Advantages of using FreeBSD (compared to Linux)

Status
Not open for further replies.
drhowarddrfine said:
FreeBSD also only puts out security updates "as and when required" so I don't understand what's different. Program updates for security reasons has nothing to do with FreeBSD. Those are third party elements FreeBSD has no control over. Neither does Debian for that matter.
Click to expand...
Debian does have control over the third party elements that Debian has in its MAIN repository. Which may be changed by Debian to make them more aligned to the whole and be maintained by Debian. For entry into MAIN the program/package must comply with the Debian Free Software Guidelines (which includes being open/free software); Must not require or recommend a package outside of MAIN for compilation or execution; And must comply with Debian policy. In effect what could perhaps be described as being source code 'owned'/modified/maintained by Debian.

I run my Debian installation using their MAIN repositories only, and as a example following Debian tweaks Nvidia tends to work better via the Debian provided drivers than that provided by Nvidia. Stick with just that Main repository and its very stable and all provided/maintained by Debian.Debian is vastly more than just a Linux kernel and core operating system.

In addition Debian provide access to "contrib" and "non-free" repositories ... that are outside of Debian so-to-speak. And there are the different versions, oldstable, stable, test and unstable (development). And they support 9 different architectures (arm, amd, i386, mips, ppc ... etc.).

Whilst FreeBSD has similar elements/policy, IMO its (considerably) less comprehensive.
 
rufwoof said:
Comparing FreeBSD with Debian, as a end desktop user with Debian I follow their oldstable branch, which the current stable version falls into once a new stable version is released ... typically every 2 years. Having been live for 2 years before dropping into oldstable most issues have been fixed and as such updates are relatively infrequent (security fixes). The Debian repository is all encompassing i.e. system and programs (Debian can modify 'packages' specifically to fit in with the complete set). A one stop shop for everything, that is pretty much fixed (system and programs), is watched over by Debian (secure system and programs) and can be used for 2 years before upgrading (to the next oldstable). The downside is that being older versions it may not work with the latest hardware or have all the bells and whistles of the latest versions.

Contrasting that with FreeBSD legacy that is also supported for around 2 years ... that only applies to the system, not the programs ... that could be updated regularly to the latest or relatively new versions (and in so doing potentially induce instability of the 'whole').

I've been using FreeBSD for a little while now pretty regularly (main boot desktop) and like it a lot. However of the two, Debian oldstable has the greater appeal to me as a workhorse that changes relatively little for 2 years at a time.

As a example, forward time under Debian and Jessie (version 8) has recently dropped from being the current stable into oldstable. That system and repository of programs is pretty solid and will continue to receive security updates as and when required. Staying with that as a main boot and pretty much both the system and programs will remain the same for 2 years ... just work. If forward time I adopted Freebsd legacy (10.3, and putting aside the next legacy stepup is in 2018) then whilst the core remains relatively unchanged, the programs when updated for security purposes (pkg upgrade) could pull in new versions of those programs ... that potentially could break the whole end user desktop setup and require having to turn focus away from the task in hand onto having to focus on fixing the tool.

The Debian model is very flexible/comprehensive, and for those that just want a desktop setup that works well, requires little attention other than a 'upgrade' every couple of years but that is security patched quickly as and when needed ... it looks to me that has the edge over FreeBSD at least on that 'stable desktop workhorse' front.
Click to expand...

Debian was one of my favorite gnu/linux distributions, it was simple and extremely stable, now I do not like the latest versions so much, it's too focused on desktop and being "easy" in addition to the latest systemd adoption.

Debian maintains the OS and third-party programs, but it is also managed with apt, so updating means updating everything from the kernel to xfce, for example, in FreeBSD I like to separate the OS from the ports/packages.

Anyway, I understand that gnu/linux on desktop is more "easy" but I no longer feel like using a "quality OS" as before, I remember that Debian 6 was amazing for example.
 
I'm using grub4dos bootloader and have both Debian Jessie and 10.3 FreeBSD (just switched over from 11.1 as I'd rather follow the 2 year extended branch) on the same HDD (obviously different partitions). I also have Puppy Linux as a boot choice (handy for admin and other programs not in either Debian or FreeBSD). Like all of them and whilst predominately booting Debian for the last year or so, more recently FreeBSD has been my primary boot choice. Like it a lot. And in fairness I'd put them equally as good. There are likely cases of one being the better than the other in some areas, vice-versa in other areas. I prefer for instance FreeBSD hierarchy layout - much cleaner than Linux/Debian (icons for instance along can be all over the place). A negative for Linux IMO is that there are way too many distro's/variations. I can only imagine how much better Linux/Debian might be had all of that massive amount of manpower been more commonly focused.
 
Is that not however comparing apples and oranges with respect to the Debian figure. Note for instance how the Debian figures include SQL Injection counts, whereas FreeBSD being counted as just the core operating system has no such counts. Debian is both the core system and all of the programs its absorbed into its MAIN repository (something like 40,000+ programs) ... which is vastly bigger than just the core system alone, and accordingly might be expected to have a much higher vulnerability count.

Fair enough however comparing Linux and FreeBSD, Linux looks to have some major issues.
 
rufwoof said:
Is that not however comparing apples and oranges with respect to the Debian figure. Note for instance how the Debian figures include SQL Injection counts, whereas FreeBSD being counted as just the core operating system has no such counts.
Click to expand...

Possibly because that's how it's distributed?
 
drhowarddrfine said:
rufwoof
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/61446/page-3#post-357021

There is nothing in your post that is any different in FreeBSD than what you play up that Debian does. No difference whatsoever.
Click to expand...
I'm new to FreeBSD, so if so ... fine. How then can I follow the FreeBSD branch that has been through development, test, then frozen and tested/fixed further, before then being released to 'live' for two years (which might be considered as a very extensive 'test' across millions of manhours) that I can adopt now and then follow/use that for 2 years whilst receiving security updates/fixes? Oh, and not forgetting the complete set of all (unchanging other than fixes) 40,000+ programs within that set that collectively work well with each other (such as LibreOffice, Openshot, Blender ...etc.). Yes I know older versions of programs ... but for me the stability of the whole is a desirable feature and, for instance, running Libre 4.3.3 (as per the current Debian oldstable (Jessie)) rather than more recent versions is sufficient to fulfill my office (docs/spreadsheets) needs.

I'm pretty certain FreeBSD can't offer me such a branch, at least not on a minimal effort on my behalf basis (end user who wants to use the system as a tool to do things rather than having to expend considerable effort maintaining the tool). So far after having opted to install the RELEASE version, starting with 11-0, within a relatively short period of time I think that kernel has been changed to a later version (11.1), LibreOffice is a nicer newer version ... but has some quirks (doesn't work as I'd expect a release version to work) and the versions of Openshot and Blender for video editing aren't compatible. And the indications are that if I opted for FreeBSD as a workhorse, the versions of programs and system might change relatively frequently ... excepting if I don't apply updates ... in which case I leave myself open to security risks (security updates fixed and published that provides a guide for hackers to attack any systems that haven't applied those security patches).

Basically my requirements are I'd like to have to update the core system relatively infrequently, once every couple of years at most, but receive security fixes during the interim, having access to a repository of a large range of program choices that can be installed/used ... older (extensively) tried and tested versions that collectively work well together (installing x doesn't break y).
 
Trihexagonal said:
So one of the main advantages would be FreeBSD is a more secure Operating System. And isn't that the most important of all?
Click to expand...
For some. But I run a single user desktop setup ... so I'm both root and user. I run internet facing programs under a severely limited userid ... as good as a sandbox. And that's far from being a oddity, instead its a majority type situation. Nothing is truly secure and even just a single weak link/exploit can be as bad as 10 or 100. Security is a practice, not a product. For instance I also run Puppy Linux where you run everything as root ... gui desktop, browser ...etc. However that can be incredibly secure provided you run it the right way (adopt the correct practice). The Ozzie police/security have even advocated such practice ... for instance for commercial transactions (such as online banking) boot a pristine system from read only medium (CD) into ram and use a pristine/factory fresh browser with no addons, to go direct to your bank nowhere else before or after.
 
IMO security is not just a practice, it is job #1 and all things come secondary to it.

I had to set the ignore vulnerability flag to get port-mgmt/portmaster to install graphics/gimp due to a vulnerability in graphics/OpenEXR, but it is not dependent on it and have since removed it so I get a clean bill of health out of pkg audit -F.

EDIT: The first thing I do on first boot after a fresh build is make a basic pf ruleset and enable it in /etc, reboot, run freebsd-update fetch and go from there.
 
Auditing and taking steps to protect against KNOWN vulnerabilities still leaves you exposed to unknown vulnerabilities. Most single user systems are like towns, you can take steps to protect the borders and plug known holes, but there's likely still other means to get in that wont get plugged until after the event. Better to encase/protect valuables internally i.e. your invaluable/irreplaceable data (system files are inexpensive and easily replaced). Lock (encrypt) your data into a safe, store disconnected backup copies ...etc. and employ procedures to access/change that data in a secure manner (perhaps only ever decrypting in memory before re-storing in encrypted form back to disk).

If you strive to secure the entire town then that leads to a false sense of security as sooner or later that might be breached ... just too many potential exploits. The only really secure system is one that is locked down with no external contact at all ... in effect useless in all but a very few extreme cases. Reduce security focus down to selective data only and that's considerably simpler/cheaper and with the right practices securer.

I don't use/own a laptop, but if my desktop setup was replicated onto a laptop and I lost that, I wouldn't be concerned as my practices make it pretty much trivial (to me) of the content then available to a third party. My data backup practice also means that the loss would be relatively trivial, the inconvenience of replacing the hardware and system software that would again provide a means to access to my data (copies restored from backups).

I'd guess that for around 99.9%+ of stuff I do on the computer I could use a public/library PC without concern of someone else seeing that activity/content. For <0.1% of activity however and I would be concerned and accordingly use relatively secure methods/practices for that (such as pristine system from a validated good source, and factory-fresh browser with no plug-ins/addons ....etc.). Not that I totally disregard security, I do take reasonable measures even for the 99.9%, just that I don't entirely trust that and keep the risks foremost in mind.
 
rufwoof It is clear to me that you have not read the Handbook or any of the documentation available online or included in an install. Without looking back, have you ever installed FreeBSD at all? Cause your questions about which version to use gives the impression that you haven't.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
rufwoof It is clear to me that you have not read the Handbook or any of the documentation available online or included in an install. Without looking back, have you ever installed FreeBSD at all? Cause your questions about which version to use gives the impression that you haven't.
Click to expand...
Yes. I installed 11.0 ... and little other choice than having to wade through the manual/handbook (initially couldn't even get it to boot without using a hint ... that had to be discovered (wasn't easily available, a lot of reading around required)). Upgraded to 11.1 when that was released. Downgraded to 10.3. Restored 11.1 again (test of backup/restore). All RELEASE. Still have it as part of a multi-boot set.

Bottom line, compared to running Debian OldStable (Linux based) ... FreeBSD offers no equivalent or more stable choice for single user gui desktop users. Predominately FreeBSD is a command line system, on top of which you can add 'third party' programs of which some (many) have been pre-built, but where the versions and interworkings with each other is far less refined than how Debian manages that aspect. As a for-instance, installing Openshot also requires the installation of Blender and Inkscape to be fully operational, and the FreeBSD pre-built choices of Openshot and Blender do not work together. In Debian they are correctly matched and work as expected/intended.

I take it from your reactions that you're unaware of the Debian offerings structure/layout? At least I've tried having a look for myself by installing/trying FreeBSD (only to discover problems with LibreOffice and the above issues with Video Editing). Nice to see later versions of programs such as Libre ... but not much use if they're flawed operationally as that relegates it to being just eye candy.
 
rufwoof I take it from your problems that you are doing everything wrong and just winging it. You have problems I don't recognize and "fixes" I've never had to do to install a system. You have problems I never have with all the software and then you make statements like this:

installing Openshot also requires the installation of Blender and Inkscape to be fully operational
Click to expand...

which is absolutely false. I've seen a number of your statements which sounded strange to me like that one but didn't take the time to investigate till now. Your inability or struggle to install most things is disturbing and quite questionable.

So I question a lot of things about you and where you get your information from.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
rufwoof I take it from your problems that you are doing everything wrong and just winging it. You have problems I don't recognize and "fixes" I've never had to do to install a system. You have problems I never have with all the software and then you make statements like this:

installing Openshot also requires the installation of Blender and Inkscape to be fully operational

which is absolutely false. I've seen a number of your statements which sounded strange to me like that one but didn't take the time to investigate till now. Your inability or struggle to install most things is disturbing and quite questionable.

So I question a lot of things about you and where you get your information from.
Click to expand...
Have a look at the openshot web site, clearly states that for 3D animated titles the dependency upon Blender.

image.jpg


Have you tried 11.1-RELEASE with Openshot and Blender pkg's installed? And if so can you create a 3D animated title?

You did already mention that you were unaware that Blender didn't have a maintainer here Openshot
 
You don't use openshot to create 3d animated titles. You're trying to use something from the openshot web site to describe how packages are installed on FreeBSD. Bad choice. Use actual FreeBSD documentation.

So this confirms what I said before. You aren't getting proper information about how things work and just grasp at whatever suits you instead of official related documentation. In the openshot case, apparently you can use blender if you want to but you do not need blender to install openshot. Or inkscape either for that matter.

But that's a choice the openshot people made and has nothing to do with FreeBSD which you are trying to blame for your issues.
 
Good grief (not you Trihexagonal)

Trihexagonal said:
Let's see... Advantages of using FreeBSD compared to Linux.

FreeBSD has had 286 vulnerabilities in the last 18 years vs 1895 for Linux
Click to expand...
Increasingly looking to me like a case of FreeBSD doesn't have vulnerabilities/bugs, rather its the user doing everything wrong and just winging it, or perhaps just ignoring (not counted).

A menubar option within Openshot is to create a 3D animated title which pops up another dialog that caters for setting values ... that then shows a rendering progress bar when the button is clicked. Blender/python is invoked behind that.



I did say to be FULLY OPERATIONAL Openshot also needs blender and inkscape. Yes it can be installed such that its 3D animated menu option doesn't work, I guess I could just as equally buy a car without doors. But hey-ho, ostrich head in the sand. I'll respectively bow out (give up).
 
And, again, you chose not to look at the official documentation and, instead, looked at "options" which you conclude make some software "fully operational" even though those options are not part of the main package.

Giving up is your best option.
 
Greetings FreeBSD forums

I signed up a few hours ago as I need to learn about FreeBSD. I was reading this thread and was wondering if one operating system is better than another. It is all subjective, to familiarity and comfort, in what ever suits you best.

I am using a Raspberry Pi 3 with Raspian as my main desktop and I am getting familiar with it. I also have a Pine A64, on which I have installed FreeBSD, or rather copied using the dd command, the image of RaspBSD, http://www.raspbsd.org/index.html, to a micro sd with my rpi3. I have a nice 32” HDMI television for my monitor. At first I thought that I had got it wrong somehow, because there was no signal to my monitor. Then going back to the raspbsd website I read “The Graphical Images currently only have a VideoCore kernel modules added to them. In the future a GUI and other tools will be preloaded. The console images do not have the VideoCore image and are designed to be used via serial or completely headless.” Ho! Hum, hardware and driver issue as mentioned earlier in this thread. I know the graphics on the Pine64 can be really good from running Remix OS on it. Remix OS is what it is, or was, as Jide have decided to move on to greener pastures. Never mind.

On another micro sd I installed Ubuntu Mate and it works OK but at present I think the Raspberry Pi 3 has the edge. With a HDMI switch I can go between Raspian and Ubuntu, at the touch of a button and with the synergy program, I can use the same mouse and keyboard (mostly). Connected by LAN. I have an older Raspberry Pi 512Mb running my private WordPress server.

Luckily I was able to find the ip address of FreeBSD on the Pine64 by logging into my modem-router, and then with ssh into the FreeBSD operating system. I have added a new user and password, but now I seem to be fumbling in the dark, being more used to Debian based operating systems.

I like to use nano as my text editor, just my preference, so I tried pkg install nano. And got back Shared object "libarchive.so.7" not found, required by "pkg".

So here my new adventure begins and any help I can get will be most appreciated.
 
I would open a new thread for that pkg issue, with a subject like libarchive.so.7 required by pkg. (I've not run into that one, and can't really help, but here's an older serverfault post about something similar. (Different versions)
https://serverfault.com/questions/575887/shared-object-libarchive-so-5-not-found-required-by-pkg

You can try using pkg-static, but again, I'd open a new thread rather than tack this onto a 3 page thread that lots of folks have stopped reading as it's turned into a bit of a bikeshed argument.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
You don't use openshot to create 3d animated titles. You're trying to use something from the openshot web site to describe how packages are installed on FreeBSD. Bad choice. Use actual FreeBSD documentation.

So this confirms what I said before. You aren't getting proper information about how things work and just grasp at whatever suits you instead of official related documentation. In the openshot case, apparently you can use blender if you want to but you do not need blender to install openshot. Or inkscape either for that matter.

But that's a choice the openshot people made and has nothing to do with FreeBSD which you are trying to blame for your issues.
Click to expand...

BTW Blender has a problem to run or better it is unusable to works Cycles Engine as long as we start to update llvm version and finally if you use llvm 3 than xorg doesn't work...I use OS X with Blender more than year and I think the future is not so brilliant too.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top