Praise for FreeBSD

So after a two/three day process, I installed FreeBSD on my laptop (17 hours of this was compiling KDE from the ports tree). I have to admit, the whole system is structured, logical, and efficient.

I had been a Linux user, and coming to FreeBSD the first thing I noticed was an amazing handbook which documents 95% of everything I need to know. It even covered nearly all of my troubleshooting. I found that after just a day of reading FreeBSD's wonderful documentation, I knew more about FreeBSD than I had known about Linux after 3 years of using it and reading its chaotic documentation (when it could even be found).
Also, although I can't make a solid claim to this, I have so far found FreeBSD to be faster at everything I have done, falling short only in 3D graphics (which I understand is managed by Xorg, so that's not really under FreeBSD's jurisdiction).

Just a few hours of using it and I can already tell I won't regret this install.
 
During my first steps with FreeBSD I didn't want to read the documentation. I was bored. I started with my experience from Linux and searching on Google and asking here on the forum. For every question on Google, the answer almost always was found in the Handbook. In the end I realized that I had read all the handbook to set[up my FreeBSD and made it workable. I have also translated some small parts of the Handbook into the Greek language (https://www.freebsd.org/doc/el/books/handbook/). I think that FreeBSD has the best documentation.
 
I started into the 'world' of FreeBSD on May 17, 2014, just tinkering around. I have learned a lot, but I have a million miles to go. I am very impressed with the quality of code that is under the bonnet of FreeBSD, and the documentation that comes with it too. I find the users on here very friendly too. In just a short time I have taken a few older machines and given them new life. Nothing fancy really, just setting them up as appliances more than say a big server. Bittorrent SYNC, miniDLNA streamer, FTP, etc. I just got the KDE desktop going and I must say I am really impressed with that too. I anticipate building a bigger NAS machine later after I have more confidence in my knowledge of the OS and hardware selection.

It is an awesome OS, and I hope for it to grow and take 'market' share from the other OSs out thee. I know one thing, I really don't see me ever buying a Windows machine again. I just hope I can help back some day. :)
 
Yeah I have to add voice to this. 2 days ago I installed FreeBSD on my desktop. I alternate between Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD, until now. For some reason I keep coming to FreeBSD because it is easy to find where things are, how things works, how to configure etc. and they are kept to minimum.

The handbooks are fantastic, just this morning it saved my life. My idea was to use FreeBSD permanently. I have a small NAS in the corner and I wanted to back it up regularly. With Windows, it works but I don't trust it.

Linux, well with all those complex varieties of GUIs it became like Windows (i.e I don't know who is doing what and where things are anymore). So I installed FreeBSD and now I needed Samba 4 (NAS uses Samba 4).

I installed Samba 4, NAS and FreeBSD can now see each other and exchange files. I wanted the NAS to do a regular backup so I added 3 TB USB 3 drive to FreeBSD. Now, I wanted to be a ZFS filesystem as well (and I haven't a clue about it, first time other than Installing FreeBSD which I just used the default for that). the NAS was happy to back to a share on external drive. The Handbook was brilliant in helping me set it up as ZFS.

This morning accidentally I lost power to the external drive. Reconnected it and it seems fine until I tried to move some files to it. It just hang the whole OS (maybe I should have waited longer, I don't know).

it rebooted fine, but I lost 1 TB of data and the NAS backup :( I just cannot see them there, but the storage it occupied are still there.... out comes the Handbook, brilliant I tell you.I was able to recover everything and now it is working beautifully. I love ZFS so far, now I am learning about snapshots through the handbook :)

Good work and thanks.
 
Linux, well with all those complex varieties of GUIs it became like Windows (i.e I don't know who is doing what and where things are anymore).
Exactly! I'm doing work for a client who can barely spell Unix much less know anything about it (their a Windows shop) but they decided to tell me to pick a Linux for their web server. In between developing the site itself, I tried to figure out which one to use and found it to be a wild ride of trying to find one that's good as a server but only being able to read about what a great desktop distro everyone's favorite is.
 
Back
Top