Okay, so what's so great about FreeBSD?

DrJ said:
I get so very tired of this line. This grandpa has no issues at all with FreeBSD desktops (I've been using them since the 4.x days) and I need no technical support from the young'uns. It helps, I suppose, that I've used BSD for over 25 years, but it just is not that hard.

And no, I'm not a programmer any more.
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Lol. My dad likes FreeBSD for surfing, keeping his music collection and OpenOffice. He's still running 5.2, but no need to update.
A few weeks ago I caught him reading a manpage on how to add a user.

But I think you both are just members of the very small group of people not becoming psychotic when there's no start button visible.
 
But I think you both are just members of the very small group of people not becoming psychotic when there's no start button visible.
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MG, I'm kinda offended with that remark. I was using 8" floppy disks, swapping out data reel tapes, and punching cards before you were a gleam in you daddy's eye. Now that's psychotic :e:e:e, just joking OK.

I was broke in good using CP/M, UNIX, and MVS in the late 70's and early 80's. Yes I have done batch on mainframes with JCL and punch cards. Man, I feeeelllll old!
 
I have actually been considering trashing Windows XP on my mother-in-law's computer and installing FreeBSD instead. :) Since she always manages to hose her Windows install with tons of spyware, viruses, and other annoying BS, I think she would have a very hard time breaking her computer with FreeBSD. Installing KDE3, she wouldn't really know the difference anyways. :) She just wouldn't be able to run all the malicious crap that people send her in emails, so there would be no chance of her ever infecting her system and trying to infect the other systems on the network. And that's one of the biggest reasons I think FreeBSD is so great...the casual malware writers tend to stay far away, so there are very, very few things that will affect the system, and virtually all of what there is require root access or some way to elevate privileges.
 
rbelk said:
I was broke in good using CP/M, UNIX, and MVS in the late 70's and early 80's. Yes I have done batch on mainframes with JCL and punch cards. Man, I feeeelllll old!
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Me too, but I started earlier, and can include VM/CMS, VMS and RTE/A. I still have my first computer (dual 8" floppies and MP/M 8-16!) that predates the original IBM PC.
 
Not sure this has been mentioned, but something I really like about FreeBSD is their approach to security fixes. Security fixes aren't issued as version upgrades, they're issued as the bare minimum of a patch file that fixes only the problem and changes nothing else.

In many other OSes, a security fix is issued as a version upgrade. In a production environment where a high demand service may have been running for years, upgrading versions to fix urgent security holes is simply not an option. Version upgrades inevitably change behaviour which is something that can't just be rolled out without prior testing to ensure it doesn't effect the service adversely.
 
In my opinion, this is most important differences:
- License diffs. This go far and change many things, e.g. software porting problems, like some drivers and flash plugin. The vendors dont want to distribute in bsd license, cus of competition from another vendors.
- Ideology diffs. Linux is kernel; *bsd is an OS. Both largely use gnu software.
- Freebsd develops kernel+contrib; linux - only kernel; They concentrate on kernel and PR it while other developers like gnu/openoffice/etc work for their honour in some sense..
- There is lots of linux users. Many of them have suffient skills to join develop, and they do so. Of course, this have good sides and bad sides.

I think freebsd have only one weakness - too small developers community, cause of insufficient PR.

p.s. Sorry for my terrible English.
 
It's quite true that FreeBSD has less developers than Linux. However, more doesn't necessarily mean good. FreeBSD has the ports tree and ZFS support while OpenBSD has PF and OpenSSH. The developers still produce excellent stuff.
 
aragon said:
Not sure this has been mentioned, but something I really like about FreeBSD is their approach to security fixes. Security fixes aren't issued as version upgrades, they're issued as the bare minimum of a patch file that fixes only the problem and changes nothing else.

In many other OSes, a security fix is issued as a version upgrade. In a production environment where a high demand service may have been running for years, upgrading versions to fix urgent security holes is simply not an option. Version upgrades inevitably change behaviour which is something that can't just be rolled out without prior testing to ensure it doesn't effect the service adversely.
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Too bad this does not hold for the Ports system (AFAIK), that one is behaving as a bleeding edge repository without some sort of 'stable' branch.
 
The ports collection is always the same for any version of FreeBSD because it just that much easier. Maintaining different branches for 20545 ports would be a ton more work than is already done. Like 10x more work, so that is why when people complain about there only being one branch of the ports tree they aren't really listened to. Having been a ports maintainer in the past I don't really see the problem. I have been using ports since I started with FreeBSD in 2001 and haven't really had any serious problems. Things may break but it seems as fast as they do they are fixed. The portmgr team has builds running all the time and thanks to the new QAT (QA Tinderbox) builds are kicked off after a port change almost right away to make sure it builds correctly. Though, bugs in the software like something not working like it should that go beyond something that can be tested by automated builds are not caught. These communities often rely on people reporting the bugs to them. So always remember the code of the open source community and help report bugs and work with the developers. Even if that means going to the KDE bugs database and reporting these bugs upstream.

And remember we always need people going through our own PR (Problem Report) database and helping us verify the bugs are real and seeing if they still exist for some of the older bugs. We have a long way to go with our PR database, but there is activity and more and more people are getting involved and helping us triage the bugs as they come in so we can get a handle on them. If you want to help you can either sign up for the freebsd-bugs mailing list or use the web interface. Find one that looks like something you could test. Follow the URL at the bottom of the email to that PR in the GNATs DB. Once you think you have tested and verified that the bug is or is not valid, you can hit the "Submit Followup" link at the bottom of the bug to email a reply and say so. Note you might want to use an alias email just for this purpose since it will make the email address you use public for all the world to see.

As one of the earlier posts in this thread mentioned, work is also going on towards getting us a better PR system that will work better for our flow. I
 
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