I went full-time FreeBSD for a couple weeks. These are my takeaways.

[cracauer@]

Thats not even remotely true. Literally every distro can be repaired same way as FreeBSD. Its a skill issue.

Alain has a point, though. The skill level required for repairs can be much higher on a modern Linux distribution than on FreeBSD.

Just for starters you can always blow away all packages and recreate your set without touching the base system. So no reinstall. If you end up in package dependency hell on Linux there is no base system to pull yourself out.

 

[Alain De Vos]

Indeed Cracauer, Let me give a simple example FreeBSD.

pkg prime-origins > to_install.txt
backup /usr/local/www /usr/local/etc
rm -vfR /usr/local/*
[Just delete everything, like its nothing]
cat to_install.txt | xargs -I {} pkg install -f -y {}

Any missing symbols in library linking will be gone.
Try that with ubuntu ...
This procedure helped me alot.
Its also why i like FreeBSD. Separation /bin ; /usr/bin ; /usr/local/bin

 

[Emrion]

The skill level required for repairs can be much higher on a modern Linux distribution than on FreeBSD.

It's a point of view, but impossible to prove. And even, it would true (for whatever 'true' can mean here), you find a plethora of tutorials on the web that explain how to repair this or that on Ubuntu. I ever used one to repair a serious problem I got on an Ubuntu station. You just need to understand what is chroot, devfs and so on. Something you learn easily whether you use FreeBSD or Linux.

Try that with ubuntu ...

Ubuntu is able to upgrade itself without need to disable loadable kernel modules (graphics notably). Try that with FreeBSD.

What I mean is such a comparison has no meaning. Each OS has its strength and its weakness.

 

[cracauer@]

It's a point of view, but impossible to prove. And even, it would true (for whatever 'true' can mean here), you find a plethora of tutorials on the web that explain how to repair this or that on Ubuntu. I ever used one to repair a serious problem I got on an Ubuntu station.

Well, when I find a good Linux tutorial it is usually for a distribution that I do not use. E.g. on Arch Linux Wiki while I use Debian.

Furthermore, and this is worst on Ubuntu, there are outdated instructions galore. Not that you can tell which version they are for. In FreeBSD, the documentation comes with the OS install and it will always fit.

 

[Alain De Vos]

Sidenote : The Most FreeBSD alike linux distro i came across is Redcore-Linux. You can do nothing without compiling.
& Please excuse me if i am to liberate. I will not divert this thead , but only one moment. You are the sbcl person, guru . Gerbil. It has nice things no ? Just one comment then we come back.

 

[cracauer@]

Sidenote : The Most FreeBSD alike linux distro i came across is Redcore-Linux. You can do nothing without compiling.
& Please excuse me if i am to liberate. I will not divert this thead , but only one moment. You are the sbcl person, guru . Gerbil. It has nice things no ? Just one comment then we come back.

I never really explored Scheme.

 

[fahrenheit]

In FreeBSD, the documentation comes with the OS install and it will always fit.

That is not entirely true.
The documentation is generally correct for FreeBSD 13/14, for 15+ it has gaps. One good example of where the documentation has a gap is with FreeBSD base as packages, this shows on several places, the handbook instructions upgrading a system require work, building packages from source (not ports, src) also needs further documentation. Setting up X11 or Wayland also has issues if followed with a 15.x release. Packages no longer exist, or better options to do something exist.
One other case where the documentation is confusing is where can you submit bugs (just bugzilla or github is valid? for all repos?) and where can you submit changes (only Phabricator? PR on Github?). As an example, drm develop is done via PRs over github but requesting the update of the drm-latest-kmd and the creation of the drm-612-kmod port had to be done via Phabricator.

Another example, you can issue a PR with documentation changes on github (which is what the edit this page does for each handbook page) but what happens is that then someone takes your commit and re-applies it on the master repo.

It is a fact that in terms of breadth and depth the FreeBSD documentation is top notch, but that does not mean it is always up to date, specially when you venture out of base.

 

[cy@]

Hmm. I've been using FreeBSD for 31 years. Granted everything was relatively primitive back then. For example I switched from Linux 0.95 at the time to FreeBSD 2.0.5 because Linux would crash daily and irreparably corrupt its EXT filesystem every week. Anything took a while to get used to. FreeBSD nor Linux were not even near the quality of a commercial UNIX like OSF/1 or SunOS.

Unlike almost all Linux distros one size doesn't fit all. With FreeBSD you have a multitude of desktop environments and apps to choose from. Most Linux distros come with a well supported desktop environment and some optional semi-supported desktop environments. One certainly must have a better understanding of the UNIX philosophy and one's choice of desktop environment with FreeBSD.

Could FreeBSD have a default desktop environment? Sure but which one? Who decides that? And what about the mass of people who want something different?

 

[msplsh]

Could FreeBSD have a default desktop environment? Sure but which one? Who decides that? And what about the mass of people who want something different?

Yes. Doesn't matter, team's choice. Core team. Uncheck the box.

 

[cracauer@]

That is not entirely true.
The documentation is generally correct for FreeBSD 13/14, for 15+ it has gaps. One good example of where the documentation has a gap is with FreeBSD base as packages, this shows on several places, the handbook instructions upgrading a system require work, building packages from source (not ports, src) also needs further documentation. Setting up X11 or Wayland also has issues if followed with a 15.x release. Packages no longer exist, or better options to do something exist.
One other case where the documentation is confusing is where can you submit bugs (just bugzilla or github is valid? for all repos?) and where can you submit changes (only Phabricator? PR on Github?). As an example, drm develop is done via PRs over github but requesting the update of the drm-latest-kmd and the creation of the drm-612-kmod port had to be done via Phabricator.

Another example, you can issue a PR with documentation changes on github (which is what the edit this page does for each handbook page) but what happens is that then someone takes your commit and re-applies it on the master repo.

It is a fact that in terms of breadth and depth the FreeBSD documentation is top notch, but that does not mean it is always up to date, specially when you venture out of base.

Good points. As far as I know changes to doc get picked up in phabricator, github and bugzilla. I would still consider this a single point to report doc bugs, a thing that Linux also doesn't have. Filing bugs against Linux documentation is done in many places, and many of those are not even stated.

 

[MrBSD]

Unlike almost all Linux distros one size doesn't fit all. With FreeBSD you have a multitude of desktop environments and apps to choose from. Most Linux distros come with a well supported desktop environment and some optional semi-supported desktop environments. One certainly must have a better understanding of the UNIX philosophy and one's choice of desktop environment with FreeBSD.

This is exactly what majority of people fail to understand. Even among experienced users. People have cult like personalities and they bash and insult everyone that doesnt use the same OS as they do. This is not a competition. I never understood this mentality of shitting on people that use Windows or Linux.

Could FreeBSD have a default desktop environment? Sure but which one? Who decides that? And what about the mass of people who want something different?

This is why distros like CachyOS have the option to select any DE or WM from the installer. I see some people are crying recently because FreeBSD team want to use KDE Plasma as default. You can also chose not to use it and install whatever you want after reboot. It is that simple.

 

[Alain De Vos]

Hmm. I've been using FreeBSD for 31 years. Granted everything was relatively primitive back then. For example I switched from Linux 0.95 at the time to FreeBSD 2.0.5 because Linux would crash daily and irreparably corrupt its EXT filesystem every week. Anything took a while to get used to. FreeBSD nor Linux were not even near the quality of a commercial UNIX like OSF/1 or SunOS.

Unlike almost all Linux distros one size doesn't fit all. With FreeBSD you have a multitude of desktop environments and apps to choose from. Most Linux distros come with a well supported desktop environment and some optional semi-supported desktop environments. One certainly must have a better understanding of the UNIX philosophy and one's choice of desktop environment with FreeBSD.

Could FreeBSD have a default desktop environment? Sure but which one? Who decides that? And what about the mass of people who want something different?

They ?, someone decided it will be KDE for FreeBSD. For me Openbox is ok. [Now i'm using Cosmic-wayland-on-artix-linux].
Main take never let you put into a corner. [This is phylophipcal]

 

[Alain De Vos]

Good points. As far as I know changes to doc get picked up in phabricator, github and bugzilla. I would still consider this a single point to report doc bugs, a thing that Linux also doesn't have. Filing bugs against Linux documentation is done in many places, and many of those are not even stated.

My interactions with bugzilla is very good. Meaning i must be to the point they just delete you like they should. But interactions always very professional, if not , just under-numbered.

 

[Andrey Lanin]

FreeBSD nor Linux were not even near the quality of a commercial UNIX like OSF/1 or SunOS.

This is exactly why I dropped both (Linux and FreeBSD) for Solaris in 1997...

 

[tingo]

Alain has a point, though. The skill level required for repairs can be much higher on a modern Linux distribution than on FreeBSD.

True. But usually it is the signal / noise ratio of the available information that is too low (in other words, the first ten, 50 or more links that tell you how to fix a problem might give you wrong advice).
And skill is always "easy" for something you know well (example: FreeBSD) but "hard" for something you are less familiar with (example: some Linux distribution).

 

[kjpetrie]

I've never understood this preoccupation with comparing OSes. They're just workhorses to get jobs done. I use FreeBSD on my servers because that was what the server I rented space on used so it was what I got used to using and I saw no reason to change when I moved over to hosting myself. I use PCLinuxOS (affectionately known as pclos to its users) on my desktop and 64-bit laptop because I was introduced to Linux by someone who gave me a disc with Mandrake on it so that's what I got used to and when I mentioned to an acquaintance that my only complaint was having to reinstall every year he suggested pclos as based on Mandrake but rolling-release. 19 years later I'm still using it because it just works and what more do I need? I have three legacy 32-bit laptops on two of which I use Devuan because it will run on them. The third is an eeePC used as a music source on my 50-year-old music centre, which runs Puppy Linux. That's horribly slow to boot so I might try Devuan on that too to see whether it's any faster, but I can't be bothered so far because I only use it for playing music and it never connects to my Wifi so there are no security issues.

As for fixing things if I break them, I can generally do that with them all, though I will reinstall from my own remaster if I break things badly enough.

 

[cy@]

This is exactly why I dropped both (Linux and FreeBSD) for Solaris in 1997...

My employer at the time didn't want to spend the money on Solaris workstations for my team and me. Rather than Windows we chose Linux and FreeBSD at about that time. FreeBSD and Linux were a lot better in 1997 than in 1995.

 

[cy@]

They ?, someone decided it will be KDE for FreeBSD. For me Openbox is ok. [Now i'm using Cosmic-wayland-on-artix-linux].
Main take never let you put into a corner. [This is phylophipcal]

Is it KDE? That's news to me.

 

[cy@]

Yes. Doesn't matter, team's choice. Core team. Uncheck the box.

I don't think anyone has had a strong enough opinion to put the work into it.\

Juxtaposed to this discussion, if people here do want a default DE, roll up your sleeves, get to work and present some code to implement your DE of choice. So far when it comes to the discussion of a DE, I hear a lot of complaints but nobody willing to do anything about it. Sounds like the community garden my other half an I are members of. Lots of complaining that someone else isn't making it better for them. WRT this, patches are always welcome.

 

[Andrey Lanin]

My employer at the time didn't want to spend the money on Solaris workstations for my team and me. Rather than Windows we chose Linux and FreeBSD at about that time. FreeBSD and Linux were a lot better in 1997 than in 1995.

My team managed to convince the company's management to switch to Solaris. At the time, we were developing a distributed system using CORBA (C++ binding). We considered ACE+TAO and ORBit, but ultimately chose omniORB. Our system is still in use (it was ported to Debian in 2011)

 

[cracauer@]

Solaris 2 was terrible when it came out, no?