
		

> However, I'm amazed by how much hate was expressed against FreeBSD (and the other BSDs as well) based on the comments in the original article and the comments on Slashdot.  You can check out other similar comments at OSNews as well.



F#$% 'em. Try not to be bothered by petty comments. 

FWIW, I jettisoned FreeBSD as a desktop long ago! Yet I still love her in other ways.


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## UNIXgod (Nov 11, 2011)

meh. I saw that on /.

/. also has gone downhill over the last decade. The next gen user may as well be too spoiled to appreciate anything that doesn't resemble a superficial point and click set of tools.


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## hitest (Nov 11, 2011)

I've been a Linux user for a little over 9 years and I've used FreeBSD since 5.x.  I think that the elitist attitude that some Linux users have is deplorable.  There are zealots in every OS camp.  Each to his own; I say live and let live.  OS holy wars are stupid.


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## Crivens (Nov 11, 2011)

Here in germany we have an old proverb which translates to "what does the oak care when the pigs are rubbing against it". So much for the /. hate brigade, OS holy wars and hypocrites in each camp.

'Nuff said, back to work


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## peetaur (Nov 11, 2011)

Most people's idea of what is good is somehow derived from what they are familiar with. I can understand that without agreeing. However, how someone who really knows Linux and can adapt and learn new things can say that FreeBSD "sucks" or vice versa is beyond me. And it's terrible that what drives most people's opinions is what the masses think, or what the media tells them to think, rather than someone who knows what they are talking about.

I'm a Linux guy. I script in bash. I like how I can install some strange device nobody ever heard of, or that says on the box that it doesn't work with my hardware, and somehow it works without installing any extra drivers. There are lots of nice things, and lots of horrible things too. For example, why does your default gateway get wiped [Debian/Ubuntu/RedHat, maybe not SuSe] when you do /etc/init.d/network[ing] restart with no /etc/init.d/routing restart to fix it? How stupid... after 20 years, you would think it would be fixed.

And after using FreeBSD, I really wish Linux would have that CTRL+T feature, or that switching terminals with CTRL[+ALT]+F## wouldn't clear your history, and that scroll lock would work properly (like it did in the old days). In FreeBSD, you can even scroll up and see the bootup choices screen, unlike in modern Linuxes. And I wish I had gpart on Linux. When partitioning in Linux, I miss being able to specify "-a 2m" to align a partition. And gnu parted doesn't seem to let you specify a size for a partition, only a start and end. How strange. Sometimes FreeBSD is awkward in some way, but in many cases, that is my fault, so I live with it.

All that really matters to me is that they work together. Various Linuxes, Mac OSX and FreeBSD live happly on my network. Why shouldn't its users? 

Windows has some issues though... mostly compatibility/monopoly enforcement related though, not quite accurately captured using the word "sucks".

And sorry for the unhappy ending, but I usually use Windows at home, simply because too many games don't work properly in Linux.  But if Windows was free, and I could run it in a virtual machine at full screen with no performance loss, then I would be truly happy.


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## fluca1978 (Nov 12, 2011)

I think that a bad point of Linux are distros, usually they are all different, use different package managament and have different purposes. This not only makes it harder to mantain several linux server, but also leads to a holy-war between the linux community itself. I believe linux is a good kernel, it is a good system in many ways and had promoted the opensource in very strong and incisive way. But it did not anything else that other OSs did before (opensource, stability, etc.). 
I love FreeBSD, it is a clean system, with a lot of tools, strong documentation and a very strong culture. Today linux is something that even my grandman can install, and this is good. What is bad is that this lead to a lot of code monkey believing they were sysadmins, and therefore to a lot of systems insecure and bad configured. And this is also what proprietary systems want: to do stuff for you, even when it does not make sense. An instance is the ORacle query hints, something that bad DBAs ask for when they are unable to tune or understand how their database is working. Something similar is happening in the linux community, where people wants simpler tools to do complex tasks. 
When I deal with FreeBSD I always know I'm going to learn something and to improve my sysadmin skills.


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## Oleg_NYC (Nov 13, 2011)

FreeBSD is better because mythtv doesn't crash when I use vdpau acceleration. On Arch Linux, it crashes.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 13, 2011)

oleglelchuk said:
			
		

> FreeBSD is better because mythtv doesn't crash when I use vdpau acceleration. On Arch Linux, it crashes.



Well I guess that settles that.


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## Oleg_NYC (Nov 14, 2011)

They say that linux is supposedly for desktops, and FreeBSD is for servers. How can it be true if mythtv, which is a desktop application, performs better on FreeBSD than on arch linux?


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## fonz (Nov 14, 2011)

oleglelchuk said:
			
		

> They say that linux is supposedly for desktops, and freebsd is for servers. How can it be true if mythtv, which is a desktop application, performs better on freebsd than on arch linux?


For starters, Mythtv performs better on *your* system. Somebody else may have different luck. And second, you seem to consider a single desktop application to be indicative for the entire desktop.

Fonz (or more briefly put: you're generalizing way too much, which leads to seriously flawed logic)


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## alie (Nov 14, 2011)

Both has pros and cons, simply choose whatever fit for your requirements.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 14, 2011)

Why we have to have a thread like this due to comments from the unclean masses is beyond me. Tell me when Linus Torvalds says something, not some rummy on Slashdot.


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## alie (Nov 14, 2011)

Nice article
http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-center/why-arent-you-using-freebsd-178119


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## fluca1978 (Nov 14, 2011)

One of the problems of the *BSD vs Linux vs Windows vs OSX war can be summarized with a statement from the article:



> Sure, it's quicker to build a Linux box, do a "yum install x y z" and toss it out into the wild as a fully functional server, but the extra time required to really get a FreeBSD box tuned will come back in spades through performance and stability metrics.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 14, 2011)

Which falls back to a point I always try to make. You have people who just want to use their computer and software like an appliance and don't care to learn how it works. Anything beyond that is "crap" to them.


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## fluca1978 (Nov 14, 2011)

drhowarddrfine said:
			
		

> You have people who just want to use their computer and software like an appliance and don't care to learn how it works.



Correct! But this kind of people should not _hate_ a system or another just because it requires users to understand it. It is like to say that you hate math books because you cannot understand more than fourth grade math; unluckily the world is not modeled with fourth grade math. And that's the same with the IT: it is not built of only appliances, but of complex systems that require sysadmins to know what they are doing.


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## DutchDaemon (Nov 14, 2011)

I think we covered all the bases by now (again), so it's closed.


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