by open-source-ux on 7/5/23, 4:25 PM with 131 comments
by glassfish on 7/5/23, 5:11 PM
Things I appreciate about FreeBSD:
- init system (with real PIDs).
- FreeBSD documentation.
- installation experience (fast and hassle-free).
- stability, consistency and low memory usage.
- DWM / XFCE works great.
- ease of configuring PF
However, there are some main impediments that prevents me from using it as my daily driver:
- WiFi drivers don't work unless it's a ThinkPad I think (specifically Broadcom 4360 on old Macbooks), I bought a Realtek USB WiFi adapter, which works but with reduced performance.
- There are sketchy sound driver issues with the laptop speakers, resulting in tinny sound.
- Bluetooth doesn't work at all, although my BOSS system shows up on hcinquiry.
by tiffanyh on 7/5/23, 5:48 PM
Really wish there wasn't a split between FreeBSD & Matt Dillon 20-years ago, since DragonflyBSD is so strong and yet FreeBSD hasn't benefited from it's innovations.
They'd truly would be better together than apart.
Can only imagine how much stronger the BSD ecosystem would be overall today, if the past 20-years these teams had been together.
Announcement:
https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2003-Jul...
EDIT: "stronger together" meaning, FreeBSD would benefit from the technology innovations, architecture simplicity and performance that DragonflyBSD brings ... and DragonflyBSD benefiting from the larger install base that FreeBSD has (and it's brand recognition).
by readingnews on 7/5/23, 5:03 PM
In my UNIX circles that I run around in, no one talks about FreeBSD. Honestly asking (yes, I guess I did not read the article) is most of its success on the commercial side? I think it is used in NAS boxes and routers/switches a lot, right?
by whalesalad on 7/5/23, 5:01 PM
by ggm on 7/5/23, 11:53 PM
It always was (to some extend) a set: Bell vs Berkely vs Digital vs Sun vs "the rest" with things taken from each, and added back. Getopt, NFS, mods to the TCP/IP stack, ideas about virtual disks and filestores.
I may misunderstand, but I think there are "more" variants of Linux, but probably close to this magic number of really significant distros.
I drove FreeBSD as a desktop on multiple machines for decades. I now live in OSX but I continue to operate FreeBSD for research nodes on Dell, but with more debian in the mix now than before.
I'd love to try FreeBSD on RPi4 but what i read suggests it still has some issues in the uBoot and install area. I drive a 4 disk ZFS node through a jmicron USB-SATA bridge card, I need to be sure that will work before I can move but having adopted ZFS on Ubuntu the good thing is, ZFS variants apart, I SHOULD be able to do this transition without dataloss, assuming the controller chip works.
Up in server land I've migrated between Debian and FreeBSD for ZFS filestores multiple times. Its really easy.
by tristor on 7/5/23, 9:38 PM
by jmmv on 7/6/23, 12:29 AM
I played with some early versions of FreeBSD and OpenBSD but, at the time, I was still a Linux newbie so I wasn't comfortable with them. Disk I/O on FreeBSD 3.x was super-slow compared to Linux out of the box... because I didn't know what "soft updates" were and how enabling them would have resolved all my issues.
It wasn't until FreeBSD 4.0 that I had learned enough Unix to make the jump, and that became my primary desktop for a while. Soon after, I switched to NetBSD (1.5.2), which I used as my only OS for various years, and I became an avid contributor to the project. I ported and maintained Gnome 2.x, and then developed things like tmpfs and the NetBSD testing framework.
But... Mac OS X came along, I jumped ship to an iBook, and without being exposed to the BSDs on a daily basis via a desktop environment, I slowly lost the interest to continue using and contributing to them. I always said back then that having a strong desktop story was super-important to capture developers, and I think it still is. And I wasn't the only case. Mac OS X "stole" many BSD developers because it /was/ almost-BSD-but-with-a-great-UI.
So I had left, until recently. I had kept a VM around all these years mostly as a curiosity, but just over a year ago, I set up (again) a home server on a "bargain" ThinkStation I found, mostly to act as a NAS and to run VMs on. My obvious choice was FreeBSD (I still "believe in" the BSDs), and ZFS and bhyve have delivered rock-solid and extremely pleasant experiences. Every time I type some zfs or vm commands, I'm amazed by how well the thing works.
I used to favor NetBSD due to its minimalism and its portability, which in turn meant it had a neat internal design (which is what "wowed" me). But by then, it's true that FreeBSD was already the "easy to use" FreeBSD with the most active contributor base, although it was stuck on i386. I think this ease of use continues to this day, and FreeBSD has seen a lot of improvements to its internal design to make it portable. FreeBSD is less daunting to the beginner user _and_ developer, and I think the latter is also critical to run an open source projects these days because, to gain new contributors, you have to meet them where they are. FreeBSD's adoption of "common" tools, such as Git, Phabricator or Bugzilla (even if not "ideal" by some standards) has helped.
I guess I should spend the time to write a full retrospective, but that will do for today, hehe.
by SpaceInvader on 7/5/23, 6:43 PM
by icedchai on 7/5/23, 9:59 PM
by pjmlp on 7/5/23, 5:27 PM
I would really like to buy a new edition of "The Design and Evolution of FreeBSD", if it ever happens.
by CodeCompost on 7/5/23, 5:23 PM
Can somebody elaborate on FreeBSD's "success"?
by wejick on 7/5/23, 10:56 PM
This part of FreeBSD history in Japan is also very interesting to read.
by open-source-ux on 7/5/23, 4:27 PM
by voytec on 7/5/23, 9:41 PM
by User23 on 7/5/23, 5:23 PM
by JoeBtfsplk on 7/6/23, 7:08 AM
Leadership ugh culture argh.
Makes me want to retch.
How about get some users?
by psychphysic on 7/5/23, 6:39 PM
by mistrial9 on 7/5/23, 6:24 PM