What Do You Love Most About FreeBSD? :)

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?
 
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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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

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

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.
 
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?
 
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
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.

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...
 
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.

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.
 
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.

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.

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.
 
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.

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.
 
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.

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.

This isn't anything new.
I didn't say it was.

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.

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

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

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

We're in a discussion that involves polarizing viewpoints; you are arguing.
 
No, it is not irrelevant.
Why is my, uneducated and inexperienced, view on how the project is run relavent? it simply isn't.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.
 
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!
Which reminds me... :) I'm working on a new FreeBSD-based OS, called FreOn! :D 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
 
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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