Flame bait: Why BSD is dying, or How I learned to stop worrying and love Linux

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aurora72 said:
Nowadays, only an ARM port of FreeBSD is really missing. We need to have the ARM version of FreeBSD releases in no time.
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I fully agree. It's about time to make ARM a Tier-1 architecture. Especially since there's now talk of servers being based on ARM.
 
aurora72 said:
FreeBSD cannot so easily die.Because it's the foundation of other 3 mainstream OS'es:

Windows NT was inspired by it, Mac OS (X) is based on it and Linux borrowed many basics from it.
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Not exactly true. The Windows NT is based on good old VMS.
Linux, IIRC, was more inspired by Minix.

aurora72 said:
Nowadays, only an ARM port of FreeBSD is really missing. We need to have the ARM version of FreeBSD releases in no time.
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You can already build for some ARM targets, but what will work there is another question.
I keep asking myself - did KMS really have to go into the kernel? And a lot of other things, was/is that necessary?
 
Blueprint said:
With modern CPUs getting faster and faster, and the upcoming switch to LLVM. I would have thought ports compilation times would become less of an issue?
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Yes it compile much faster, but produced code looks like runs slow. :(

http://blog.vx.sk/archives/25-FreeB...-gcc-base-vs-gcc-ports-vs-clang.html#extended

clang was 10% slower in average on most of the tested CPUs than FreeBSD base gcc (4.2.1)
gcc 4.5 was 5-10% faster in average on most of the tested CPUs
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It looks like Chinese's cheap products manufacture according to this tests - that made products fast but quality is bad.
(No offense to Chinese friends because we know that Apple, Dell, etc that run quality assurance in the China has very good quality)

GCC on other side produces faster code but license... is GPL3
which is means you can not build another "Apple" with this kind of license because it required to share your source code, but as we all know we all make a lot of money by employing BSD code in our close projects and nobody can require to pay royalty then...

From another point of view GPL3 is a hook - take a look on MySQL, it happily grabbed from community by Oracle and commercialized.


...
 
AlexJ said:
From another point of view GPL3 is a hook - take a look on MySQL, it happily grabbed from community by Oracle and commercialized.
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MySQL was always dual licensed. Probably at the right time historically as businesses needed adoption and the world of open source could be misinterpreted by 'upper management' as being of low quality or non-viable option like "shareware" or "less robust" than the Oracle or Microsoft solutions. As much as it may have been a detriment the dual license itself may have helped adoption with the aggressive marketing hit with managers from bother M$ and Oracle.

I don't know if the cargo cult mentality still exists as much as it did a decade ago.

On a side note Oracle took more than from us than just MySQL with the Sun Microsystems buyout. We'll always have PostgreSQL. At least that one started at UC Berkeley =)
 
Strange.

I came to FreeBSD FROM Linux because of the upgrade process and stability between upgrades.

I don't run it on the desktop, but then, running FreeBSD on the desktop is, in my opinion like using a screwdriver to drive nails. Sure, you can do it (I have done so in the past, for that matter), but its a lot more difficult than it could be.

That's what my Mac is for.


And for what it's worth... I run with binaries these days. Very rarely need to recompile anything.


ps:
Cisco
Holden
iOS
vi

:D
 
throAU said:
... running FreeBSD on the desktop is, in my opinion like using a screwdriver to drive nails. Sure, you can do it (I have done so in the past, for that matter), but its a lot more difficult than it could be.
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I disagree. There are no real "purposes" of Operating Systems. You can use FreeBSD for a media station, Windows for a server or Mac for a workstation. It is not the OS'es that make the difference, but the mindset of users and set of tools/programs they have.
 
Majorix said:
I disagree. There are no real "purposes" of Operating Systems. You can use FreeBSD for a media station, Windows for a server or Mac for a workstation. It is not the OS'es that make the difference, but the mindset of users and set of tools/programs they have.
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I do agree. I do actually have just two FreeBSD box at home. One is a media server and file server, a multipurpose machine working fine from I think 5 years. I always painfully updated it, then now it is time to upgrade the hardware with some inexpensive and fine Ivy Bridge derived processor and considering FreeBSD is very painfull in supporting new hardware, I will choose a customized Archlinux box I always tested on Ivy Bridge and it works really fine.

The other machine is an old "desktop": it is long time it seat on a "entartainment" room and it is time to trash it too, even if it still works quietly fine (a miracle considering the poor video and multimedia support offered by FreeBSD; it got a old Pentium IV processor and a ATI graphic). New configuration (with some up to date AMD graphics) it simply will underperform under FreeBSD, and also the poor ACPI support I think it makes the box consuming a lot, so it is time to definitely say goodbye to FreeBSD in real life. For this machine I think a Linux Mint (I love it!) box will work top.

I will still maintain a virtual FreeBSD machine for educational purposes and that's all.

FreeBSD is painfully and sometimes "ridicoulisly" out of time to be used in real life.
 
Majorix said:
I disagree. There are no real "purposes" of Operating Systems. You can use FreeBSD for a media station, Windows for a server or Mac for a workstation. It is not the OS'es that make the difference, but the mindset of users and set of tools/programs they have.
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And you're free to do so.

If you don't want to pay money for an OS, or you want to fiddle with the source, etc. then FreeBSD is great for doing most things.

And it's true, any OS can do pretty much most things these days. Some are just better at it (and less hassle) than others at specific roles.

I guess what I'm saying is that after being all for open source at any cost for 15 years, I've come to realise I'm happy to pay money for the best solution for my needs.

The Mac rocks as a home desktop. Windows is compatible with everyone else at work, and runs more commercial software than anything else. FreeBSD makes a great firewall, NAS, mail server, proxy server, etc. - and yes you're right in saying it is the applications generally that make the difference.

I'm operating system agnostic and am a firm believer of "the right tool for the job".

Its far less effort, and at the end of the day, this is what computing is about for end users - making your life easier.

For some people, tinkering is a hobby though, and that's fine too.
 
throAU said:
And you're free to do so.

"the right tool for the job".
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I'm glad someone finally said it. I'm sick of hearing the general Apple consumer cry oh we are so much better because of x,y,z. Then its Mac vs. Windows, then its A vs B, etc. It's irritating. A person who knows and respects computer technology will tell you there are positives and negatives for all systems, but each one has a purpose for a specific job; you use whatever distro for what purpose you are trying to fulfill at the moment. Like they say "a hacker or cracker uses whatever tool necessary to get the job done."�e
 
Ok bye, FreeBSD works just fine for me, been using it for 2.5 years now, never had a major issue with it as a desktop.
 
I'm a bit late to the game here but I'd like to contribute my thoughts.

My conversion to BSD was pretty recent. First installed OpenBSD about a year ago for a mail server. Started running FreeBSD a couple of months ago on my main desktop.

gmane's logs clearly show a decrease in activity on the mailing lists for both these systems but that may be the result of a rise in webforum activity (dunno how to get that data) or an increase in the general usability of these systems (thus requiring less hand-holding for new users).

Since I started using it, I've gotten several other people to install BSD systems on their computers.

With the rise of the mobile phone as the general-purpose e-mail and browsing machine, we're starting to see the ubiquity of desktop systems wither as they're used for far less than they were before. As we see more software move to the web as its delivery mechanism, the prevailing need to be able to run the same universal binaries as everyone else is dwindling. Unlike fifteen years ago, when everything was shipped to you in compiled binary form, it doesn't matter so much what OS you're running so long as you've got a browser.

Now that adding transistors isn't the panacea to performance, I've noticed a bigger push for elegant software design that makes distribution simpler. Unix shines in this regard. Among the Unixes that I've used (which include Solaris, AIX, HPUX, and too many Linux systems to mention), BSD seems to shine above the rest.

Yeah, I've run into some inconveniences. Linux never seemed to have as many headaches with sound drivers. Sometimes, it's unclear to me why a ports build worked or didn't. But now really does seem like a great opportunity for BSD to rise.

Is it dead? It seems to be running just fine for me.

http://youtu.be/g7tvI6JCXD0
 
ishpeck said:
With the rise of the mobile phone as the general-purpose e-mail and browsing machine, we're starting to see the ubiquity of desktop systems wither as they're used for far less than they were before.
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This is much talked about and market advisers state this is the reason Microsoft will see dwindling revenue over the coming years. (Not just Cringley but many others). In web development, it is now preached "mobile first" when designing and coding web pages.
 
Well, the dwindling numbers for desktop and climbing numbers for mobile were reported for quite a while now and were brought up in Microsoft's own quarterly earnings a couple weeks ago as one of the reasons for their weaker earnings. iirc, the WSJ or NYTimes had an article this morning mentioning the same thing but the real proof is in this: web developers develop for Android, iPhone, iPad and Opera mobile FIRST. That's it. Windows is never in the mix until you build to the desktop and have to start including all the IE hacks.

Five years ago, Paul Graham said, "Microsoft Is Dead".
So not only does the desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway.
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EDIT: And, today, Facebook isn't even bothering to build an app for Windows 8.
 
I've come from Linux, Solaris and OpenIndiana. I like Solaris and OpenIndiana but they have limited hardware support, OpenIndiana is pretty much dead since its been in beta testing for over 2 years and their ancient packages that hasn't been updated for quite some time. So, I'm not comfortable using OpenIndiana for production use with its future uncertain. Solaris and OpenIndiana's zones are quite powerful but I question their long term viability since Oracle ceased OpenSolaris project which I think they made a big mistake but Oracle is in business to make money.

FreeBSD's jail is almost similar to Solaris's zone. It's good enough for secured virtualization for mysql, web, mail, etc. I use ezjail since its great tool to manage the jails with flavours. Linux doesn't have anything like this and they have to use third party containers such as OpenVZ.

ZFS is already compiled into the FreeBSD kernel. Linux does not have ZFS compiled into its kernel due to license incompatibility.

Linux is great for desktop users and FreeBSD is best for server due to less overhead and its more secure. Linux got too many dependencies that hogs memory and it can compromise the server to hackers. FreeBSD ports are impressive and I like it since it allows me to choose the options before compiling the sources. It takes time to compile but its worth it due to security. Binary packages does not give you the options and you don't know what is compiled into the binary packages.

PC-BSD is pretty good for desktop users and they're getting there. I might use it since I'm quite familiar with FreeBSD system.

It all comes down to how comfortable you're with Linux or FreeBSD and the primary reason for using it. Two reasons I use FreeBSD are jail and ZFS with mirror/raidz support.
 
Remington said:
Linux doesn't have anything like this and they have to use third party containers such as OpenVZ.
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There also is V-Server... and they have KVM that FreeBSD haven't.
Linux itself it is just a kernel by its definition. It is a lego, you can build with it exactly what you want, - it's a power of the Linux.

Remington said:
ZFS is already compiled into the FreeBSD kernel.
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If it would happened, FreeBSD will loose two more markets - embedded and VPS.
I also don't think that a regular computer users are ready to spend 1Gb of RAM per each 1 Tb of HDD.
ZFS is pretty cool, but... I really don't need 50 tons truck just to drive to nearest food store and I really glad that FreeBSD has a kernel that allow to load module(s) dynamically - exactly what you need ONLY.

Remington said:
Linux does not have ZFS compiled into its kernel due to license incompatibility.
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No, as soon as the ZFS module isn't distributed or statically linked to the Linux kernel there no license conflict and as you can see here http://zfsonlinux.org/ linux move adopting it pretty actively.



Remington said:
Linux got too many dependencies that hogs memory
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Ghm, you should speak about particular distro, not about kernel ONLY.
Linux's kernel could be very-very small and a distro like http://www.emdebian.org/ for example doesn't have a lot "dependencies that hogs memory"


Remington said:
...and it can compromise the server to hackers.
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It is just because it's more popular. If FreeBSD would be on a CentOS place I pretty sure it gain hackers attention too.

Remington said:
FreeBSD ports are impressive and I like it since it allows me to choose the options before compiling the sources.
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Gentoo linux distro has it too.

Remington said:
It takes time to compile but its worth it due to security.
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Every time when I read this, I really, REALLY want to see that person who VERIFIED ABSOLUTELY ALL source code that he is compiling. I do really want to see that guy who enjoy to do that. Sorry, but I don't believe you that you check every FreeBSD update or ports source codes to be sure the all code are secure!
Ports is great for those who do customization or those who really check every line of source code ONLY. There no any magick, compilation isn't more secure than a binary update/install. You probably didn't heard how many FreeBSD servers a few years ago was owned when popular proftpd(8) source code was modified by hackers.


Remington said:
Binary packages does not give you the options and you don't know what is compiled into the binary packages.
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That's because one can't cook them right. Adjust option/source as you want, compile from source and then pkg_create(1) it and distribute your unique binary packages.
Beside of that, source code distribution instead of packages doesn't not guarantee that there no "Easter eggs". Especially it true since primary source repositories just recently going to switch form CVS that doesn't has integrity checking feature.

Remington said:
PC-BSD is pretty good for desktop users and they're getting there. I might use it since I'm quite familiar with FreeBSD system.
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Get some old Pentium-4, install there VirtualBox, then install there PC-BSD and Debian, then compare its speed... visually

Remington said:
It all comes down to how comfortable you're with Linux or FreeBSD and the primary reason for using it.
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That is a part where I completely agree with you!
That is all depended on a task.

Even if you have the most precision microscope, hammer will be better, if you going to nail something.

This is completely childish thread that measure whose penis is bigger.

FreeBSD is full operation system. It self contained, kernel and all its utility. It has its advantage and disadvantage. Linux is just a kernel that can be build to a dishwasher or run server farms. And while it is scary how many distros it has, all of them has particular purpose instead of attempting to satisfy everybody.
 
AlexJ said:
It is just because it's more popular. If FreeBSD would be on a CentOS place I pretty sure it gain hackers attention too.
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That would be the case, sure. But then again there is another point to this, because that attention would result in different gains of success. When it comes to breaking into user mode software, we can agree on that there are holes which can be exploited easily.
But that is only part of the point. IMHO the *BSD kernels offer ways to be made much harder to mess with that Linux does. This also stems from the design goals. When confronted with obtaining a speedup or getting a 'cool' new feature against taking a risk to be the victim of some privilidge escalation, I would wager that the scales tip more to the risk in Linux than in *BSD.
AlexJ said:
Every time when I read this, I really, REALLY want to see that person who VERIFIED ABSOLUTELY ALL source code that he is compiling. I do really want to see that guy who enjoy to do that.
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Partly, here!

I do not read any and all code, but I enjoy reading kernel code as this is where the highest demand on clearity and reliability is. Here is the code which you supposedly can learn from. Trying to learn defensive programming, safe code, gracefully fallover, ... from code that values speed over correctness is futile.

Any programm that can present you with an "unknown internal error" message should go back to the drawing board, learning from that codebase IMHO should be prohibited.

Also you do not need to read all code. You read a part of it, and somebody else reads an other part, and given enough readers you have a good chance to read all of it. And that means that whoever wants to slip something in has a good chance to be found out. This is a risk one can take if messing around is the goal. But if your goal is to, say, slip in some gubbermint backdoor, this risk is unacceptable. Only one guy needs to get it and sound the alarm.

And that is why I try to avoid what I can not check. Not that I would be able to check it all, but being denied the chance to check something means that someone has a reason that I am not doing so. That reason may be payment (good reason for him), or it may be that he tries to slip something in (NSAKEY, anyone remembers?). In the end it comes down to risk and trust.

And these days when your telco tries to sell the location information from your phone and your call logs to world&dog, trust is in pretty low supply.

AlexJ said:
Even if you have the most precision microscope, hammer will be better, if you going to nail something.
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Agreed, if you know how to handle both. Otherwise you might arrive at the conclusion that the heavier the object, the better the nail is driven. Know your instruments is what I mean.
 
I use BSDs wherever I can. My laptop currently runs FreeBSD 8.3. At work I have four OpenBSD firewalls that protect my employer's network and provide VPN services. Around 20 FreeBSD 9.0 servers spin on VMware ESXi 5.1 for different purposes - simple DNS servers, proxy and web content filtering servers, mail relay servers, web (and mysql) servers etc. In fact, I wanted to have my non-windows part completely linux-free but it turned out I couldn't.

What made me to start using linux (CentOS) on some machines was the fact that my ESXi boxes would not talk well with FreeBSD NFS storage servers. Speeds were terrible, and I spent half of year trying to make it work, tweaking every possible sysctl that was mentioned in any instruction I could find online. In the end I said to myself "lets eliminate OS factor and try it on something else". CentOS worked out of the box.

Of course this does not mean I am going to transfer all my services to CentOS. But it is good I was reminded that there is no such thing as "the best OS". Sometimes eveen the same OS works different in different release, architecture, hardware combination etc.
 
First post, but have been reading these forums for many months.

After doing a little bit of googling, it turns out the content of the link posted by the OP was actually originally created by a troll. I'm not saying it was the intentions of the OP, but just pointing it out.
 
FreeBSD is like a fender stratocaster. You may eye candy a Gibson Les Paul, even buy one and play it for years. You will always go back to the strat. It just feels natural.

I have FreeBSD ws/server at work and do a wonderful load of things. At home, and laptop, I have Ubuntu for the unarmed civilians (wife/kids). It just feels like a stupid toy in comparison to FreeBSD. Also all those bells and whistles do not come for free. I think the time is not too distant that Ubuntu/Google or any similar Linux/cloud combination will prove to be a much worse nightmare than poor MSoft ever was.
 
I personally like a easy OS to use.
Not being able to auto Mount drives in gnome sucks on freebsd.
I like a GUI sorry people.
I like a package manager in my GUI sorry people.
Debian and redhat have good package managers and not all the hassles of trying to get things to work like on freebsd. It shouldn't be a night mare trying to get FLASH and JAVA running.
Yes I know I am afraid of hard work/just goto Linux blah blah blah.
Mostly I use Oracle Linux for now but always like to get FREEBSD running and give it a chance once in awhile.
 
GreenMeanie said:
I personally like a easy OS to use.
Not being able to auto Mount drives in gnome sucks on freebsd.
I like a GUI sorry people.
I like a package manager in my GUI sorry people.
Debian and redhat have good package managers and not all the hassles of trying to get things to work like on freebsd. It shouldn't be a night mare trying to get FLASH and JAVA running.
Yes I know I am afraid of hard work/just goto Linux blah blah blah.
Mostly I use Oracle Linux for now but always like to get FREEBSD running and give it a chance once in awhile.
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Fine use Windows. That's supposed to be easy to use. Microsoft have even simplified the latest version so much that the user just prods his/her finger at coloured squares on screen.

Maybe that will satiate your need for an easy to use OS.
 
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