# What Do You Love Most About FreeBSD?   :)



## RedPhoenix (Jun 3, 2018)

For me, It's because it's not Linux.   It does things differently.      I LOVE Linux, don't get me wrong.   But FreeBSD does things Linux can't.   And vice-versa.      It's like a breath of fresh air (even MORE so when coming from Windows.)   I also like FreeBSD because all I had to do to get it to work with my flat screen TV with the AMD HDMI Port was edit a simple Text File...      Also, I get so much more into FreeBSD when I have a lot of Caffeine.      What drew you guys to FreeBSD?


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 3, 2018)

I love when the FreeBSD logo appears and the pretty colors just light up my day and make me think of the morning sun flitting across my desk and the dew upon the grass as I reminisce about days gone by, the girls I've loved, the friends, family, pretty flowers and long walks on the beach.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jun 3, 2018)

The Daemon aspect. And the desktops I get out of it.

I showed my sister and her family my website, tutorial, the page source and explained how the browser interpreted that text into what they were looking at, screenshots, etc.

They liked the screenshot with Demonica, the sexy daemon girl, on the index page. Sex sells. Their eyes glazed over for the rest of it, and she works at a computer all day.


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## Beastie7 (Jun 3, 2018)

Beastie is ten times cuter than Tux.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jun 3, 2018)

When the subject came up in a Linux forum, I asked what they had previously thought the diet of a Daemon consisted of?


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## timypcr (Jun 3, 2018)

The community support and the spot on documentation is what keeps me a happy Systems admin at work and at home I use FreeBSD at every opportunity I can, cause I know what every tasks I throw at it, FreeBSD will handle it. 

The jails system is also incrediable, this type of container paravirtualization takes a lot of the headaches  away from using a traditional hyper-visor like carefully allocating resources to each VM and in my opinion managing jails with ezjail is much more straight forward than any tools for Docker.  When it comes to system management nothing really compares to jails.


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## ShelLuser (Jun 3, 2018)

"Because it's not Linux" seems a bit shadey to me, no offense. I like to stick with using a product because it can get the job at hand done better, but not because it's "not something else". Using something because you dislike something else is usually a recipe for problems.

As to me... I stopped using Linux a long time ago in favor of Sun Solaris/x86. I don't care for OS's which introduce changes with every release for the sole reason of the change itself. On Linux stuff can change on a developers whim and that's not the way I want to run my server farm. Another reason is because support on Linux - generally speaking - sucks. It's not all bad but there's a lot of garbage out there.

For example: LTS. Long Term Support, mostly looking at Ubuntu. While it is true that an LTS version gets supported for a longer period of time, the downside which no one speaks of is that development doesn't stop. Upgrading from one LTS version to another usually effectively boils down to doing several *major version* upgrades at once. Going from version 10.x to 13.x is no exception. That's really not my idea of "Long Term Support", it's more in the likes of: "Long Term Upgrade Postpone". With all the risks involved. You'll probably have to make up for the postponed time tenfold.

I am a little worried that FreeBSD might be heading down this path as well eventually. Thing is: this is easier for the developers, but not for the end-users.

And we're already going there somewhat: the shorter support cycle for example is proof of this. When a new release comes out (when is a little bit of anyones guess) then they want to burn bridges because the previous version will only be supported for 3 months tops.

It's still a lot better than your average Linux distribution in my opinion, but it's also a step in the direction of "what's easiest for the developers" while somewhat ignoring the userbase.

But back to the question at hand...

When (wh)Oracle took over Sun it was the beginning of the end for Solaris. I had a support contract as a hobbyist for the only reason that I wanted to support the OS and the company. When I got the choice to pay triple for less support I knew I was going to jump off the bandwagon.

I wanted a mature Unix-like OS which also provided support for ZFS. Well.. FreeBSD provided. Linux only started recently with ZFS support and well... Last March ZFS on Linux landed but unfortunately data disappeared. ZFS has been around for what? 12 years now?  And it has been available through open source for a long period as well. BSD could make it work, Linux developers... not so much it seems.

That should also tell you something in my opinion.

So yah, I discovered FreeBSD and its excellent ZFS support, I tested, moved and I basically never looked back.


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## Crivens (Jun 3, 2018)

I started my unix usage on NetBSD on 68k and tried out linux as it was smaller and better to understand at that time. There were no distributions. Then I kind of stuck with linux, untill the bloat crept in and the nannying got on my nerves. After an upgrade I found that there were several picture viewers installed as a dependency from the desktop, each with it's own bulk of dependencies. Now the desktop switched to the next cool thing, updating the old stuff and funneling in still more. I remembered NetBSD, and missed it. I had used Solaris and SunOS in the mean time, so I somehow ended up with FreeBSD thanks to the handbook.
Also, I like the approach of *BSD package management. Whenever there needs to be something changed outside the package files, *you* are the one to do that. No installing some crypto stuff for "one day it might come in handy" and then finding out it has crapped all over your PAM settings. Or webservers which are meant as a playground and they insist to be started all at once.

Sadly, the "we want  to play cool and do stuff behind your back as you are too dumb to do that" attitude creeps in here as well. Slowly but we still need to fight it. That's why that drm-next thing got up my nose so hard. Are we professionals (or aiming too be) or are we sheeple? In the latter case I might as well buy a mac and be done with it.


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## Beastie7 (Jun 3, 2018)

ShelLuser said:


> "Because it's not Linux" seems a bit shadey to me, no offense. I like to stick with using a product because it can get the job at hand done better, but not because it's "not something else". Using something because you dislike something else is usually a recipe for problems.



But does Linux really do any job better?  That sentiment is warranted IMO because of the incohesive and fragmented nature of Linux and it's ecosystem. It's a self perpetuating mess. All the drama that arises there seems to originate from it's polarizing nature as well.

To quote Vision; "conflict... breeds catastrophe". 

To answer the OPs question; Among my many reasons, I love that FreeBSD upholds the concept of "the base system", and it's separation from third party software. All aspects of its superiority stems from that very concept.

Oh, and it's amazing documentation.


edit: clarity


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jun 3, 2018)

Crivens said:


> Sadly, the "we want  to play cool and do stuff behind your back as you are too dumb to do that" attitude creeps in here as well. Slowly but we still need to fight it. That's why that drm-next thing got up my nose so hard. Are we professionals (or aiming too be) or are we sheeple? In the latter case I might as well buy a mac and be done with it.



When my FreeBSD boxen start behaving like a Windows machine, I will build OpenBSD on every one of them the same day. And not likely to have anything good to say about FreeBSD from that point on, much less promote it.

Is this a pattern developing with FreeBSD brass? Doing things off the top of their heads without careful consideration of the possible consequences?

Stimulus - Response - Consequence is the way that flows: 

Make changes people don't want (but are too stupid to know what's best for them), people will leave in droves like they did with the CoC, and the consequences? Figure it out.

I think people have finally stopped laughing at us about the disallowing of virtual hugs. Let's not give Linux inept something else to bash us with. Or has FreeBSD decided to go in a different direction and soon no longer Free to do with it as I see fit?


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 3, 2018)

Trihexagonal said:


> I think people have finally stopped laughing at us about the disallowing of virtual hugs. Let's not give Linux inept something else to bash us with. Or has FreeBSD decided to go in a different direction and soon no longer Free to do with it as I see fit?


The downfall will occur if FreeBSD should ever be more concerned with what others think rather than the science of computing.


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## Deleted member 54719 (Jun 3, 2018)

Good sentiments here.  As I get older, there is a lot of truth to me in the saying "It's not what tech I like, so much as it is what tech offends me the least."  Just because something can be done, does not necessarily mean that it should be done.  My use cases for freeBSD are more based in ease of analysis, and by that I mean, I want to be able to quickly analyze and understand the software path through a system, where as in Linux the script kiddie devs at places like redhat change APIs and configs with the frequency that many folks change their skivvies.  What init system are we stuck with this week, and what is the half finished and untested utility command to manage it?  Hmmm....


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## ShelLuser (Jun 3, 2018)

Beastie7 said:


> But does Linux really do any job better?


Unfortunately, yes. Take for example the massive main stream support it has which results in big vendors providing support for their own hardware just to meet assumed "popular demands". You can even see this on FreeBSD itself where several people will use a Linux compatibility layer in order to get certain hardware made usable.

However, it remains to be seen how long this will last. I'm aware of quite a few vendors who have dropped Linux support for the sole reasoning that they dubbed it a "toxic environment". When you take a look at a general Torvalds comment on the kernel mailinglist it's not that hard to understand why.

My only personal problem though...  As much as I detest the way Torvalds expresses himself (in my opinion he's an arrogant dork when it comes to this: apparently he doesn't even want to put any effort into this thing called communication, I honestly wouldn't want anything to do with him), the other side of the story is also important: in many cases he is plain out right, you can't deny that. However, the reason why I still oppose this is because in a way he's also a hypocrite. The main reason for his rants is that he feels people don't put enough effort into their work (such as testing) and then delivering a horrible unfinished product. Right or wrong... fact is that he himself could _also_ put some extra effort into _his_ work in communicating to make sure the message comes across but in a much more mature way. He obviously doesn't want to do that, too much work (or maybe he honestly doesn't comprehend how to call someone not qualified for their job, maybe there's too many difficult words in that).

That's how you call someone a moron without the "m word". And if you're worried that people don't get it... then why the heck are they on the kernel development list in the first place? That's also something I never got...

Of course in the end I don't mind at all, because in this way he ensures that the only reason vendors keep involved with Linux is because of the brand and what it stands for. Once that starts eroding, and please mark my words: then the whole ship will sink faster than the Titanic, and this is going to happen someday. There are plenty of vendors who are involved with Linux, having to heed the Torvalds ranting, but not of their own will but company policy. Do you really think those guys will advocate in favor of Linux when they see a way out? I sure don't.

Time will tell..

Apologies for a small rant, weekend and all. Bottom line: yeah, there are areas in which Linux is better. But for how long?


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## Beastie7 (Jun 4, 2018)

Those words couldn't be more true.


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## Datapanic (Jun 4, 2018)

The challenge.


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## alx82 (Jun 4, 2018)

I started seriously moving my systems slowly to FreeBSD since a couple of months. Before I was familiarizing myself with it, to make sure it fits well my use cases, and it does very well! As a newcomer, these are the points that I love the most about FreeBSD

*sysctl -a* and you can list all the tunable system settings! sysfs is a big mess under Linux, the solution for badly designed interfaces under Linux is, guess what, abstraction (https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.16/admin-guide/sysfs-rules.html)
Audio quality is superb! Again under Linux the solution to the Alsa mess is abstraction, welcome to pulseaudio latencies!
Up to date ports, with a stable system base. It is a perfect mix between rolling and stable release models, almost non existent on any Linux distro.
Documentation is great!
Kernel modules remain compatible between minor releases, you have a module for 11.0, it is guaranteed to work for all 11.x. Under Linux, a module compiled for 4.16.0, will refuse to load on the kernel 4.16.0.0.0.....1! 
Almost every kernel module has it own Makefile under /usr/src/dev/modules. You can modify/build what you want from there.
No shit like systemd, my point on that has been always that it is okay to have a parallel init system, but a init that eats other daemons, udev, logind, cron, etc... stopping me from booting my system because it does not find my external flash card that is listed in fstab, filling my disk with binary logs, killing my processes by default on logout, noooooo.
Sane community.


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## vermaden (Jun 4, 2018)

> What Do You Love Most About FreeBSD?


Current Code of Conduct


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## VladiBG (Jun 4, 2018)

What i love most about FreeBSD? - The BSD Daemon never Failed me.
I like how the layout of the file system is defined. hier(7) 
When you sit in front of a FreeBSD server which another administrator is maintaining and you need to diagnose a software problem you can easy see what is installed and what are the configurations. Everything has it's specific place and it's easy to see the entire picture.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jun 7, 2018)

drhowarddrfine said:


> The downfall will occur if FreeBSD should ever be more concerned with what others think rather than the science of computing.



If that were the case it would be free virtual hugs for everybody.  (Line up people , I got plenty of parenthesis for each side.) They obviously wanted to placate somebody out there in PC Land or we wouldn't have the new CoC. 

While it generated considerable controversy, I can see where that didn't change anything on the software side of things or science of computing. Just the wetware of every human bean that has to live under it. Who I bet could really use a hug.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 7, 2018)

Trihexagonal On occasion, I'm asked to fill in for a couple of hours at one of my restaurants when they're shorthanded. I cringed when I caught myself saying to someone, "I _loved_ working with you today". Or the time I was taken aback at how good one of the unattractive people looked in their prom picture. You can't say anything to anyone nowadays without fear of becoming the next Harvey.


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## Crivens (Jun 7, 2018)

Well, when I don't understand something I usually turn cause and effect around and try again. So banning of virtual hugs makes sure there won't be any, and now there is a reason why no one gets them. And that reason can be understood, that is better than "you don't get hugs because of no reason". See, all clear now. And now it's the other peoples fault, they would only need to ask...


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## Minbari (Jun 7, 2018)

The ports system and the rc.d init, although a new rc which support parallelization will be a step forward, mainly on servers, on desktop the actual rc.d it's quite fast, less then 25 seconds, which compared with my Arch GNU/Linux machine with systemd (~12-15 sec boot time) it's more then O.K.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jun 7, 2018)

Crivens said:


> So banning of virtual hugs makes sure there won't be any, and now there is a reason why no one gets them.



I have a disclaimer at the bottom of my tutorial:



> Neither I, or this site, are affiliated with the The FreeBSD Foundation or the The FreeBSD Project and this tutorial is presented solely for your benefit in learning to use FreeBSD as a desktop Operating System.



The word "your" looked like a good place for a nice virtual hug, but that wouldn't be nice of me. I will admit to only adding The FreeBSD Foundation after the fact.

It was big in chat around 2000 among friends or regulars and everybody would say your name when you came in with sometime a dozen parenthesis on each side. It's not on my list of things that offend me.

Now don't touch me or invade my personal space has gone virtual.


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## michael_hackson (Jun 7, 2018)

What do I love most about FreeBSD?
All the chicks? Women love "The Power To Serve". 

*Edit: *Perhaps insuffice to say, but take note that we are the one who serves. *Could be understood in an unfortunate way*


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## Oko (Jun 7, 2018)

I used to like it because of this






but ever since FreeBSD became VirginOS I moved onto CHAD UNIX.


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## abishai (Jun 8, 2018)

The last time I tried CHAD UNIX it hangs on my laptop and requires reboot, while VIRGIN OS works flawlessly. Probably, CHAD UNIX is too secure 
https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-bugs&m=150085289719624&w=2


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## achix (Jun 8, 2018)

Because FreeBSD has withstood all the pressure and the hard times of past last decades, demonstrating an unprecedented value/cost ratio. Other systems have many times the number of developers that FreeBSD has with only marginally better results (if any).
FreeBSD has remained steady, trustworthy, efficient. In a word : Great!
True, I almost lost my faith some times, but came back again in a heartbeat!


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## k.jacker (Jun 8, 2018)

FreeBSD was actually the first OS I came across that I found was good, after I dropped my C64.
Since then, no computer/device running Windows, Linux or MacOS could ever convince me they where better in any way.
I allways liked that FreeBSD feels free (like in freedom) and not like an enemy on my own computer, I have to fight all the time.
...and I grew up with it .

Yeah, It kicked my butt sometimes (I often kicked myself to be honest), but that's not something specific to FreeBSD...
I've heard there are commercial OSes that treat their customers as beta testers all time, longing for the next patch that finally make the OS usable .


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 8, 2018)

k.jacker said:


> I allways liked that FreeBSD feels free (like in freedom) and not like an enemy on my own computer


You should put that in your sig. +1


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## ldilley (Jun 11, 2018)

I am extremely fond of `pkg` && ports, ZFS, the Linux ABI, kqueue(), `clang` + `lldb`, DTrace, jails, bhyve, having multiple firewall implementations to choose from, and just how tidy kernel configuration files are along with how intuitive it is to build a custom kernel.


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## wolffnx (Jun 11, 2018)

i love this from FreeBSD

-Freedom to choose
-Great community
-Great support
-Security
-The chance to change E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G that i want
-The limit to tuneup your FreeBSD if up to you
-The rules are simple, keep it simple and functional
-I' can modify source for everyting that i'want and compile without problems from /usr/ports
-A real solid server infraestructure
-A real solid desktop
-Speed and a great logo


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## Sensucht94 (Jun 12, 2018)

ShelLuser said:


> As much as I detest the way Torvalds expresses himself (in my opinion he's an arrogant dork when it comes to this: apparently he doesn't even want to put any effort into this thing called communication, I honestly wouldn't want anything to do with him)



Likewise, among the other reasons, one I'm really unlikely going to have anything to do with the CHAD UNIX for, is de Raadt and his "I am better than you" complex.

One plus side,  spoilt narcissistic leaders like thoseo ften  tend to attract proud aspergers fanboys which develop a religous cult for their OS leader and represent a true plague for  OSS communities nowadays; I remember OpenSolaris  mailing lists in 2006-2010 to be much more friendly and populated with rational people (similar to those here). netbsd-users abd openindiana-discuss are good places to attend too.

But whenever I had to deal with Linux communities (been in Linux for 3 years so far) I always felt kind of rejected and out of place, no matter the distro. They're obsessed with privacy, security, GPL even though half of times they show to know less than nothing on those subject, then make pretentious assumptions making laugh of those who were pointing them out the truth. Politeness, respect, civil debate are out of question.. They're always quarrelling with each other and they seem to enjoy scanning others replies in search of something to criticize.


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## ralphbsz (Jun 12, 2018)

> What Do You Love Most About FreeBSD?


It's not one thing, it is a cost-benefit-pro-con tradeoff.  I have a long history of using computers, from MVS, RSX-11, VM CP/CMS, VMS, both Berkeley and AT&T Unix on minicomputers, SunOS, NeXTStep, and who knows what else.  I started using Linux at home in 1994 or 1995, somewhere around 0.99.13, when the only distributions were stacks of floppies.  There is still a (trivial) line of code I wrote in the Linux kernel.  Then at work I used a lot of HP-UX and AIX.  At work, I deal with zillions of Linux machines, but fortunately I don't have to administer them, just log in and program on them.

For a while, I used OpenBSD at home.  Today, the only OS that I seriously install at home and administer is FreeBSD (the other operating systems come free with a machine, and are things like Android or MacOS).  Exception: The three Raspberry Pi run Raspbian Linux; I tried FreeBSD, but ran into too many road blocks (mostly minor but all annoying).

Why do I chose FreeBSD for my home machine?  The main reason is that it is clean, well-organized, and done by people with a professional mindset of quality.  Note that I only use it as a server, not as a desktop (where a lot of the cruft, like "drm-next" comes in).  Honestly, OpenBSD is even better in this regard, as Theo and his friends do an even better job of reviewing everything, cleaning it up, and removing everything that's not strictly necessary.  But then, OpenBSD is lacking one particularly important feature, namely ZFS.  Since I know a little bit about storage, I insist on RAID, and a high-quality file system: the rest of the machine can go up in smoke as far as I'm concerned, but I want my data to be safe.  ZFS with checksums and integrated RAID is the best available option at the FOSS hobbyist level (if I wanted to spent many $10K on a file system, there would be better commercial options, but for that money I'd rather buy musical instruments).

Little things which are really nice to have, and which prevent me from getting pissed off at FreeBSD, include things like mostly good documentation, a clean package system, a good and easy-to-use upgrade mechanism, and a forum that can be used for support with mostly friendly people.  The absence of complete a**holes (of the caliber of Linus or Lennard), but on a day-to-day basis they don't annoy me much.  I know some of the *BSD old-timers a little bit (Kirk, Eric, Sam), and they are all very friendly (at least when sober; when drunk they can be overwhelming).  The FreeBSD code of conduct also helps, to keep people interacting in a friendly fashion.

The downsides of FreeBSD are hinted at above: not as minimalist and clean as OpenBSD; performance is not as high as a hand tuned Linux system (but performance is not my issue); much less hardware support (but my hardware happens to work, with the exception of wireless cards, but I gave up trying those), and no commercial support of the high-end caliber (which I probably wouldn't buy for home, but demonstrates that it can be supported).  Some everyday things (like getting LetsEncrypt certificates, and many other examples) are a little harder than on Linux, because 99% of the documentation and help out there is written for Linux, but so far I've got everything worked out with a little extra effort.



timypcr said:


> The community support and the spot on documentation ..


Agree.



Crivens said:


> After an upgrade I found that there were several picture viewers installed as a dependency from the desktop, each with it's own bulk of dependencies. ...


That kind of dependency hell is exactly what killed Linux for me.  And being root-kitted.



Beastie7 said:


> But does Linux really do any job better?


Yes, there are lots of jobs that Linux does much better than FreeBSD.  Proof is in the pudding.  For example, look at the new Summit computer at Oak Ridge, the fastest compute cluster in the world.  It runs Red Hat Linux.  No, it does not run AIX or zOS, even though it was built by IBM.  The people at Oak Ridge (and the other national labs) are very very smart, and evaluated what OS to pick, and they clearly rejected Windows, MacOS, FreeBSD, and Minix.  They have reasons, very good reasons.  Matter-of-fact, 100% of the 500 fastest computers in the world run Linux (every single on).  If you look at the likes of Facebook, Amazon, Google, the big banks: the overwhelming majority of their systems run Linux (with some Windows thrown in at commercial sites); the only major FreeBSD exceptions are NetFlix (the video distribution company), NetApp (the NAS storage server company), and Jupiter (which makes high-end routers), but together that's perhaps 1% of the market.

One job Linux does particularly well: being stable enough to be sold for profit and commercially supported.  The fact that RedHat has grown to a very large company by cleaning up, selling and supporting a free OS speaks volumes about how good Linux can be.  But that doesn't matter to me: my home system is not a big bank, not a big Internet company, nor do I want or need commercial support.  I want an OS that I can and enjoy supporting myself.



drhowarddrfine said:


> The downfall will occur if FreeBSD should ever be more concerned with what others think rather than the science of computing.


What FreeBSD does today has nothing to do with computer science.  The progress of FreeBSD is engineering, not science.  When was the last time you saw a scientific publication about some improvement in *BSD?  I think it might have been Kirk's paper on Soft Updates, but that was nearly 20 years ago.



vermaden said:


> Current Code of Conduct


Agree.



Oko said:


> I used to like it because of this (picture of good-looking woman in tight-fitting beastie costume compared to badly dressed and ugly Linux geeks omitted)


That is indeed a good argument, unfortunately only for straight male and LGBT female computer users.  But since I do self-identify as a male hetero chauvinist horny pig, I wouldn't mind if you shared the ladies' phone number.  I'd like to meet her and check out whether she is silicon or real ...



> but ever since FreeBSD became VirginOS...


In the office, when the annual "property control audit and inventory" comes around, I tell them the following joke: For religious reasons, I tried a vow of chastity once.  It wasn't much fun.  So now I have taken a vow of poverty instead, and no longer own any computing equipment that needs to be inventoried.  They typically get upset at me.

OK, enough dirty jokes.



Sensucht94 said:


> ... is de Raadt and his "I am better than you" complex.
> ... spoilt narcissistic leaders like thoseo ften  tend to attract proud aspergers fanboys which develop a religous cult for their OS leader and represent a true plague for  OSS communities nowadays;...


All true.  But the average *user* of Linux or OpenBSD (not developer or community member, but the person who just installs and runs it, perhaps with a support contract from a company like RedHat) does not go to the forums or mailing lists.  He doesn't care whether Linus uses 4-letter words, or whether Theo is abusive if someone challenges his superiority, or whether Lennart is a fool with delusions.  He simply cares that the product he downloaded or bought works well.  And Linux does work well for many people.  We should not over-emphasize the effect of a few nutcases on the business of computing.


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## Crivens (Jun 12, 2018)

ralphbsz, very very very true words.


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## elmarko1 (Jun 12, 2018)

Freebsd love, well love and hate all in one, pain in ass to get things going but once you do elation kicks in. 
but i could best descibe it like this
windows ....works but everyone knows you are using it and everything you do is tracked logged spyed stolen and hijacked.

linnux ....works for a few weeks....updates break things ..every distro moves things, cant find anything without distro specific help...a muddled mess 
freebsd ...nothing works but over time you can make it work, with a manual that easy to follow and a community thats helps you. And when your IQ kicks in and you copy and save your rc.conf bootloader.conf etc then next install gets easier and easier.
PLUS you can run a lean system on old crap you get given that no one else would use......recycling woooot!
oh.......and 666
gotta love the devil


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## Sensucht94 (Jun 12, 2018)

ralphbsz First of all that's one of the best answers I've seen in a while; consider the possibility of start writing public speeches and press releases under payment



ralphbsz said:


> the average *user* of Linux or OpenBSD (not developer or community member, but the person who just installs and runs it, perhaps with a support contract from a company like RedHat) does not go to the forums or mailing lists.



And I perfectly agree with you; but similarly, why  would  those same users then, ever feel the need to worry that much about an internal Code of Conduct, which -let's be realistic- would   affect  FreeBSD developers only, if ever literally applied?

Let me remember that Crivens, a veteran user, a moderator, a developer was told to f*** off by someone in another  thread not long ago, without any consequence.

If I remember correctly someone another thread reported the 'testimony' from a guy eulogizing his own courage  for having moved his entire company from FreeBSD to OmniOS, because FreeBSD had supposedly "been hijacked by Geek Feminists".

Many of those who said they moved after the CoC revision didn't even appear to be professional enterprise users.

I think you're overestimating
people's judgement, maturity  and  rational discernment.
They do care about things like CoCs, or 'true tough male leaders' actually more than how much they care about the quality of the product, especially Home Server and Desktop users, young FOSS developers, IT/computer science students. Running either CHAD UNIX (regardless of its poor performance, its lack of virtualization capabilities,  the fact its UFS2 implementation doesn't even support SU+J, snapshots, LVM, TRIM...) or an OS whose chief keeps telling Nvidia developers to get f*****, even when his requests clearly go against Nvidia's (who clearly detains a monopoly on the GPU market) enomical interests,while he takes between 500k and 1bilion USD per year from Linux Foundation, is exactly what those people care about, above everything else


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## Crivens (Jun 12, 2018)

With FreeBSD, if it does not work, it is usually my fault (cue in current C state problems). 


Sensucht94 said:


> Let me remember that Crivens, a veteran user, a moderator, a developer was told to f*** off by someone in another  thread not long ago, without any consequence.


_Was stört es die Eiche wenn sich die Schweine dran reiben?_ 
And that is also one point that brought me here and keeps me. People here don't insult on purpose and don't throw a tantrum when something acts up. To insult or really  tick off those great old ones, which I want to be one of one day, you need real machines - and not a box of spare parts (so to speak).


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## Sensucht94 (Jun 12, 2018)

Crivens said:


> _Was stört es die Eiche wenn sich die Schweine dran reiben?_



Unfortunately, in spite of my nick, I don't speak German (studied it a bit,but was a long time ago); I put it on Google Translate, and here's the output :



> What bothers the oak when the pigs rub it?



I assume you were wandering about what was I referring to: IIRC it was on the TP-LINK dongle thread ,but really don't bother with that 



Crivens said:


> And that is also one point that brought me here and keeps me. People here don't insult on purpose and don't throw a tantrum when something acts up. To insult or really tick off those great old ones, which I want to be one of one day, you need real machines - and not a box



Yeah, definitely, I agree 100% on this, one more reason to keep supporting this OS and community


----------



## ronaldlees (Jun 12, 2018)

Agree with ralphbsz and Sensucht94 about this.  It's the cleanliness factor that nails it.  Take a USB disk, apply an MBR, partition, and file system with a few commands, extract kernel.txz and base.txz to the file system, and you're done.  Nice clean system.  No glitzy GUI based installers that seem to run in circles and get cranky if they're not connected to the internet.


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## Sensucht94 (Jun 12, 2018)

I noticed that, while blubbering,  I  hadn't actually told why I love FreeBSD, I'll try to be quick and concise:

clean, coherent, secure, simple yet modern and performing system. If you like free UNIX descendants, FreeBSD is IMHO the most advanced among all BSDs and Illumos distros
very Unix, has a positively strict,  Unixish phylosophy and a clear position on how things should get done, but is opened to innovation and new technologies. Doesn't trade quality for convenience and stupid trends.
ZFS or UFS2 with snapshots, bhyve, jails, devd, IPFW, sndio, geli, GEOM,  DTrace, poudriere/synth and the ports/packages system are nice things to have and play with on my system
amazing,unparalleled community and documentation. friendly developers and moderators open to hear users' feedback and help them 
it's easy contribute and support the project in many ways if you're eager enough to do so
beastie is the best OS logo ever created 
FreeBSD, even more than Solaris before it, brought me into Unix and made me develop such a strong passion for Unix-like systems, to the point that even as an amateur with a very busy life I've got more experienced than I would have ever imagined.


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## PMc (Jun 12, 2018)

RedPhoenix said:


> What drew you guys to FreeBSD?



This is very simple: whenever I get along a command /usr/bin/whatever, it is guaranteed that I can go to /usr/src/usr.bin/whatever and find there precisely the code that is actually running, can try to understand it, optionally change it, can say "make" and the code will replace without any unexpected side-effects and without searching for missing prereqs etc.etc.
This is freedom and independence. Certainly, as Datapanic remarked, this is challenging - but then it is probably the only way to really fulfil the stance: "do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." (The point behind this is that there is no option left to look for other people's faults as the cause why something does not work: either accept it the way it is or work on your own development.)


----------



## Maxnix (Jun 12, 2018)

ralphbsz, her name is Ceren Ercen and is a well known Deamonette (and FreeBSD security officer IIRC).


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## ralphbsz (Jun 13, 2018)

Thank you, but that was really just a joke.  Having been happily married for decades, I only look at daemons in red leotards from a safe distance.


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Jun 13, 2018)

I've been in the entertainment business for decades and have a son who's an actor and owned his own theatre company. You wouldn't believe the trying times I've had with daemons I've met.


----------



## Crivens (Jun 13, 2018)

ralphbsz said:


> Having been happily married for decades, I only look at daemons in red leotards from a safe distance.


So maybe you do not need her number but the one of her tailor?


----------



## shkhln (Jun 14, 2018)

Sensucht94 said:


> chief keeps telling Nvidia developers to get f*****, even when his requests clearly go against Nvidia's (who clearly detains a monopoly on the GPU market) economic interests



What's wrong with that one? Do you realize that maintaining FreeBSD drivers also goes against Nvidia's interests and, for example, in addition to recently deprecating the 32-bit kernel driver they silently dropped the 32-bit (FreeBSD) application support? This company is _really_ annoying to deal with.


----------



## Crivens (Jun 14, 2018)

Since drm-next-kmod is also to be amd64 only, they are in good company there. *grumble*


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## Spartrekus (Jun 14, 2018)

BSD looks like the old good PDP. 

But it is not really UNIX, in my opinion.


----------



## Deleted member 48958 (Jun 17, 2018)

IMO, the best thing in FreeBSD is that it's a complete operating system,
it's not bunch of packages collected together in "distros", like GNU/Linux,
even Linux kernel is a separate package... So you'll never see "dependency hell",
when using pkg, also your system will never be broken after package upgrades,
you're even able to remove all packages and delete /usr/local, and your system
should work fine, without any issues. Also I like much that it is more focused on console usage,
this means that there is no crappy "settings GUI-s" to play with, which tries to emulate some kind
of control panel... Just edit appropriate configuration file, add appropriate service to rc.conf
and you're ready to go. Also it is very good that there is no and won't ever be no "crapware"
in base system, like systemd in GNU/Linux, for example. If FreeBSD had support for a similar ammount
of hardware (not "exotic", of course), apps (except systemd ) and "desktop features" (like suspend to disk/RAM
on all GPU-s) as GNU/Linux, it would be the best OS IMO!


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jun 18, 2018)

Sensucht94 said:


> Unfortunately, in spite of my nick, I don't speak German (studied it a bit,but was a long time ago); I put it on Google Translate, and here's the output :
> 
> "What bothers the oak when the pigs rub it?"



_Was stört es die Eiche wenn sich die Schweine dran reiben?_

Insignificant as a single tear shed in the sea.


----------



## Vladimir1922 (Jun 21, 2018)

Hey, semi-new user here (I tried it before many times, but didn't manage to have proper compatibility with my hardware up to 11.1. The port system and the forceful shoveling of systemd made me look at alternatives under Linux, but I never stopped trying different variants of BSD. I managed to suceed at last with my backup thinkpad T60.

The man pages are amazing! If I don't get the WiFi working a simple "man ath0" will prompt a man page with everything I need, even if I don't know where the init scripts are located yet. Just by typing "man" and the device name! how crazy is that!? I don't need a Internet connection to set up my computer!.

I still hate that bsd-games doesn't include monop (monopoly). I went into great lenghts to compile it under different Linux distros. It now only installs by default under OpenBSD and that will stop supporting SMP, so it is a big no-no. I am not familiar with llvm, so I couldn't compile it yet, but I will prevail... I hope.

the COC fiasco did made me weary tho. I am glad that it didn't transcend into a professional level as I see here.


----------



## giahung1997 (Jun 21, 2018)

Is FreeBSD pkg really that sucks? http://www.ivoras.net/blog/tree/2015/Feb-why-freebsds-pkg-sucks.html

I'm used it with fairly simple use case so I couldn't know.


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## Crivens (Jun 21, 2018)

Another reason for FreeBSD: yesterday I checked an install archive, unpacked it and later deleted it again. Absent minded, tired and low on coffee I typed ""rm -r bin lib". Only it was /bin, and that was a root shell. No biggie, just /rescue/tar extract the userland from the install archive. No, this was debian, and I was happy to get /home out of the way before reinstall.


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Jun 21, 2018)

giahung1997 To an extent, he was doing it in a naive way and got himself into trouble. "Flavors" solves his problem but he should have been more careful as mentioned in one of the comments.


----------



## PMc (Jun 21, 2018)

giahung1997 said:


> Is FreeBSD pkg really that sucks? http://www.ivoras.net/blog/tree/2015/Feb-why-freebsds-pkg-sucks.html



Not sure what his problem actually is. I would say that the ports/pkg thing is not the best and most reliable part of FreeBSD (but then, I failed to really devise any better logic), and I am usually rebuilding all ports when upgrading the system, and for the special things (like development environments and such) I tend to know what I want and check that the right things get installed, and I didn't perceive such problems in more recent time. One cannot expect a ports management tool to handle each and every application (of ~30'000!) in a perfect way (given that this all happens on voluntary basis).
E.g. for ruby, which I am using extensively, and which also comes along with hundreds of add-ons (so called gems), I do a clear cut: ruby itself gets installed via the ports system, but the gems are maintained by the ruby-tools and NOT by pkg/ports (and they get NOT installed in /usr/local). If php does not come along with it's own proper maintenance tool for it's dungeon of piece-meal, well then I would say php sucks.

drhowarddrfine also with flavors, somebody has to sit down and edit all the twohundredwhatever makefiles, and that guy doesn't sound like he would enjoy to approach the task.


----------



## rigoletto@ (Jun 21, 2018)

giahung1997 said:


> Is FreeBSD pkg really that sucks? http://www.ivoras.net/blog/tree/2015/Feb-why-freebsds-pkg-sucks.html
> 
> I'm used it with fairly simple use case so I couldn't know.



Thats all BS on that article!

WTF he want to upgrade packages one by one instead of just issuing `pkg upgrade` like, you know, all normal people do? And if the thing worked like he think that should work and he was the need to upgrade just one package?

[EDIT] PMc Sorry, wrong quote.


----------



## shkhln (Jun 22, 2018)

giahung1997 said:


> Is FreeBSD pkg really that sucks? http://www.ivoras.net/blog/tree/2015/Feb-why-freebsds-pkg-sucks.html



No software is bug free. I find it odd that the author found time to write a blog post about the issue, but never submitted the PR to the bug tracker. Especially since apparently he has an @freebsd.org email address.

I can only suggest you to check it yourself whether this issue actually existed/exists and what has been done about it.


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (Jun 22, 2018)

lebarondemerde said:


> Thats all BS on that article!



lebarondemerde, I've been waiting for giahung1997 to post a screenshot of his FreeBSD desktop since March and he has yet to do so to the screenshot thread. He seems more interested in efforts to detract from FreeBSD or make disparaging statements regarding it or its use than show signs of ever having used it at all.

A screenshot showing it was actually his FreeBSD desktop would shoot me down in flames without a parachute, and I will salute till I hit ground.


----------



## RedPhoenix (Jun 22, 2018)

Trihexagonal said:


> When the subject came up in a Linux forum, I asked what they had previously thought the diet of a Daemon consisted of?
> 
> View attachment 4901


Oh, dear GOD man.   XD   I'm not good at ASCII Art, and quite frankly, Beastie looks excited for a literal flaming of Linux.   XD


----------



## RedPhoenix (Jun 22, 2018)

Vladimir1922 said:


> Hey, semi-new user here (I tried it before many times, but didn't manage to have proper compatibility with my hardware up to 11.1. The port system and the forceful shoveling of systemd made me look at alternatives under Linux, but I never stopped trying different variants of BSD. I managed to suceed at last with my backup thinkpad T60.
> 
> The man pages are amazing! If I don't get the WiFi working a simple "man ath0" will prompt a man page with everything I need, even if I don't know where the init scripts are located yet. Just by typing "man" and the device name! how crazy is that!? I don't need a Internet connection to set up my computer!.
> 
> ...


Yes, the man pages saved me when I set up FreeBSD on my Dell with Intel Wireless and an Nvidia Card (and the kind people on these Forums helped me out with Xorg and FreeBSD!   )   But, I eventually got, uh, shnookered and tripped and cracked my Dell's screen...      Just Caffeine now for me.


----------



## rigoletto@ (Jun 22, 2018)

Trihexagonal said:


> lebarondemerde, I've been waiting for giahung1997 to post a screenshot of his FreeBSD desktop since March and he has yet to do so to the screenshot thread. He seems more interested in efforts to detract from FreeBSD or make disparaging statements regarding it or its use than show signs of ever having used it at all.
> 
> A screenshot showing it was actually his FreeBSD desktop would shoot me down in flames without a parachute, and I will salute till I hit ground.



The screenshot machine may be lacking film.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jun 22, 2018)

RedPhoenix said:


> Oh, dear GOD man.   XD   I'm not good at ASCII Art, and quite frankly, Beastie looks excited for a literal flaming of Linux.   XD



I did that with games/cowsay. It comes with some default ASCII art in /usr/local/share/cows and Beastie forking Tux is among them. I just added the flames at the bottom to make it look like a penguin on a pitchfork picnic. I did post it at LQ though.

I don't think I'm well liked there anymore. For various reasons, that being the least of them. Nothing a little penguin pâté on my palate won't put into perspective or purge from my perception.


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## Chris_H (Jun 25, 2018)

o because it's *not* Windows
 o because it's *not* Linux
 o because it's Free*BSD*?
I guess for me, it's probably because the entire layout makes the most sense for me (System V?). I *hate* the "traditional" Linux fs layout. Tho systemd has pretty well dispensed with that.
I'm also pretty keen on the ability to easily analyse problems -- both hardware, and install/running (FreeBSD) systems. The ports(7) framework, tho it has it's warts, is _still_ better than anything the other operating systems have to offer.
I suppose to best summarize; I'd have to say it's *ease of use* in _any_ given situation. Something I _can't_ attribute to the other operating systems available -- free, or not.

This comes from someone riding (a form of) BSD, since the DEC tapes. 

--Chris


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## debguy (Jul 1, 2018)

*  %100 built from source system, guarantee against "hidden bin inserts" (though, due to size and complexity, possibly false list of contributors, this "doesn't keep them honest" like it used to)

* light fast C compiler - %101 K&R compatible (unfortunately, freeBSD moved to gcc then clang to ... make porting easier??)  and pmake .mk

* Unix compatibility (ie, adherence to sysctl).  whereas on linux they are adhering to standards that novell/anthem have modified that aren't backward compatible.  they are doing forced upgrades over there (at least ubuntu is)

I like interface compatibility (ie, sysctl(1)).  I hate people who change interfaces.  Get your own interface don't heist someone or older software's.  Interfaces should always have a version switch: so use that to add features or rename your feature as something else.

I know there's a strong push by some to make C 1/2 way like objective C and kill all old software, to follow germany's led evern mutating Unix standards that force upgrades and put a few in control.  i don't like any of that.  (if i want objective C i'll use that.  if i use C, i expect it to be 'C').  i don't want my C to be C89, C98 C2013.  i want it to be K&R C and any bull should be in #pragma where it should be.  they are just continually trying to obstruct software from building: in my opinion, leaving them holding the keys to successs is their goal

probably allot of what i liked about freeBSD 4.3 has changed.  but freeBSD tends to stick to tradition - to get new things done without "breaking everything else", and i like that

The and the Handbook is great and installs are, as far as the few i've done, are far more stable than (ie, debian) installs.

(i've tried early slackware which was linux run on a ported bsd base and loved that but had depends issues compiling software, tried redhat for rpm but also had dependency issues, switched to debian hoping there was hope in apt system only to find admins were likely crafting it to create forced upgrade situations rather than maintain compatibility and dependency: they were copying left software forcing users to change those brands they kontrolled, ie, to gcc hacks (many were made by debian admins) which found their way into making headaches for freebsd and in the end: gcc wasn't kept in freebsd - freebsd now uses clang)

LIKE ANY USER i love it when both old and new software works and without headaches.  features should be added: not be a series of broken hacks until it sticks.  i love it if i can run software and develope that way or decide to add features if i feel the need.  i don't want to be forced to continually deal with breakage or obstruction.  i feel that freeBSD is not an always broken system and hope they continue to admin the more classic freeBSD way (ie, keep tcsh because it's traditional and changing it would break tons of stuff).


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## debguy (Jul 1, 2018)

Chris_H said:


> o because it's *not* Windows
> o because it's *not* Linux
> o because it's Free*BSD*?
> --Chris



i mentioned linux,  it's the Distros that are "tenuous" morso than the kernel (which is modular - don't like a hack?  de-select it don't use it)

WIndows: probably spies on me.  But that's ok because I spy on them!  (not really, i use it for gaming or maybe for free autocad or stuff that's (free) that's for win10 only)

>  o because it's *not* Apple bsd ???

you seem to have skipped something   is bsd under apple, and making apple bsd better in tune with freeBSD a bad thing? apple bsd has some kernel compatibility enhancements, bsd userland (older though) and likely can be made further compatible (incl the build system), and can compile gpl software.  it could be the only difference would be: hw drivers which bsd is always late on (and really  - that's going to get worse not better, read today's low lever chips even small chips have enough features to give a pro a headache to just see the list let alone code and leverage)

it's a great question if user's should give up on "free" hw dev (often buggy) or demand these industries stop releasing poor hardware (ie, IGD video cards that X11 doesn't see as VESA (no new standard that isn't complicated as hades - due to usb led and all), motherboards sold without real BIOS and can't do things efficiently without "key drivers" that are withheld (hardware that performs POORLY or NOT ATALL without specially keyed drivers.  what in the old days we used to call "CHEAP")


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## ronaldlees (Jul 1, 2018)

In spite of the known fallacy of security by obscurity, such a thing as that can be moderately useful.  Linux is the target of all sorts of entities with vested interests that don't match the community's interest at all.  It's because Linux is not obscure.  So, while security may not be obtainable with obscurity, the lack of obscurity certainly impacts (heavily) security.  In spite of the common "wisdom" - I look to obscure operating systems.  FreeBSD is the least obscure of several OS's that I regularly use ...

That's a good reason to like it ...


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## Oko (Jul 1, 2018)

debguy said:


> *  %100 built from source system, guarantee against "hidden bin inserts" (though, due to size and complexity, possibly false list of contributors, this "doesn't keep them honest" like it used to)
> 
> * light fast C compiler - %101 K&R compatible (unfortunately, freeBSD moved to gcc then clang to ... make porting easier??)  and pmake .mk


+1 
BSDs should have never abandoned PCC (Stephen Johnson's Portable C Compiler) as a system only C serial compiler in favor of GCC. What people do with ports is different thing.


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## Chris_H (Jul 2, 2018)

debguy said:


> >  o because it's *not* Apple bsd ???
> 
> you seem to have skipped something   is bsd under apple, and making apple bsd better in tune with freeBSD a bad thing


No. I didn't leave it out. In fact it's my _only_ other "go to" OS.
While I have many "nits" with it. There are many things I like about it. Not the least of which; is my ability to work with/on (Free)BSD on it.
They also one-upped FreeBSD, in that they have been UNIX certified since OSX 10.5 (Leopard). Something I wish FreeBSD could have found the time to manage getting. While many insist that FreeBSD is a "UNIX like" OS. I would argue that UNIX is a "BSD like" OS; given it's heritage.

--Chris


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## hardwired (Jul 12, 2018)

I moved all my servers from Linux (Debian and Ubuntu LTS) to FreeBSD a year ago and I couldn't be happier! I really love how easy FreeBSD is to use and just how great the Handbook is. I love that everything I install (and all my configuration files) are put into one place. I love how fast my websites perform on FreeBSD and how easy upgrades are so I don't have to worry about stuff breaking. I enjoy using IPFW and PF and there's just so many ports/pkgs available to install...the list of reasons can go on and on and on!

I'm always learning something new with FreeBSD and it's just a joy to use and manage my servers.


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## stratacast1 (Jul 19, 2018)

For me, I started out being concerned with Canonical possibly becoming a publicly traded company. To me, that makes software smell of $$$ and not quality. So I initially liked FreeBSD for these reasons:

ZFS
Jails
Stability
Compiling OS from source & easy to add/subtract kernel config options for buildkernel time was pretty neat
In that time I came to like these additional things:

Separation of the base system and packages (used to like it all being combined in Linux, but not so much anymore when having to update certain packages), same goes in the filesystem layout
Service don't autostart after installing (had some fun with Linux trying to overwrite data and configs on database upgrades, even with the service stopped!)..they start when you tell it to
pkg audit
beadm
Really getting to know my system and what I run, not having an OS enable ALL THE OPTIONS in some software (like apache24)
No systemd - I like to control my /etc/resolv.conf thank you very much, stop ignoring my local network's DNS server
Stable base with rolling-esque packages on top. That was an itch I couldn't fix on any Linux distro. It was either bleeding edge to the max, or forever stale packages
What I have come to not like:

Still have some issues with KDE5, but so happy with it (whoever is doing most of the work, can I buy you a beer? Or if you don't like beer, well...doesn't have to be a beer)
I had to custom compile ffmpeg to have audio work with Firefox(?)...not sure what that's all about
All keyboard keys don't map properly out of the box. Maybe I'm not SMRT enough for this, but I can't find info I need to understand solving this issue
Still not PHP 7.x by default
Still just can't get around to trusting FreeBSD on my XPS 13 9350, it will remain being Fedora Linux...oddly every other Linux distro sucks on this laptop for me
Honestly though, I can't complain much. I've only begun using FreeBSD as a desktop OS, and overall it has been really good for me. I'm missing some pieces of software that I came to enjoy in Linux, but really, I'm okay with not having them (Spotify, DRM support in Friefox)


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## drhowarddrfine (Jul 19, 2018)

stratacast1 said:


> I had to custom compile ffmpeg to have audio work with Firefox(?)...not sure what that's all about


Not sure what you mean. I have no such issues.


stratacast1 said:


> Still not PHP 7.x by default


PHP of any kind is not installed by default. This is an issue you have with your applications, not FreeBSD.


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## stratacast1 (Jul 19, 2018)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Not sure what you mean. I have no such issues.
> 
> PHP of any kind is not installed by default. This is an issue you have with your applications, not FreeBSD.



With FreeBSD 11.1 I would frequently have no audio in Firefox, until I custom compiled ffmpeg, then the problem never came back. Did a fresh install of 11.2, have the same issue.

For PHP, I should be more clear: not that it is installed by default, but that the default version is 5.6, and that premade binaries are all made for 5.6, so you have to edit the make.conf file and set it to 7.x, and then you have to fetch files from ports and compile some for 7.x, and set pkg locks to prevent it from installing php56 and the php56 version of whatever you had to compile


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## PacketMan (Jul 20, 2018)

Hmmm, let me see, and many of these comments I have posted before:

FreeBSD is heavy duty service capable OS. That is why we see it appearing in big iron products/systems. Examples include Juniper, NetFlix, Sony PS3/4, and Nintendo Switch, as well as a slew of enterprise grade appliances. (If I had the money I would build the worlds largest supercomputer using FreeBSD and lease out compute time to the crazy intensive work loads out there; weather being one of the first that comes to mind. I'm sure the machine would shine!)
I really like this forum, and the very vast majority of the people here. The support is awesome; I only wish I had more time to spend on FreeBSD and return the help I have received.
That the base OS is minimalist, and that all the other stuff I have to choose to add on. Its the opposite of many other OSs where it comes loaded with all sorts of "we make it easy for you the dummy" code that seems to be slapped together, resulting in a machine that simply frequently: (a) requires a lot of maintence, (b) is disappointing and frustrating.
It still subscribes to the old UNIX philosophies. Some might disagree with that, but please keep in mind we have had incrediable changes in technology since the 1960s.  From my viewpoint of the world FreeBSD and other UNIX 'true like' OSs have a good future ahead of them.
It just works; as simple as you want it, or as complex as you want it!


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## MMacD (Jul 24, 2018)

RedPhoenix said:


> For me, It's because it's not Linux.   It does things differently.      I LOVE Linux, don't get me wrong.   But FreeBSD does things Linux can't.   And vice-versa.      It's like a breath of fresh air (even MORE so when coming from Windows.)   I also like FreeBSD because all I had to do to get it to work with my flat screen TV with the AMD HDMI Port was edit a simple Text File...      Also, I get so much more into FreeBSD when I have a lot of Caffeine.      What drew you guys to FreeBSD?


Well, one thing  I really _don't_ like is the way it seems to be becoming more like Linux every day.  Another is the mayfly-length life of each new release, and the purge of older versions.  Maintainers these days seem to be infected by the gamer mindset:  gotta have new latest-and-greatest bits every few months, even if the changes are insignificant for most real-world applications.


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## PacketMan (Jul 25, 2018)

MMacD said:


> ......Another is the mayfly-length life of each new release, and the purge of older versions.  Maintainers these days seem to be infected by the gamer mindset:  gotta have new latest-and-greatest bits every few months, even if the changes are insignificant for most real-world applications.



I agree. Perhaps we can ignore the gaming world, but the rest of the world sorely needs to get back to a software development, and management system where users can select a train of code that provides long time debugging support.

I am a big fan of a red yellow green three train model:

Red - code base contains newly developed code (features/functionality), and ongoing releases contain more new coding and minimal debugging has been done.
Yellow - code development has been locked down, debugging begins, thus amount of debugging so far is less than green code, say 3 months.
Green - code has been been debugged for set amount of time (say 1 year), and will continue to be debugged until end of life (say a total of 3 years).

This would allow users to test and explore new features in a lab using red code, yet allow same users to deploy rock solid mature (green) code in the production environment. And the yellow code would be used in those situations where a compromise is required.

So back to FreeBSD I would love to have this as my OS migration path: 10.3.12 > 10.4.12 > 10.5.12 > 11.1.12 > 11.2.12 > 11.3.12> 11.4.12> 13.1.12 >etc, etc.  I will need to become a billionaire I guess so I can support FreeBSD with the money required to make this sort of code development support a reality.


Sorry I've gone off the rails again.


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## tankist02 (Jul 26, 2018)

PacketMan said:


> Hmmm, let me see, and many of these comments I have posted before:
> 
> (If I had the money I would build the worlds largest supercomputer using FreeBSD and lease out compute time to the crazy intensive work loads out there; weather being one of the first that comes to mind. I'm sure the machine would shine!



For some reason FreeBSD disappeared from the list of top 500 supercomputers. It is all Linux now. Why?


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## nihr43 (Jul 26, 2018)

tankist02 said:


> For some reason FreeBSD disappeared from the list of top 500 supercomputers. It is all Linux now. Why?



CUDA.  and inifiniband support has to be compiled in manually.  Most sysadmins really really don't like that.

Even infiniband is becoming a thing of the past now.  100Gb mellanox infiniband exists, but Intel Omni-Path is much more popular as the new 100Gbps rdma technology, and I highly doubt it will ever come to BSD.  see: cpus plugged directly into network

Also the vast majority of common HPC software (such as whats available in the spack package manager) is exclusively released for centos.


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## connchri (Aug 4, 2018)

elmarko1 said:


> Freebsd love, well love and hate all in one, pain in ass to get things going but once you do elation kicks in.
> but i could best descibe it like this
> windows ....works but everyone knows you are using it and everything you do is tracked logged spyed stolen and hijacked.
> 
> ...



Pretty much the same reasons here.  Although besides a few issues (That I know is due to some weird quirks with the hardware I'm using), I've not struggled to get started.

I've just finished up with a company that went tits up a few months ago.  I inherited their IT hardware, so I've a few toys to play with. It was a small company, but I was the IT/Electrical/Technical guru.  Everything was virtualised on an old HP XW6600 (20GB ECC RAM and two Quad Core Xeons, and a simple Mirrored RAID array via a P400 card).  It was virtualised via Windows Server 2012, having CentOS, Ubuntu, Windows2012, and FreeBSD Virtual Machines.  All with their own purposes - but the Linux's kept throwing up issues for one reason or another.  FreeBSD - it just kept going and going and going and going and go.... you get the point.  Windows?  Well, I had no complaints either.

I'm not a professional IT administrator - I'm an Electronics and Electrical Engineer to trade who jumped ship when the last coal power Station in the country closed. But I've always been a geek of sorts with IT.  I've tried numerous times over the last few years to get to proper grips with Linux - but if you spend any time away from it, no matter how small, it's hard to keep up - it's too much of a moving target, and I'm too slow (or too busy to invest the needed time and energy) to keep up to date with it.  FreeBSD?  My impression from the online guide and forums is it's more organised, and slower to change - I can spent time to properly learn how to use it without being concerned of being too out of date next time I use it.  I like the fact that it's the entire O/S that is FreeBSD, and not thrown together by different tools from GNU to make the OS.

I started, two weeks ago when I got some time off, to sit with a notepad and really try to learn that OS.  Now at home I have my web server up and running, a mail server (still waiting on the ISP to sort out my PTR record), a file server, and my databases up and running in Jails, isolated by vLANs, behind a nice SMB router and enterprise switch, I have ZFS (without scrubbing) and snapshots automatically backing up certian mount points nightly on an external Hard Drive.  And I understand now how to administer all of this - there are parts where I've needed to come to the forum to clarify something, but on the whole the quality of the guide and the fact it's not as fast a moving target makes me confident that I'll not be pulling my hair out when it comes to update.  I simply couldn't do this with Linux - the manuals don't exist, and where they do, they are out of date or fragmented.

Oh, and btw, I have all the above on a single Via Eden 1GHz CPU with only 2GB of RAM.  Its a modified Dell FX130 - with a couple of USB drives.   It's not going to break any speed records, but it's quiet and doest the job with (believe it or not), next to no CPU utilisation.

Because of work needs (and the fact I have had to invest so much time in getting it to run as cleanly and as leanly as I can), I have Windows on the laptop.  It's a lenovo with a docking station and what not - the chances of FreeBSD or Linux/GNU meeting my current needs are slim to none.  But for serving, FreeBSD has been gold.

Anyway, enough about all that.  What do I like about FreeBSD?

Easy to find out how to do something.
Helpful forum, from contributers who appear, so far at least, to actually "know" the O/S (not just script jockies that found out how to do the task last week)
Jails
Easy config of networks
Not a fast moving target to learn - it's sane!
Has such low demands of hardware it could probably run on an empty crisp packet - it actually runs the FX130 supporting all it's hardware! (WTF? it's a thin client from over a decade ago with an obscure CPU - yet it supports the cryto acceleration of that CPU!!!)
Supports my UPS.
It behaves itself for long long periods of time.

Things I am worried about:
That it may fade into obscurity and become useless by lack of use and relavence.  I hope the above reasons keep it going, but the world - in many occupations, even deemed professional - is become more infatuated with "shiny shiny bling" (I'm a grumpy old man at heart).


PacketMan said:


> I will need to become a billionaire I guess so I can support FreeBSD with the money required to make this sort of code development support a reality.



I have a game plan, and if I ever make it big, I'd throw serious dosh at FreeBSD too.  It's too good to disapear.


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## drhowarddrfine (Aug 4, 2018)

connchri said:


> Things I am worried about:
> That it may fade into obscurity and become useless by lack of use and relavence.


Something well over a documented 40% of all internet traffic runs through a FreeBSD operating system so, no, lack of use and relevance are not issues.


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## connchri (Aug 4, 2018)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Something well over a documented 40% of all internet traffic runs through a FreeBSD operating system so, no, lack of use and relevance are not issues.



I don't doubt it.  However, I am aware of some, erm, 'percieved' political issues with FreeBSD - not that I am in anyway aquinted with it.  And I am aware that things can change - quickly.  I just hope that it doesn't hamper FreeBSD.

There was a time when Apache dominated web serving.  Nginx has swiftly taken the crown - at least with the top 10,000 or so websites - and continues to grow market share.  Yet at some point, last year if I remember, there was a period when it didn't have a ports maintainer on FreeBSD.  For something as important as Nginx,  On an O/S priding itself on serving,  This was a worry.

I'm not fortelling anything, as I doubt Apache is going anywhere soon either.  But if I had any possible concerns with FreeBSD, this would be it. Especially since the majority of your quoted "40% of all internet traffic" is probably attributed to a single service - NetFlix.  All it would take is for them to move to another platform and that 40% shrinks significantly.  I'd concern myself more with distribution of market penetration as opposed to the % network traffic - video requries high bandwidth afterall.  That's just me though, and that's why it's my worry...


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## drhowarddrfine (Aug 4, 2018)

connchri said:


> Especially since the majority of your quoted "40% of all internet traffic" is probably attributed to a single service - NetFlix.


It is. Which is why I said it's "well over 40%" because Netflix documented that number. So 40% is a bare minimum. So now let's consider how many Juniper network devices are installed which run FreeBSD. I don't know except it's a huge amount. And on and on.


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## ralphbsz (Aug 4, 2018)

On a Jupiter network router, the traffic does not flow "through" FreeBSD.  The actual traffic goes over a data plane, which is mostly hardware and custom stuff.  FreeBSD is the control plane: it configures the data plane.

I don't know how Netflix serves content these days. In the early days, they had their own servers (and data center), and machines running FreeBSD there.  Today, Netflix mostly uses 3rd party cloud providers (silicon valley is full of rumors of what provider they use), and it is not even clear whether Netflix still uses its own CDN (content distribution network) machines at the edge of the core network, or has outsourced that too.  And we also don't know what OS Netflix uses on the machines it rents in the cloud.  So I'm no longer sure that Netflix is a FreeBSD shop.

The other problem with claiming that traffic from Netflix, or traffic through Jupiter, should be counted towards FreeBSD, is that you end up massively double-counting the traffic.  If you watch a video on Netflix or Youtube (and I think video is a large fraction of all internet traffic these days), the traffic goes from a server inside a data center owned by some cloud provider, over a whole series of routers (built by multiple vendors), to a public network, to an edge POP with more routers, and to your provider.  On the way, it probably goes through Cisco routers about 10 times.  So I could truthfully claim that "1000% of all internet traffic goes through Cisco".


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## drhowarddrfine (Aug 5, 2018)

ralphbsz
Netflix is a FreeBSD shop.
All Netflix video is served by FreeBSD servers around the world.
Netflix contributes to the FreeBSD kernel including sendfile() to greatly improve throughput as well as monetary contributions.


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## Beastie7 (Aug 5, 2018)

ralphbsz said:


> On a Jupiter network router, the traffic does not flow "through" FreeBSD.  The actual traffic goes over a data plane, which is mostly hardware and custom stuff.  FreeBSD is the control plane: it configures the data plane.
> 
> I don't know how Netflix serves content these days. In the early days, they had their own servers (and data center), and machines running FreeBSD there.  Today, Netflix mostly uses 3rd party cloud providers (silicon valley is full of rumors of what provider they use), and it is not even clear whether Netflix still uses its own CDN (content distribution network) machines at the edge of the core network, or has outsourced that too.  And we also don't know what OS Netflix uses on the machines it rents in the cloud.  So I'm no longer sure that Netflix is a FreeBSD shop.
> 
> The other problem with claiming that traffic from Netflix, or traffic through Jupiter, should be counted towards FreeBSD, is that you end up massively double-counting the traffic.  If you watch a video on Netflix or Youtube (and I think video is a large fraction of all internet traffic these days), the traffic goes from a server inside a data center owned by some cloud provider, over a whole series of routers (built by multiple vendors), to a public network, to an edge POP with more routers, and to your provider.  On the way, it probably goes through Cisco routers about 10 times.  So I could truthfully claim that "1000% of all internet traffic goes through Cisco".



Netflix's OCA (Open Connect Appliance) CDN is pure FreeBSD, and it's still (and has been for years) in use today across their global infrastructure.

Their web application infrastructure runs on rented VMs in Amazons AWS. This is what they gave us a few years ago.

The rest of your comment is conjecture, at best.


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## ralphbsz (Aug 5, 2018)

Thank you for the clarification.  Knowing that they had outsourced to a cloud provider, I was not sure what OS they were using.


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## PacketMan (Aug 9, 2018)

ralphbsz said:


> On a Jupiter network router, the traffic does not flow "through" FreeBSD.  The actual traffic goes over a data plane, which is mostly hardware and custom stuff.  FreeBSD is the control plane: it configures the data plane.
> 
> I don't know how Netflix serves content these days. In the early days, they had their own servers (and data center), and machines running FreeBSD there.  .......... On the way, it probably goes through Cisco routers about 10 times.  So I could truthfully claim that "1000% of all internet traffic goes through Cisco".



Firstly, racks and racks full of Netflix caches spread around the earth, are alive and well. 

Secondly, its semantics to say traffic does not flow through the FreeBSD inside a Juniper router.  FreeBSD made the Juniper router possible, just like the Cisco IOS code made the Cisco router possible, and without it the router would not work. Whether all the bits of data go through the actual OS or not is moot to me. I would even challenge that a platform design that allows most of the data to not go through the OS, that the OS is the 'governor' of the machine, is simply smart design.

But you are right about how we 'measure and add up' how much traffic goes through a certain vendor or OS.  We often think Layer 2 and 3 (switching and routing), but who measures vendors at the Transport (Layer 1) layer?  Some folks would be surprised to learn that boat loads of Internet traffic flows through Fujitsu fiber optic transport systems.

What I've said before is that FreeBSD is a heavy-duty capable OS, that allows for the production of products that are rock-solid heavy-duty.  That is (also) what I love about it.  If I were a brass hat executive knowing what I know now, at a large heavy weight financial institution, I would be asking the 'IT shop" why FreeBSD is not used more, and I would be pressuring the market to provide well design products based on the FreeBSD OS. I think that highly of it.  And while I used finance as an example, any large scale critical real-time system could be named.

FreeBSD's single biggest issue right now is its marketing.  The vast majority of 'uninformed' people still think its a hobby OS not mature enough for the real world.  Even the freebsd.org website looks hobbyist, however the freebsdfoundation.org site looks quite professional.  I think its time for FreeBSD to have a marketing makeover, including dropping the beastie character in its main marketing materials, and sell itself to the heavy-duty server software application companies of the world. Sell it right and they will see the ROI.


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## connchri (Aug 9, 2018)

PacketMan said:


> I would be asking the 'IT shop" why FreeBSD is not used more, and I would be pressuring the market to provide well design products based on the FreeBSD OS. I think that highly of it.  And while I used finance as an example, any large scale critical real-time system could be named.
> 
> FreeBSD's single biggest issue right now is its marketing.  The vast majority of 'uninformed' people still think its a hobby OS not mature enough for the real world.  Even the freebsd.org website looks hobbyist, however the freebsdfoundation.org site looks quite professional.  I think its time for FreeBSD to have a marketing makeover, including dropping the beastie character in its main marketing materials, and sell itself to the heavy-duty server software application companies of the world. Sell it right and they will see the ROI.



Interesting that you brought this up.  I was watching this youtube video last night, here, with George Neville-Neil, and he was asked this very question (Why FreeBSD isn't used as much).  He brought up a few reasons why FreeBSD isn't as popular, but his most convincing answer, for me anyway, was the lack of "Red Hats, Suses, and Canonicals" in the BSD world, and he goes on to explain, and use as examples, that some big iron users of Linux will pay $2,000 per CPU for support, and that no FreeBSD equivilant exists.  It's a good watch.  To paraphrase him, when it comes to missions critical applciations, senior managment want insurance, and whereas you can get that insurance via paid for support for Linux, it is lacking with FreeBSD.  The technical merits simply don't matter - when it comes to risk management and bean counters, they want someone to blame/sue/fix it. None of the BSD's offer that.

Perhaps there is a business oppertunity right there.  Perhaps the FreeBSD foundation should get more commercially active?


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## scott22 (Aug 9, 2018)

It’s classic. It’s more Unix-like. It’s not always easier but it it’s simpler. And oh, I love the packaging system


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## xtremae (Aug 9, 2018)

Yeah, this is to be expected in both consumer and corporate levels. I don't know how many people would risk spending $1000 on a new laptop hoping to run FreeBSD, over an XPS running _xyz_ linux. If the _investment_ with FreeBSD doesn't pan out (unsupported hw etc), getting support from the the handbook and forums won't be enough.


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## Nicola Mingotti (Aug 9, 2018)

In short: This Forum !

Linux is not comparable to FreeBSD, but other BSD are, and they are also very good.


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## Beastie7 (Aug 10, 2018)

connchri said:


> Perhaps there is a business oppertunity right there. Perhaps the FreeBSD foundation should get more commercially active?



The reason FreeBSD lacks a Red Hat, or Canonical, etc is because the project itself already does in a way what those those companies do; ie. releasing engineering, support, administration, etc. It's all a communal effort that's already structured that way in how Red Hat or Canonical, does things. 

If you observe the projects administration; FreeBSD already has a 5 year support cycle and a "stable" release that there's literally no void to fill that would allow such a business model to sustain itself.

If there were a support company backing FreeBSD; they would be in direct competition with the FreeBSD project itself, and all of its contributors; which would be ugly, IMO. It's kind of a catch 22 problem. At least that's how I see it.

Also, the foundation is a 501c3 non-profit organization; their status would get revoked if they became more commercial i believe.


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## connchri (Aug 10, 2018)

Beastie7 said:


> The reason FreeBSD lacks a Red Hat, or Canonical, etc is because the project itself already does in a way what those those companies do; ie. releasing engineering, support, administration, etc. It's all a communal effort that's already structured that way in how Red Hat or Canonical, does things.
> 
> If you observe the projects administration; FreeBSD already has a 5 year support cycle and a "stable" release that there's literally no void to fill that would allow such a business model to sustain itself.
> 
> ...



I didn't factor in the non-profit part.  However I disagree with the rest.

We're not talking about support cycles in terms of patches and bug fixes for the lifetime of the O/S release.  We're (I'm) talking about people being available or on site or SSH in to get a downed server back up on it's feet as per a service contract/SLA - in that guise there isn't a Red Hat, and the likes, equivilant for FreeBSD - not in scale anyway.  If I'm mistaken, I'd be curious as to who can provide it.  That's the void right there.  If you watch the video, it explains it a bit better than I care to elaborate.

I fail to see the 'direct competition' that would arise - Red Hat is not in direct competition with the Linux Kernel team - quite the contrary, the amount of upstream bug fixes and contributions from Red Hat to the Linux Kernal is an advantage, and the other comercial interests, that arguably have grown from having such support increasing its uptake have supported, not threatened, the position of linux.

Companies do turn to Red Hat, Conanical, and Suse for support - and pay top dollar for it.  Clearly an 'insurance' is important to some.  Otherwise Red Hat wouldn't have revenued almost $3 Billion last year...


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## Beastie7 (Aug 10, 2018)

connchri said:


> We're (I'm) talking about people being available or on site or SSH in to get a downed server back up on it's feet as per a service contract/SLA - in that guise there isn't a Red Hat, and the likes, equivilant for FreeBSD - not in scale anyway. If I'm mistaken, I'd be curious as to who can provide it.



Yes, and this requires said company to distribute their own release of FreeBSD. Thus, the rationale I mentioned.

If you're just talking about on-call support; there are already tons of companies that provide support contracts for one-off tasks like what you've mentioned. This is a small portion of Red Hat or Canonical support contracts.

I'm talking about the entirety of Canonicals or RedHat business model; which involves that, and much more.



connchri said:


> I fail to see the 'direct competition' that would arise - Red Hat is not in direct competition with the Linux Kernel team - quite the contrary, the amount of upstream bug fixes and contributions from Red Hat to the Linux Kernal is an advantage, and the other comercial interests, that arguably have grown from having such support increasing its uptake have supported, not threatened, the position of linux



This works precisely because RedHat or Canonical does not own the Linux or GNU stack, as well and Linux and GNU being polarizing entities. Also, because GNU/Linux and FreeBSD designed and structure differently, this comparison isn't really applicable.

How do you suppose a company will provide support for FreeBSD, itself? I supposed you can probably have company "X" log into a home-brewed system. What about liability? That'd be a recipe for disaster.

Company "X" would need their own spin off of FreeBSD itself in order to provide such services. Thus, this is where the competition issue would arise. This project is already self regulating like a company.


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## connchri (Aug 10, 2018)

Beastie7 said:


> Yes, and this requires said company to distribute their own release of FreeBSD. Thus, the rationale I mentioned.



I don't see how it is an absolute requirement.  However I would see the advantage if they did for, say to control what versions of software they would be willing to support. But I think you are missing the context of the entire point here - the question put, or the question answered after a few iterations of it, was why FreeBSD hasn't made it the same way as Linux in the coorporate market, with Packetman citing he'd pull up his IT shop.  A legitimate answer is the same support that would be acceptable for a suit and tie doesn't exist for FreeBSD.

Not having this is undoubtably one of the reasons why Linux has greater penetration in different markets, along with the timing and legal issues cited in that we video that FreeBSD encountered.



Beastie7 said:


> If you're just talking about on-call support; there are already tons of companies that provide support contracts for one-off tasks like what you've mentioned. This is a small portion of Red Hat or Canonical support contracts.


No it is not what I'm talking about.  It's the other portion of support that Red Had and Canonical provide.  Hence the mention of SLA, the metaphorical situation of some one to 'sue'... surely this was clear?  I'll spell it out - someone big enough and deep enough in the code to charge $thousands per CPU to be confident enough to say something along the lines of - "We'll ensure that your application is up and running 99.99% of the time with a 4 hour resolve time. and we'll throw big money at it if we don't".  I don't mean your telephone support when you have a permission issue.



Beastie7 said:


> This works precisely because RedHat or Canonical does not own the Linux or GNU stack, as well and Linux and GNU being polarizing entities. Also, because GNU/Linux and FreeBSD designed and structure differently, this comparison isn't really applicable... would need their own spin off of FreeBSD itself in order to provide such services.


Perhaps so.  But so what.  I don't find it terribly objectionable.  I can't find the post, but someone mentioned that the percieved obscurity of FreeBSD, and BSD's in general, relegate it to hobbyist and fringe application in the minds of some of those who make the decisions.  Getting BSD's more comercially available and supported would improve it's popularity and image.  Look at the amount of code shared between FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonflyBSD - why fear a commericial addition if it was founded on the right principals?  Even not, getting the BSD name out there would help the 'free' BSDs image.

I understand that the model is different in terms of how the projects are managed/owned/controlled.  I don't see it's practicable differences, or how they would manifest, should a 'Red Hat' FreeBSD turn up over night.  And Red Hat does a good job at using their trademark as a way of controlling 'their' O/S.  (OK, so there's CentOS, but that's not what is being put on big iron in the cooporate world where RH are getting their $3Billion a year from)

I simply posit, well actually George Neville-Neil does - I just buy into it, that having no Red Hat, and co, equivalent has not done FreeBSD any favours in terms of uptake in certain situations.  That is it.  I don't get how this is such an objectable POV.  It reads as common sense to me.  It could be argued that it was exactly this that brought Linux from fringe to comercial adoption.  Suits and ties at times simply don't care for techical merit - they want high levels of insurance/guranteed support - on FreeBSD you can't get it.  Quite frankly the issues inccured from having 'Red Hat' BSD would mean different things to different people - but I don't believe it would harm BSD, I think quite the opposite actually.

Anyway, I'm hardly in a position to have a professional opinion on it.


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## Beastie7 (Aug 10, 2018)

connchri said:


> But I think you are missing the context of the entire point here - the question put, or the question answered after a few iterations of it, was why FreeBSD hasn't made it the same way as Linux in the coorporate market, with Packetman citing he'd pull up his IT shop.



Does it really matter if FreeBSD has "made it" the same way Linux has in the corporate market? iXsystems is the most popular open source storage vendor, with many customers from different markets, I would say FreeBSD has "made it" fine so far.

I understand the problem clearly, and it's something i've already advocated for years ago. I'm simply telling you why it hasn't so far, and the predicament.

If you understood how the Project is administered my argument would be much clearer; perhaps not.

From Peter Wemm on reddit;



> It's a long and complicated story. The super short version is that the project has done just enough in the way of support, release engineering, etc (all the things that the Red Hats of the Linux world do) that there was no clear void to fill. The problem is that the project does this on volunteer time and spreads itself too thin in the process so we end up in the situation that we're in now. Our folks put their hearts and souls into it, but that isn't exactly a solution. The fact that we even have a "stable" and 5 year patch cycles prevents a void big enough to make a business around.
> 
> In spite of that, there is a support company - see the Xinuos folks. They do paid 10-year extended support on their spin of FreeBSD - aka OpenServer 10. The catch is that their business model is a lifeline for old legacy SCO binaries, not supporting FreeBSD in its own right. They would love to, but we (the project) would be competing with them.
> 
> And that's the predicament.



This isn't anything new.



connchri said:


> No it is not what I'm talking about. It's the other portion of support that Red Had and Canonical provide. Hence the mention of SLA, the metaphorical situation of some one to 'sue'... surely this was clear? I'll spell it out - someone big enough and deep enough in the code to charge $thousands per CPU to be confident enough to say something along the lines of - "We'll ensure that your application is up and running 99.99% of the time with a 4 hour resolve time. and we'll throw big money at it if we don't". I don't mean your telephone support when you have a permission issue.



You're not being consistent here. Again, companies already exist to provide this type of support. Review this link for more details.


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## connchri (Aug 10, 2018)

Beastie7 said:


> Does it really matter if FreeBSD has "made it"


No.  And I didn't say it was.  But it was the question.  Someone asked the question, I proposed an answer.



Beastie7 said:


> I understand the problem clearly, and it's something i've already advocated for years ago. I'm simply telling you why it hasn't so far, and the predicament.


This is perhaps the crux of out little debate here.  I wasn't positing a problem, or citing that one even exists - I was making an observation, because I'm not qualified to offer anything to any such 'problem'.  You are being overly zelous on the defence of something that I haven't articulated.



> It's a long and complicated story. The super short version is that *the project has done* just enough in the way of support, release engineering, etc (all the things that the Red Hats of the Linux world do) that there was no clear void to fill. *The problem is that the project does this on volunteer* *time and spreads itself too thin *in the process so we end up in the situation that we're in now. Our folks put their hearts and souls into it, *but that isn't exactly a solution*. The fact that we even have a "stable" and 5 year patch cycles _*prevents a void big enough to make a business around*_.
> 
> In spite of that, there is a support company - see the Xinuos folks. They do paid 10-year extended support on their spin of FreeBSD - aka OpenServer 10. *The catch is that their business model is a lifeline for old legacy SCO binaries, not supporting FreeBSD in its own right.* They would love to, but we (the project) would be competing with them.



Things is bold only: Precisely the point I was making - simply not suitable for a suit and tie.  Admittantly *"isn't exactly a solution*" - his words, not mine.
Things in bold and italics: Exactly why Xinuous isn't a good example and why it's still no Red Hat.



Beastie7 said:


> This isn't anything new.


I didn't say it was.



Beastie7 said:


> You're not being consistent here. Again, companies already exist to provide this type of support. Review this link for more details.


I had previously already looked at this of my own back - didn't want to be completely ignorant.  However, there's not a Red Hat equivilent there - consultants don't quite cut it for a turn key solution to support with pockets to throw significant money at problems.  How many coders are at Red Hat?  How many consultants in that list have the same involvement in the code base that RH does?  They are not comparable.  Consistancy?  Since when have I mentioned anything other than SLA/Big Iron comercial/Insurance support when the topic arose?  The video I linked to first post I made concern all this was solely in this context - you changed the goal posts to "If you're just talking about on-call support; there are already tons of companies that provide support contracts for one-off tasks ", when I had made it clear previous that wasn't what I was meaning.  Not in software, but in Engineering, I have worked in consultant roles with big turn key suppliers.  Atkins - Red Hat is an equivilent in the software world.  There is no such Turn Key providers in the BSD.

As for Xinuos, thanks for the link - as I infered, I was hardly qualified to have a valid opinion on the matter.  However, they are still not comparable to RH in terms of size and services.

But this is growing arms and legs and is getting into places that was never intended.  All of the above is taking this conversation away from my post in reply to Packetman...

I think you need to step back a bit and understand what I am saying here.  I am not trying to argue the merits of how the project is run, or cast judgement - it's completely irrelevent, and in the context of this thread, I really don't care.  I'm simply trying to answer a question/prompted to answer as to why FreeBSD doesn't quite have the same go-to aurora about it as Linux does.  A suit and tie doesn't care for if the project just offers enough support or not to justify a comercial venture to provide that support, nor do I and it's not the point I was making - that's a FreeBSD Project concern, that's FreeBSD's 'predicament'.  The suit and tie just cares that it is available, and in many use cases it isn't > hence why it's not in places where Linux is > hence why it doesn't get quite the same following > hence why, as Packetman put it, "The vast majority of 'uninformed' people still think its a hobby OS ".

I flirted with the idea on one line, but it was immaterial to the answer given to the question ("*Perhaps *there is a business opportunity right there.  *Perhaps *the FreeBSD foundation should get more commercially active? ").  I.E. Perhaps there is space for a 'Red Hat' BSD.  By all accounts of your citation of Peter Wemm, he recognises that currently there isn't a solution.  And I understand the predicament.  I was simply fanatising about a possible solution, in one line, after attempting to put forward a reason to a 'question'.  I've now stated more than once that I am not in a position to have a qualified opinion on it.



Beastie7 said:


> If you understood how the Project is administered my *argument *would be much clearer; perhaps not.



You're having an argument, I'm not.


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## Beastie7 (Aug 10, 2018)

connchri said:


> I am not trying to argue the merits of how the project is run, or cast judgement - it's completely irrelevent



No, it is not irrelevant.

It's funny; you insist on misinterpreting my argument, then cast rebuttals on that misinterpretation. 

There is no equivalent of a "RedHat" (whatever that term encompasses) for FreeBSD, yes; I'm well aware of this, and I would like if there were. I'm simply telling you why there hasn't been, and why it's a hard and complicated problem. It doesn't get any simpler than that.

I provided sources of support, and you insist on changing your position on what "SLAs" or "insurance support" means. This is where I will stop my debating.



connchri said:


> You're having an argument, I'm not.



We're in a discussion that involves polarizing viewpoints; you are arguing.


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## connchri (Aug 10, 2018)

Beastie7 said:


> No, it is not irrelevant.


Why is my, uneducated and inexperienced, view on how the project is run relavent? it simply isn't.



Beastie7 said:


> It's funny; you insist on misinterpreting my argument, then cast rebuttals on that misinterpretation.


Funny that, because I was thinking the same.  You're the one 'arguing' *why *the FreeBSD project doesn't do something that someone else does, when I never claimed to have questioned why in the first place.  I *stated *simply that they didn't do that something - an observation, and my comments pretty much have been limited to that - I have not once argued a reason as to why FreeBSD doesn't offer RH level of support. I have actually explicited stated that.  Additionally, I haven't actually rebuttaled anything of what you have said, I used the quote of Peter Wemm that you provided to clarify the point I was making, and I found the rest was actually quite informative.



Beastie7 said:


> There is no equivalent of a "RedHat" (whatever that term encompasses) for FreeBSD, yes; I'm well aware of this, and I would like if there were.


Good, glad we agree on something.  Also, you need to step back a bit, it wasn't purely for your reading - I was under no illusion that you weren't aware of this.



Beastie7 said:


> I'm simply telling you why there hasn't been, and why it's a hard and complicated problem. It doesn't get any simpler than that.


But here's the crux, I didn't ask or argue about the *why*.  I stated that it's simply the way of the land as of now - and you've conjoured up this 'argument' from that.



Beastie7 said:


> I provided sources of support, and you insist on changing your position on what "SLAs" or "insurance support" means. This is where I will stop my debating.


I haven't clearly defined, myself, what I meant by SLA or Insurance Support in this context, I made an "ass" out of "u" and "me" and "assume"d you knew.  You didn't ask otherwise, so how can you infer I changed any position?

If you watched the video, the context becomes very clear, and that George Neville-Neil was very much talking about the level of support offered by large Turn Key providers (hence I brought them up in my last post).  The constant citation of RH, Canonical, Suse and some considiration of what makes them stand out, would also help with the context and defination of SLA/Insurance support.  I can't help it if you missed the context here or failed to ask.  I did clairify when you mentioned call support that this isn't what is meant.  If you think clarification = changing position, I can't help you there. My position was fixed.



Beastie7 said:


> We're in a discussion that involves polarizing viewpoints; you are arguing.


I think someone's ego has clouded their vision.  You were arguing with yourself (and we seem to be arguing over the 'argument') - I've simply stated, as we seem to agree on, that no equivilent exists, and gave a few hypothetical arguments as to why it may affect the uptake/image of FreeBSD - that is all I have stated on the matter.  You have imagined this 'argument' about *why *there is no RH equvilent, insist on 'arguing' and explaining *why *a 'RH' BSD doesn't exist, and the problems surrounding one coming about when *it has never been about why it doesn't exist, but more on how it may affect FreeBSD's image/uptake/etc*.  We can't have polarising viewpoints when we are talking about a different thing.  Where have I 'argued' about *why *there is no 'RH' like support for FreeBSD?  What is my position and thoughts as to why it doesn't exist?  You don't know, because I haven't made such a case.  At all.  I have been very consistent in not making any sort of written judgment on the reasons for the lack of RH equivalent. I have reserved my statments to nothing other than the fact that there isn't one.



Beastie7 said:


> This is where I will stop my debating.


Yeah, ok...  I suggest to re-read what has been said, so you don't accidentally fall down the trap of having a 'debate' over something that was never said.  It might prevent the compulsion, in this case by myself, to defend the constant miss-intrepreation of what has been said.  It wastes both our time.


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## RedPhoenix (Aug 17, 2018)

PacketMan said:


> Hmmm, let me see, and many of these comments I have posted before:
> 
> FreeBSD is heavy duty service capable OS. That is why we see it appearing in big iron products/systems. Examples include Juniper, NetFlix, Sony PS3/4, and Nintendo Switch, as well as a slew of enterprise grade appliances. (If I had the money I would build the worlds largest supercomputer using FreeBSD and lease out compute time to the crazy intensive work loads out there; weather being one of the first that comes to mind. I'm sure the machine would shine!)
> I really like this forum, and the very vast majority of the people here. The support is awesome; I only wish I had more time to spend on FreeBSD and return the help I have received.
> ...


Which reminds me...      I'm working on a new FreeBSD-based OS, called FreOn!     Like the fridge chemical.   :3   I cheleose FreeBSD because it's stable.      I don't know if I'm good enough to finish it though.   XD


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## CoTones (Aug 18, 2018)

RedPhoenix said:


> For me, It's because it's not Linux.   It does things differently.      I LOVE Linux, don't get me wrong.   But FreeBSD does things Linux can't.   And vice-versa.      It's like a breath of fresh air (even MORE so when coming from Windows.)   I also like FreeBSD because all I had to do to get it to work with my flat screen TV with the AMD HDMI Port was edit a simple Text File...      Also, I get so much more into FreeBSD when I have a lot of Caffeine.      What drew you guys to FreeBSD?



I wonder why ALWAYS its about Linux. Why not compare with Windows or MacOS?

Anyway FreeBSD is nice OS. Biggest issue lately became 
https://goblinrefuge.com/mediagoblin/u/car/m/users/


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## RedPhoenix (Aug 18, 2018)

CoTones said:


> I wonder why ALWAYS its about Linux. Why not compare with Windows or MacOS?
> 
> Anyway FreeBSD is nice OS. Biggest issue lately became
> https://goblinrefuge.com/mediagoblin/u/car/m/users/


Because Linux is the most used Unix-like OS.   And macOS is BSD.   Windows, however, could be a more appropriate conversion (typo: comparison).   But I said what I liked about FreeBSD.      And I like Linux too.


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## alexseitsinger (Aug 18, 2018)

Jails are great. I also have to agree that its pretty cool that FreeBSD doesn't seems to change dramatically that frequently. Though, i'm not sure if this is because the development is slower or because things don't need to change. Either way, it makes it less overwhelming to become familiar with it. However, the downside is hardware/software support can be lacking here and there.


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## alexseitsinger (Aug 18, 2018)

RedPhoenix said:


> Which reminds me...      I'm working on a new FreeBSD-based OS, called FreOn!     Like the fridge chemical.   :3   I cheleose FreeBSD because it's stable.      I don't know if I'm good enough to finish it though.   XD



You might be challenged by Google's graphics stack named Freon . What does your OS do differently?


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## RedPhoenix (Aug 18, 2018)

alexseitsinger said:


> You might be challenged by Google's graphics stack named Freon . What does your OS do differently?


Lol, I didn't think about that.      Well, it doesn't do much yet...  I have yet to have a Drive big enough to compile it, and do any real extensive work.      Also, I'm thinking about making it humorous...   I want it to pep up it's users.


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## RedPhoenix (Aug 18, 2018)

alexseitsinger said:


> Jails are great. I also have to agree that its pretty cool that FreeBSD doesn't seems to change dramatically that frequently. Though, i'm not sure if this is because the development is slower or because things don't need to change. Either way, it makes it less overwhelming to become familiar with it. However, the downside is hardware/software support can be lacking here and there.


Yeah.      I should really get into learning Jails more.      But as for Hardware support, I think that FreeBSD is where Linux was some years back.      People are also starting to want to use it as more than just an appliance and/or Server driver.   But it won't be long.      I just posted a Thread yesterday about getting WiFi and Graphics working on my HP 15-bs212wm.   Here's hoping...!


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