# Why do others hate FreeBSD over Linux?



## meteorrock (Jul 3, 2013)

As a younger new member here, I am having problems with my developers wanting to look into using this operating system and looking for support here.

Could someone fill me in on why the Linux community and the FreeBSD community do not get along too well? Is this based on grunges held from the past? I do not understand.

Thank you for your support. As a young person, I do not have this bias.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jul 3, 2013)

FreeBSD users used to consider Linux as a brother but, with the rising popularity of easy to use desktop systems and some shifting of Windows users over to those easier systems, that Windows-mentality has festered there, too. With that childish mentality comes childish behavior, especially when the people making such negative comments really are children. Now that they use Linux, they think they know stuff and feel free to act like it.

That's what I've noticed over the last few years. Something I never saw much when I first started using FreeBSD.


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## zspider (Jul 3, 2013)

They hate FreeBSD because it's what Linux should _have_ been, but isn't.


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## wblock@ (Jul 3, 2013)

Actually, the communities of serious Linux users and serious FreeBSD users do get along pretty well.  There is some rivalry because the two operating systems are competing for users, but honest people in both communities know that diversity and competition make for improvements, and are willing to admit that both have advantages.  A Linux developer at the last conference I attended told me that they were starting to see the value of keeping a distinction between the base and added software.

There is tribalism in every community, too.  There are people who attack "the other side" just because it's not on their team.  For the most part, these people can be ignored.


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## throAU (Jul 3, 2013)

meteorrock said:
			
		

> As a younger new member here, I am having problems with my developers wanting to look into using this operating system and looking for support here.
> 
> Could someone fill me in on why the Linux community and the FreeBSD community do not get along too well? Is this based on grunges held from the past? I do not understand.
> 
> Thank you for your support. As a young person, I do not have this bias.



I've used both over the past 18 years.  I still have a couple of Linux boxes running business applications and a few FreeBSD boxes doing _I_nternet facing services.

In my view a few factors influence this...


Linux has a very public figurehead,  Linus Torvalds.  Which makes the OS *seem* more like a "people's OS" - whereas FreeBSD originates from an abstract "FreeBSD core" team.  A bit like commercial software.  Never mind that in reality both have thousands of developers - Linux has a prominent public face.  The irony is that Linux is a lot more of a dictatorship (the kernel at least) than FreeBSD is.
There's a lot of hype surrounding the GPL, and Linux is GPL.  For better or worse (personally, I believe better) FreeBSD is under the BSD license, which enables commercial use of the code without requirement to contribute back modifications.
Linux has had a lot more time and energy spent on UI fluff, as there are multiple competing distributions; the installer is the first thing people see and in the Linux world a flash installer is critical for your distribution to be in with a shot.  Plenty of Linux users haven't done much technical stuff with the OS beyond installing it these days, and in their view, the FreeBSD installer sucks.  Thus, the OS must suck!
Due to the popularity (in part due to the slick installers), there is more commercial software support (games and whatnot) and driver support for Linux.  Thus "FreeBSD sucks!" because it didn't work out of the box with some user's hardware.
Most of the "haters" have never used the OS and are just bashing it because it is "cool" to do so among their peer noobs.
Apple make use of a few FreeBSD components in OS X.  In a Linux user's eyes, Apple are evil, and thus FreeBSD is evil by association.
And of course... the "BSD is dying!" meme from a decade or more ago referring to some Netcraft survey.

In other words, most of the reasons have nothing to do with the actual technical merit, and are largely herd mentality from clueless idiots (the 12-20 year old pimply faced nerd demographic - as above, Linux has plenty of younger users purely due to the shiny - things like Compiz, etc.) who have no authority to be commenting on much at all.

The animosity is not from the people who actually code, so much.


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## ShelLuser (Jul 3, 2013)

meteorrock said:
			
		

> Could someone fill me in on why the Linux community and the FreeBSD community do not get along too well?


For the same reason many people in the "Ableton community" often don't think much of the "Reason community", why people within the "Unix community" often don't think much of the "Windows community" and why people within the "(BBC) Archimedes community" often didn't think too highly of the "PC community".

When there's people and religion involved (either spiritual, industrial or whatever other shape it can manifest itself in) there will often be rivalry, bickery and childish behaviour.

In my opinion it's best ignored and experienced for yourself instead.


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## CurlyTheStooge (Jul 3, 2013)

I'm 26 and a late starter[](started at 20) and I have met extremists on both sides. Though I'm a strictly a Linux (Slackware) user and admin, I have tremendous respect for the BSD community as a whole, given their history, legacy and approach.
@wblock@'s first line of response sums it up. It*'*s just that we humans simply are unable to let go of the traces of cannibalistic behavior still. Can be ignored safely.

Regards.


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## freebuser (Jul 3, 2013)

I was/am a Linux user too, and sometime back I always thought 'why developers started FreeBSD when this almighty Linux is already here, are they trying to divide the community?'.

But now I can see what a wonderful OS FreeBSD is.

It is MHO that until you actually experience it, it is very hard to convince that anything you haven't experienced yet is better than what you have already experienced.

So my advice is "Never afraid to try new things.."

Have a good day..


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## DutchDaemon (Jul 3, 2013)

freebuser said:
			
		

> 'why developers started FreeBSD when this almighty Linux is already here, are they trying to divide the community?'



And, of course, it's the other way around: FreeBSD was first. And we know exactly why Linux surged ahead. Know your history


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## jem (Jul 3, 2013)

When people choose to "hate" the alternatives to their own choices, it's usually down to either immaturity or fundamentalist extremism.

In the case of hatred of anything non-Linux, it's probably a combination of the two: immature Linux kiddies with a "mine is better than yours" mentality and/or their almost religious adherence to the fundamentalist ideals of people like RMS.

Some people get an emotional kick from hating something.  It takes a well balanced person to avoid that temptation and just live-and-let-live.


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## SirDice (Jul 3, 2013)

As they say, Linux is for people that hate Windows, FreeBSD is for people that love unix :e

But mostly it's because people tend to fear what they don't know or understand. People that scream bloody murder about Windows being insecure and Linux being so much better usually don't know sh*t about either operating system. The same can be said for the FreeBSD vs. Linux flamewars.


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## DutchDaemon (Jul 3, 2013)

... which we're not starting all over again here ..


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## jalla (Jul 3, 2013)

DutchDaemon said:
			
		

> And, of course, it's the other way around: FreeBSD was first. And we know exactly why Linux surged ahead. Know your history



The first version of the Linux kernel was released in august -91. It predated 386BSD with 6 months, and FreeBSD 1.0 with well over 2 years.


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## DutchDaemon (Jul 3, 2013)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnu/linux#BSD


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## jalla (Jul 3, 2013)

Development of 386BSD started probably long before Linux, but it wasn't released until about march of '92. (v.0.0).
The first version of 386BSD I used was 0.1-alpha which came a few months later that year


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## drhowarddrfine (Jul 3, 2013)

People had been using 386BSD but it was embroiled in legal complications for many years before Linux came out. That was the reason Linux was able to get a foothold in history otherwise, as Linus himself once said, he never would have created Linux.


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## bkouhi (Jul 3, 2013)

Hi.

386BSD is based on 4.3BSD NET/2 and it was released on June 1991. Also, 4.3BSD NET/1 was released on June 1989 under the BSD license. (Link)


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## metacollin (Jul 3, 2013)

I've been using Linux since I was 12 years old roughly, my first distro was LinuxPPC, this was back in 1996.  Solidly in the era of desktop computers when they totally sucked and were being crushed under the weight of inappropriately intensive GUIs, multitasking that felt like being lied to, and 'multimedia' which was an experience as rich as watching a stuttering, extremely poor quality vhs on a very tiny TV while reading a book at the same time filled with abrasive, pixelated letters flickering at 60Hz.  I got it but I really had no idea what Linux even was, except that it was an operating system that was free, and the word 'Linux' meant it was good, kind of like natural.  It's natural, grass-fred Linux, so it must be good and I want it, even if I don't know why its good.  Never got far enough to ask IF it was good. 

Anyway, Linux was, like, amazing, it was really fast and you could do like multiple tasks at once, but the problem was all of the possible tasks were ones I didn't want to do because there was like 5 programs for Linux back then and 4 of them were calculators.  But that potential, that promise, of a computer that didn't cause physical pain just to use, kept me peeking back in at the Linux situation every couple of years.  The huge irony is that this wasn't the first time I had used a computer this responsive and nimble. The community college in my town had a 'Children's College' program where you could do cool elementary school level activities during the summer.  One of them was an intro to HTML, and we used these *pimp* Silicon Graphics workstations, all running System V.  But I was misinformed about their precises nature, I had the notion that they were awesome entirely because they had sports car insides, and were not really desktop computers, but things you might get to use at a company, but that was it.  But in reality, their innards had all their power proportioned for graphics rendering, and the awesomeness was good ol Unix.  


Then, I started using OS X, and Linux started getting really popular and getting loads of software, and used it too, but I thought Unix had died before I was born, and Linux was a volunteer attempt to keep the flame alive or something silly like that.  And this is bringing me to my point: Linux really was that, kind of, but not because Unix died, because Unix was closed source at the time, so Linux was created because Unix was such a great piece of kit that a guy wanted to duplicate the entire operating system with totally original code from scratch. Linux was conceived as functionally identical to Unix, but entirely original code.  But Unix shortly became open - and more open than Linux, which had a more restrictive (albiet with the intention of aiding open source) license.  I grew up hearing about linux and knowing about linux and that was the hot stuff going on, and that's how it was for most people I think.  I don't think, if Linux had never been, BSD would have ever had any comparable amount of steam, I don't know why, only that the reasons are irrational, emotional bad ones, ones that shouldn't be reasons for things but are.  Linux, to me, isn't really about Linux, it's about making the open source community as large and powerful as it is today.  I don't think *BSD could have done that.  


And now, Linux is diversifying and becoming unix-like, but where unix ain't.  And Unix continues to do what it always did - be awesome and be unix.  I hope it keeps on like that forever.  The origins and functionality invite comparisons far more often between BSD and Linux, and from that, you quickly see comparisons develop into competitions, which we tend to call comparisons, but comparisons contrast differences, not say which of two is better.  It's just human nature.

Now, I will say one thing: I have been all up inside and around the kernel and basic OS of all 3 BSDs and Linux.   The Linux kernel is exactly what, well, what it is: a confusing piecemeal patchwork of a thousand different people who have never talked to any of the others ever, have never documented anything, and shockingly, somehow smash all their different bits into a box that compiles.  It is a nightmare, and it is not Linux so much as it's open source nature and, uh, overeagerness and widely accepting standards of code it accepts.  The documentation of Linux as a whole is universally poor to appalling when it exists at all, and there is often little consistency or logic in the wider structure (speaking of a given distro, of course different ones are inconsistent with each other).  I have been using linux since I was 12, but I just started using FreeBSD, and OpenBSD and NetBSD to lesser degrees, as of this writing, about 2 years.  I still use Linux because it has its places, but Unix has supplanted all my computing needs, and it happened organically, like, slowly, *BSDs just were the obvious choice in more and more things.  The documentation is spectacular, FreeBSD has a well written, easy to read and understand book that is free that tells you how to fix all the things that might ever go wrong with it, and do all the stuff you want.  OpenBSD is not quite as friendly, because you have to guess the man page, but it is just as complete.  NetBSD is also as throughough with its man pages.   

Unix kernels are a *dream*.  They are not even special from anything else, you edit a conf file, build them, just like it should be.   Linux has a program dedicated entirely to configuring the kernel, and it is definitely a necessity, not there to be user friendly.  FreeBSD specifically is the most logical, consistent, well-thought out, rational piece of software, in code and in function, I have ever used, and that is what makes it great.  Linux does all the crazy new things that are beyond BSDs reach, and for that it is great, but in a totally different way.  Neither can do one without losing the other quality.  Basically, Linux and Unix are like two sides of a mobius strip shaped coin: the same side, but coving the surface the other one isn't at the moment, and different but the same.  I guess.

My point is that saying one is better than the other just means you're stupid but it's ok, I'm stupid too, just about different things.  Not this one .


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## metacollin (Jul 3, 2013)

Also there aren't really any main characters, just lots of little ones, and Richard Stallman is the villain.  There you have it, the Unix/Linux Narrative in a nutshell.  Movie comes out next year, Samuel L. Jackson is playing Theo de Raadt (it works, don't ask) and everyone else is still being casted.


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## throAU (Jul 5, 2013)

Am I the only person who first got Linux (in 1996) and was impressed in some ways but NOT with regards to memory and disk consumption?

My backgroud was as a young gamer on the Amiga, and then later with DOS (and Windows 3.1).

My Amiga started with 512 KB of memory (expanded to 1 MB!) and shipped with a full 32 bit, plug and play multitasking GUI operating system - that consumed roughly *90-120 kilobytes* of RAM to boot to the desktop.  I had fully mouse driven file management, multi-channel stereo sound, drag and drop, etc.

When I shifted to the PC, I had 4 megabytes. I could run a full point and click GUI, again, with drag and drop file and application management. Cut and paste worked and everything ran pretty fast. 8.3 character file names felt like stepping back into the stone age though, and stability was questionable (though I did see plenty of software crash with the old Guru Meditation on the Amiga as well).

I went to University in 1995 and got hooked on the internet, and in particular a MUD. I wanted to learn to code C and host a MUD of my own. I also got a job doing web development (in 1996), and having a copy of Apache would be handy.

Cue, Slackware 3.1.

I installed it on my 486 (the above machine with 4 MB) and couldn't even run X properly (pretty slow on 4 MB!). No drag/drop file management. Limited hardware support. Hacking together a working X configuration?  Hard. Getting PPP to work properly? Hard. Figuring out what I needed to install? Hard. And it took so much disk space! For essentially, a command line machine. Sound? Haha... recompile the kernel.

Sure, once I upgraded to 8 MB and ran a couple of copies of DOOM in a window at the same time in X, I was impressed. FVWM still felt like the stone age, despite multiple desktops (which was cool).

Multitasking from the command line, and pipes were cool.

But resource consumption - for me, Linux was a hog. The user experience was much better on my Amiga, with 1/8th of the RAM and probably 1/4 of the processing power. Running from floppies...


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## ShelLuser (Jul 5, 2013)

jalla said:
			
		

> Development of 386BSD started probably long before Linux, but it wasn't released until about march of '92. (v.0.0).
> The first version of 386BSD I used was 0.1-alpha which came a few months later that year


Oh ye gods, you kids (not specifically aimed at you @jalla).

As we all know SunOS was first (warning: _extreme_ bias involved). Because when Sun and AT&T got their acts together they "borrowed" from nearly everyone on the field. Let's see...  System V (known for the SysV compliancy), Xenix (known by insiders who get their brains fried every time at the sheer idea of Microsoft "doing" Unix) and...  Oh my.

Would that be the BSD project?

The one SunOS got most of their traits from, the very same foundation which makes me, a SunOS / Solaris adept, feel completely secured ("at home") during the very first _days_ of using FreeBSD?

Of course this happened around 1983 when I was NUTS about computers and stuff. And this awesomeness was *way* out of my reach.

I wonder where Linux was at that time. Oh, I know! "_The History of Linux began in 1991 with the commencement of a personal project by a Finnish student, Linus Torvalds, to create a new free operating system kernel._" (Wikipedia source here).

So; SunOS being the first because I said so, and then they borrowed from the BSD project because history tells us so. And all of that happened way before Linux even existed in its most pristine state.

I wonder who's first 

Actually I don't. Who cares?

What is this anyway? I was first to get noticed so I'm the best around?

"Results gained in the past are no guarantee for the future".

Edit: I know SunOS moved back to SysV compliancy and therefore no longer can be compared to BSD. And I may also got the years wrong, but I'm writing from the back of my head.

Even so (made it up while editing): just because they went "back" to being SysV compliant suddenly undid all the BSD influences? I beg to differ.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jul 5, 2013)

ShelLuser said:
			
		

> I'm writing from the back of my head.


He's got eyes back there, too.


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## DutchDaemon (Jul 5, 2013)

Closing arguments, people. This is going round in circles, as these topics always do.


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## jozze (Jul 5, 2013)

No offense to the OP, but really I don't understand why isn't this in the Off-Topic section. This is a philosophical question, which has nothing to do with either Linux or FreeBSD, but the immaturity of "diehard" fan(atic)s and narrow-mindedness of fundamentalists, which you can find anywhere.

In my opinion it's in everyone's best interest to avoid such futile discussions: instead try things out and make up your own opinion.

Also I would really recommend you to see this.


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## adripillo (Jul 5, 2013)

Sorry if I am wrong, but I remember my father using an old computer that did not had "CPU", was all in one with green letters _and_ that was running Unix. And he told me that in that time *L*inux did not exist yet.


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## gigi (Jul 5, 2013)

Hi,

I won't talk about technical differences between Linux and FreeBSD or about performance. *I*n my op*i*nion both are great. *L*et*'s* take Debian and FreeBSD. FreeBSD requires from a user "more comfort with regard to the CLI". I have chosen it as the latest OS for me after a long travel working with a lot of OSes (and I stay with FreeBSD), because I believe FreeBSD is on the learning curve at the highest point. *I*t does not matter if this is true or not.

Please let me give a*n* answer about the subject:[]in my opinion the hate is caused,[]in general,[]by the lack of knowledge and education.

All the best and kind regards!

gg


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## jalla (Jul 5, 2013)

drhowarddrfine said:
			
		

> People had been using 386BSD but it was embroiled in legal complications for many years before Linux came out. That was the reason Linux was able to get a foothold in history otherwise, as Linus himself once said, he never would have created Linux.



As the saying goes, "If you remember the 60's you weren't there". I was definitly _there_ in the late 80's, early 90's, but my memory of the whole thing may be completely screwed up :\


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## systemdrulez (Jul 6, 2013)

The is mainly with you FreeBSD and BSD nuts in general not us Linux guys. It's your attitude to us and your definition of human freedom. This is the case from the very beginning. BSD was never friendly with Linux. You were always Microsoft and Apple aligned even before 386BSD.

When Linux came out, you BSD nuts were the first to throw the punches at us saying 'we are all unprofessional', 'Linux is developed by teenagers with nothing better to do', 'Linux is a random assembly of hacks', 'Linux are for Losers', 'Linux is a mess' and many more. What an irony as many of these statements now apply to all BSDs. When Linux popularity increased and started eating into BSD's usage share, your attitude to us became worse and thus Linux users and developers started retaliating back. Clearly you deserve this sort of thing.

One more thing, a lot keep saying that 'Linux is for people who hate Windows and BSD is for people who love UNIX'. By looking at the behaviour of BSD people compared to Linux people, I think a more realistic statement is: 'Linux is for people who love freedom and BSD is for people who hate Linux'

Thank you


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## DutchDaemon (Jul 6, 2013)

[ Closed, dropped in Off-Topic, @systemdrulez banned for violating forum rules 6 and 7 (at the least) and trolling ]


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## DutchDaemon (Jul 6, 2013)

Going forward, we will be keeping any '*BSD versus Linux' and 'BSD license versus GPL' topics either very short, or close them, depending on 'flammable content'. This forum is full of them, and, as stated, they never end well or lead to new insights. They invariably invite trolls and hate speech. There's no need to pit one against the other. Use what you like.


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