What Do You Love Most About FreeBSD? :)

For me, It's because it's not Linux. It does things differently. :) I LOVE Linux, don't get me wrong. But FreeBSD does things Linux can't. And vice-versa. :) It's like a breath of fresh air (even MORE so when coming from Windows.) I also like FreeBSD because all I had to do to get it to work with my flat screen TV with the AMD HDMI Port was edit a simple Text File... :) Also, I get so much more into FreeBSD when I have a lot of Caffeine. :) What drew you guys to FreeBSD?
 
The Daemon aspect. And the desktops I get out of it.

I showed my sister and her family my website, tutorial, the page source and explained how the browser interpreted that text into what they were looking at, screenshots, etc.

They liked the screenshot with Demonica, the sexy daemon girl, on the index page. Sex sells. Their eyes glazed over for the rest of it, and she works at a computer all day.
 
When the subject came up in a Linux forum, I asked what they had previously thought the diet of a Daemon consisted of?

bon_appetit.png
 
The community support and the spot on documentation is what keeps me a happy Systems admin at work and at home I use FreeBSD at every opportunity I can, cause I know what every tasks I throw at it, FreeBSD will handle it.

The jails system is also incrediable, this type of container paravirtualization takes a lot of the headaches away from using a traditional hyper-visor like carefully allocating resources to each VM and in my opinion managing jails with ezjail is much more straight forward than any tools for Docker. When it comes to system management nothing really compares to jails.
 
"Because it's not Linux" seems a bit shadey to me, no offense. I like to stick with using a product because it can get the job at hand done better, but not because it's "not something else". Using something because you dislike something else is usually a recipe for problems.

As to me... I stopped using Linux a long time ago in favor of Sun Solaris/x86. I don't care for OS's which introduce changes with every release for the sole reason of the change itself. On Linux stuff can change on a developers whim and that's not the way I want to run my server farm. Another reason is because support on Linux - generally speaking - sucks. It's not all bad but there's a lot of garbage out there.

For example: LTS. Long Term Support, mostly looking at Ubuntu. While it is true that an LTS version gets supported for a longer period of time, the downside which no one speaks of is that development doesn't stop. Upgrading from one LTS version to another usually effectively boils down to doing several major version upgrades at once. Going from version 10.x to 13.x is no exception. That's really not my idea of "Long Term Support", it's more in the likes of: "Long Term Upgrade Postpone". With all the risks involved. You'll probably have to make up for the postponed time tenfold.

I am a little worried that FreeBSD might be heading down this path as well eventually. Thing is: this is easier for the developers, but not for the end-users.

And we're already going there somewhat: the shorter support cycle for example is proof of this. When a new release comes out (when is a little bit of anyones guess) then they want to burn bridges because the previous version will only be supported for 3 months tops.

It's still a lot better than your average Linux distribution in my opinion, but it's also a step in the direction of "what's easiest for the developers" while somewhat ignoring the userbase.

But back to the question at hand...

When (wh)Oracle took over Sun it was the beginning of the end for Solaris. I had a support contract as a hobbyist for the only reason that I wanted to support the OS and the company. When I got the choice to pay triple for less support I knew I was going to jump off the bandwagon.

I wanted a mature Unix-like OS which also provided support for ZFS. Well.. FreeBSD provided. Linux only started recently with ZFS support and well... Last March ZFS on Linux landed but unfortunately data disappeared. ZFS has been around for what? 12 years now? And it has been available through open source for a long period as well. BSD could make it work, Linux developers... not so much it seems.

That should also tell you something in my opinion.

So yah, I discovered FreeBSD and its excellent ZFS support, I tested, moved and I basically never looked back.
 
I started my unix usage on NetBSD on 68k and tried out linux as it was smaller and better to understand at that time. There were no distributions. Then I kind of stuck with linux, untill the bloat crept in and the nannying got on my nerves. After an upgrade I found that there were several picture viewers installed as a dependency from the desktop, each with it's own bulk of dependencies. Now the desktop switched to the next cool thing, updating the old stuff and funneling in still more. I remembered NetBSD, and missed it. I had used Solaris and SunOS in the mean time, so I somehow ended up with FreeBSD thanks to the handbook.
Also, I like the approach of *BSD package management. Whenever there needs to be something changed outside the package files, you are the one to do that. No installing some crypto stuff for "one day it might come in handy" and then finding out it has crapped all over your PAM settings. Or webservers which are meant as a playground and they insist to be started all at once.

Sadly, the "we want to play cool and do stuff behind your back as you are too dumb to do that" attitude creeps in here as well. Slowly but we still need to fight it. That's why that drm-next thing got up my nose so hard. Are we professionals (or aiming too be) or are we sheeple? In the latter case I might as well buy a mac and be done with it.
 
"Because it's not Linux" seems a bit shadey to me, no offense. I like to stick with using a product because it can get the job at hand done better, but not because it's "not something else". Using something because you dislike something else is usually a recipe for problems.

But does Linux really do any job better? ;) That sentiment is warranted IMO because of the incohesive and fragmented nature of Linux and it's ecosystem. It's a self perpetuating mess. All the drama that arises there seems to originate from it's polarizing nature as well.

To quote Vision; "conflict... breeds catastrophe". :)

To answer the OPs question; Among my many reasons, I love that FreeBSD upholds the concept of "the base system", and it's separation from third party software. All aspects of its superiority stems from that very concept.

Oh, and it's amazing documentation.


edit: clarity
 
Sadly, the "we want to play cool and do stuff behind your back as you are too dumb to do that" attitude creeps in here as well. Slowly but we still need to fight it. That's why that drm-next thing got up my nose so hard. Are we professionals (or aiming too be) or are we sheeple? In the latter case I might as well buy a mac and be done with it.

When my FreeBSD boxen start behaving like a Windows machine, I will build OpenBSD on every one of them the same day. And not likely to have anything good to say about FreeBSD from that point on, much less promote it.

Is this a pattern developing with FreeBSD brass? Doing things off the top of their heads without careful consideration of the possible consequences?

Stimulus - Response - Consequence is the way that flows:

Make changes people don't want (but are too stupid to know what's best for them), people will leave in droves like they did with the CoC, and the consequences? Figure it out.

I think people have finally stopped laughing at us about the disallowing of virtual hugs. Let's not give Linux inept something else to bash us with. Or has FreeBSD decided to go in a different direction and soon no longer Free to do with it as I see fit?
 
Good sentiments here. As I get older, there is a lot of truth to me in the saying "It's not what tech I like, so much as it is what tech offends me the least." Just because something can be done, does not necessarily mean that it should be done. My use cases for freeBSD are more based in ease of analysis, and by that I mean, I want to be able to quickly analyze and understand the software path through a system, where as in Linux the script kiddie devs at places like redhat change APIs and configs with the frequency that many folks change their skivvies. What init system are we stuck with this week, and what is the half finished and untested utility command to manage it? Hmmm....
 
But does Linux really do any job better? ;)
Unfortunately, yes. Take for example the massive main stream support it has which results in big vendors providing support for their own hardware just to meet assumed "popular demands". You can even see this on FreeBSD itself where several people will use a Linux compatibility layer in order to get certain hardware made usable.

However, it remains to be seen how long this will last. I'm aware of quite a few vendors who have dropped Linux support for the sole reasoning that they dubbed it a "toxic environment". When you take a look at a general Torvalds comment on the kernel mailinglist it's not that hard to understand why.

My only personal problem though... As much as I detest the way Torvalds expresses himself (in my opinion he's an arrogant dork when it comes to this: apparently he doesn't even want to put any effort into this thing called communication, I honestly wouldn't want anything to do with him), the other side of the story is also important: in many cases he is plain out right, you can't deny that. However, the reason why I still oppose this is because in a way he's also a hypocrite. The main reason for his rants is that he feels people don't put enough effort into their work (such as testing) and then delivering a horrible unfinished product. Right or wrong... fact is that he himself could also put some extra effort into his work in communicating to make sure the message comes across but in a much more mature way. He obviously doesn't want to do that, too much work (or maybe he honestly doesn't comprehend how to call someone not qualified for their job, maybe there's too many difficult words in that).

That's how you call someone a moron without the "m word". And if you're worried that people don't get it... then why the heck are they on the kernel development list in the first place? That's also something I never got...

Of course in the end I don't mind at all, because in this way he ensures that the only reason vendors keep involved with Linux is because of the brand and what it stands for. Once that starts eroding, and please mark my words: then the whole ship will sink faster than the Titanic, and this is going to happen someday. There are plenty of vendors who are involved with Linux, having to heed the Torvalds ranting, but not of their own will but company policy. Do you really think those guys will advocate in favor of Linux when they see a way out? I sure don't.

Time will tell..

Apologies for a small rant, weekend and all. Bottom line: yeah, there are areas in which Linux is better. But for how long?
 
I started seriously moving my systems slowly to FreeBSD since a couple of months. Before I was familiarizing myself with it, to make sure it fits well my use cases, and it does very well! As a newcomer, these are the points that I love the most about FreeBSD
  1. sysctl -a and you can list all the tunable system settings! sysfs is a big mess under Linux, the solution for badly designed interfaces under Linux is, guess what, abstraction (https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.16/admin-guide/sysfs-rules.html)
  2. Audio quality is superb! Again under Linux the solution to the Alsa mess is abstraction, welcome to pulseaudio latencies!
  3. Up to date ports, with a stable system base. It is a perfect mix between rolling and stable release models, almost non existent on any Linux distro.
  4. Documentation is great!
  5. Kernel modules remain compatible between minor releases, you have a module for 11.0, it is guaranteed to work for all 11.x. Under Linux, a module compiled for 4.16.0, will refuse to load on the kernel 4.16.0.0.0.....1!
  6. Almost every kernel module has it own Makefile under /usr/src/dev/modules. You can modify/build what you want from there.
  7. No shit like systemd, my point on that has been always that it is okay to have a parallel init system, but a init that eats other daemons, udev, logind, cron, etc... stopping me from booting my system because it does not find my external flash card that is listed in fstab, filling my disk with binary logs, killing my processes by default on logout, noooooo.
  8. Sane community.
 
What i love most about FreeBSD? - The BSD Daemon never Failed me.
I like how the layout of the file system is defined. hier(7)
When you sit in front of a FreeBSD server which another administrator is maintaining and you need to diagnose a software problem you can easy see what is installed and what are the configurations. Everything has it's specific place and it's easy to see the entire picture.
 
The downfall will occur if FreeBSD should ever be more concerned with what others think rather than the science of computing.

If that were the case it would be free virtual hugs for everybody. :) (Line up people , I got plenty of parenthesis for each side.) They obviously wanted to placate somebody out there in PC Land or we wouldn't have the new CoC.

While it generated considerable controversy, I can see where that didn't change anything on the software side of things or science of computing. Just the wetware of every human bean that has to live under it. Who I bet could really use a hug.
 
Trihexagonal On occasion, I'm asked to fill in for a couple of hours at one of my restaurants when they're shorthanded. I cringed when I caught myself saying to someone, "I loved working with you today". Or the time I was taken aback at how good one of the unattractive people looked in their prom picture. You can't say anything to anyone nowadays without fear of becoming the next Harvey.
 
Well, when I don't understand something I usually turn cause and effect around and try again. So banning of virtual hugs makes sure there won't be any, and now there is a reason why no one gets them. And that reason can be understood, that is better than "you don't get hugs because of no reason". See, all clear now. And now it's the other peoples fault, they would only need to ask...
 
The ports system and the rc.d init, although a new rc which support parallelization will be a step forward, mainly on servers, on desktop the actual rc.d it's quite fast, less then 25 seconds, which compared with my Arch GNU/Linux machine with systemd (~12-15 sec boot time) it's more then O.K.
 
So banning of virtual hugs makes sure there won't be any, and now there is a reason why no one gets them.

I have a disclaimer at the bottom of my tutorial:

Neither I, or this site, are affiliated with the The FreeBSD Foundation or the The FreeBSD Project and this tutorial is presented solely for your benefit in learning to use FreeBSD as a desktop Operating System.

The word "your" looked like a good place for a nice virtual hug, but that wouldn't be nice of me. I will admit to only adding The FreeBSD Foundation after the fact.

It was big in chat around 2000 among friends or regulars and everybody would say your name when you came in with sometime a dozen parenthesis on each side. It's not on my list of things that offend me.

Now don't touch me or invade my personal space has gone virtual.
 
What do I love most about FreeBSD?
All the chicks? Women love "The Power To Serve". :):)

Edit: Perhaps insuffice to say, but take note that we are the one who serves. *Could be understood in an unfortunate way*
 
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