Why did you choose to stay with FreeBSD?

stability, performance, ports, yep, that pretty much sums it up :e

And I love the fact I can build everything from the ground up
 
Organization. Separation of the base system and 3rd party applications. A core system developed as a system, instead of a hodge-podge of things thrown together. Simple package systems.
 
I've said it before, I will say it again:
  • Jails
  • An easy, well-supported base system upgrade path

(I am administrating a FreeBSD host for a peer department; FBSD itself is running in a VM, and each of its services runs within a jail. I need something that I don't have to fuss with a lot.)
 
All that has been mentioned so far + easy and fast installation process + customizability and flexibility of applications + quality and high availability of documentation.
 
Stability, ports, jails, GEOM, and now ZFS.

I'm a convert from Linux. I changed jobs from where the primary in-house platform was Linux (Redhat, mostly) to one using FreeBSD (4.x and 5.x). I always like to "eat my own cooking" (as the saying goes), so I like to run my primary home and work machines using the prevalent OS. I went from Fedora to FreeBSD. This was mid 2005 or so.


After the typical growing pains of learning a new system, I fell totally in love with it. The entire system is very tight and stable, including the ports (which is what keeps me from switching -- no, portage just doesn't do it for me).

FreeBSD has a few annoyances, like lack of good 3D acceleration (I hate using proprietary binary blobs, never mind the current lack of amd64 support from vendors) and inability to use Wine under amd64. But overall, these aren't things that interrupt my productivity, so I can't really complain too loudly. Now that we've got a solid, working version of VirtualBox, the lack of WINE isn't a huge deal for me (though it would be nice to have), and I'm not really a huge gamer anyway and my recent experience w/ the new Radeon code is very encouraging.

I've been tempted over the years to go back to Linux, mostly for stupid things like wanting VMware (now irrelevant due to Vbox), Flash (it sucks, but hey, I like to indulge in Hulu or Youtube), WINE, or inability to run Compiz (now possible w/ open source 3D drivers, I assume). But the things that were lacking in the past are now available, and even when they weren't, I just couldn't bear the thought of giving up ports, jails, GEOM, and ZFS.

I really can't imagine ever going back to Linux. Now don't get me wrong; Linux is awesome in its own right. I think both platforms have their place. However, I prefer it personally on the desktop for my own needs, and I prefer it in the server room for my professional needs.
 
I am using FreeBSD+GNOME as my primary desktop OS for many years.
Why FreeBSD? Performance? In desktop Windows has pretty good graphics (2D/3D) than FreeBSD (and Linux). So, it is not the only reason.
I just love BSD philosophy, it's truely free! it's a whole OS (not just kernel)! it's developing in managed (core team)!
It's my primary desktop OS! I use Windows while required (government and bank sites require Windows+IE in Taiwan).

BTW, FreeBSD needs more desktop support! Like webcam support (cheese, pidgin...)
 
Yeah, everything that's already been mentioned.

Stay on FreeBSD, as opposed to what? I haven't seen anything out there that's compelling enough to get me to switch.

OS X is pretty, but Apple's getting more and more totalitarian every day.

Plan 9 is a more elegant implementation of the ideas that inspired Unix. But it's not much use except as a research tool.

OpenBSD? Maybe if I were running a mission-critical server where security was all-important. But I'm not. These are just my home machines.

NetBSD? Maybe if I were running on exotic hardware, but I'm not. (I do, however, have a long-standing intention to install it on an old Vadem Clio I have stuffed in a drawer somewhere...)

PC-BSD? Text-mode installers don't bother me. My current favorite window manager is musca, not whatever PC-BSD has chosen for me.

Linux? Too much GNUish cruft and too many Windows expats trying to make things just like they were back where they came from. GPL doesn't affect me directly, since I'm retired and am not in the business of selling software, but it still offends me somehow.
 
Yeap, Apple way of doing stuff pushed me to open source (I do use mac os x on macbook, it is a good os for a macbook) but on eeepc I do have FreeBSD installed.

FBSD is more or less "idiot" proof - just like os x (no problem after hard shutdown ;).
Since I could call my self an OS "idiot", FBSD is perfect for me :D

Stability and speed (it rocks on 900 MHz netbook!) is also a +.
Oh, and I just love FreeBSD logo...

Once again - great job FBSD devs!
 
I have tried many OSes, but FreeBSD seems less fscked up from all the others, something like 'jack of all trades'.

I started with Linux but all this mess was pain in the ass, too many daemons, hald, udev, modprobe.d, various arguments to loaded modules (!?) configuration spread across all files under /etc, package management ...

Then I used FreeBSD for a long time, but after switching to newer hardware (not new ...) FreeBSD became unstable, panics, was not able to burn cd/dvd, so I decided to look around and tried some others, like OpenSolaris.

I run OpenSolaris mostly on my laptop, I liked native flash and virtualbox, but suffered from VERY small amount of packages ... then IPS thingy came out, some repositories showed up ... but number of packages (these that I needed not overall) was still small. Also various problems with adding packages ... The SVC with XML configs scripts was also pretty fscked up, especially ehn you look all those enabled services, you do not really know what they do or what will you break when you disable some of them ... No virtual consoles also at that point, so X11 or console ...

I also tried OSX on PC, worked quite nice, but ... I felt so limited and retarded using OSX interface, also package management ... what package management ... everything you want to add/install is not freeware/open they want you to pay for all little tiny shit that does something ... at least on Windows it was easy to find a crack/serial, well not here. If you use your box for very casual things, then OSX may be nice, but when you want to do something that Apple did not want you to do or they did not thought that someone would want to do taht, then you are fscked up.

So I tried Linux again, Ubuntu to be precisely ... worked quite nice for some short time, then I stopped to care about system state, some random updates/upgrades etc, sound was broken from the install, thru all updates till the end, creator of ALSA/PulseShit should be sitting back to back with Hans Reiser in Jail at least ... problems with modules, non existed modules (after deinstallation of apps taht I did not used any more), problems with versions of modules (after updates), generally one big mess of shit.

So I thought, FreeBSD 8.x seems nice, viirtualbox should work, flash 10 should work, lets try again ... and that was best decision to date, to come back. Now I have pure order on my boxes, I know what is going on everywhere, clean setup with ZFS, moved to openbox (really nice MW), all needed packages are available, almost everything works, generally now the OS does not come into my way, I just use it as documentation says and everything works.

I will have to be really drunk to think about switch to any other OS at that point ...
 
I use FreeBSD as a workstation and/or (home) server since 2.2.7 (IIRC). I was using FreeBSD (at home) in parallel with RH Linux (at work) till (IIRC) 2004, when one day i discovered that free RedHat packages from rpmfind were no longer available. The shortest path for me was to go with FreeBSD. Have never regretted it. Had many many many dark times with it, but it *always* went well in the end, due to the sophisticated, intelligent, professional, soulful FreeBSD community.
In short i stay with FreeBSD because i want and because i can!
To say "Thank you FreeBSD" is nothing in comparison with what i got.
 
Raised on Dual Vaxes running BSD. FreeBSD made more sense in my head then NetBSD. Had my first taste when a friend installed 0.9 on a hard drive and gave it to me. Never saw a reason to switch. I like things that work as advertised, even if you have to dig for the advertisement. :)
 
I remember reading the 386BSD articles in Dr Dobbs, but I didn't try the software on my own machine because it seemed extremely pre-alpha. (I went with a commercial Unix instead, Interactive 386/ix.)

I kinda lost track of the project after that, and only came back to it after buying an iBook in 2003 and learning that OS X draws a lot of its internals from FreeBSD. That eventually led me to install FreeBSD on one of my PC's -- which had also been a testbed for several flavors of Linux. I usually wiped the machine soon after getting Linux installed and running, because it never felt like something I would actually use. FreeBSD was different, and never got wiped from the machine. Only upgraded.

So let me add my thanks to the developers and everyone else in the FreeBSD community, for keeping it going all these years. If only I'd known what that Dr Dobbs article was starting!
 
FreeBSD does all I need, and it does it well. That's it, actually -- my needs are simple.

It's a system I don't have to fight -- there's very few bugs, so I don't need to hack-around stuff. If I need to tune something, I just look it up and do it. It doesn't try to be smart and tell me what it thinks that I want -- it simply does what it is told, nothing more, nothing less.

Oh yeah, and Beastie is just cute, and I like the red-white visual style of the homepage. :D
 
Because of "evolution" :D

SGI Irix -> Slackware -> FreeBSD/OpenBSD (from the early 90s until now)

I can get anything I want in Slack too, but Volkerding cannot fix a lousy kernel. So FreeBSD is my favorite since 5.0. Well have used many Apples since System 7 (68k) until now, but I've never considered MacOS X as something UNIX-like. It's just some toy for rich people without any real needs.
 
oliverh said:
I've never considered MacOS X as something UNIX-like. It's just some toy for rich people without any real needs.
Click to expand...

Macs are not always that expensive.
Few years ago 13' macbook was the cheapest laptop I could buy with such small screen (before netbooks).
 
respite said:
Organization. Separation of the base system and 3rd party applications. A core system developed as a system, instead of a hodge-podge of things thrown together. Simple package systems.
Click to expand...

Exactly this plus the relatively small, but functional base install. Super useful and easy.
 
And I still use Linux; but, I keep a working version of FreeBSD somewhere.
 
Well I use FreeBSD where I can and love it, the main reason is consistent well written documentation and also the support forums I manage a lot of production machines and if i have to ask a question on say the Ubuntu forms about a legacy machine that has to be kept online without getting the stock answer of "upgrade to X before we go any further" etc.

Another is the licence, this is a big one for me for my own reasons.

Stability of code, this is a must for me I run my businesses web server, firewall and other bit's of network infrastructure soaly on freebsd because it's stability.

Security is another, the FreeBSD security team are quick off the mark to fix any problems and notify end users faster than most other teams I can think of.

There is a few thing's i am not a fan off but they are minor personal gripes because that is the way of the world I am not a fan of text based installers (they have a place certainly)but I would prefair a GUI installer, and perhaps a little more amd64 compatibility but that is just a personal thing. But I have noticed that I get more bang for my buck on a 32bit freebsd machine than I do on linux or windows.
 
klanger said:
Macs are not always that expensive.
Few years ago 13' macbook was the cheapest laptop I could buy with such small screen (before netbooks).
Click to expand...

"Expensive" in terms of hardware/software compared to competitors. I don't see any real use in Apple Hardware/Software. I could beat for example the first Macbook with Intel hardware in 2006 with any competitor in price and quality. There were certain nice products of Apple, especially my Quadra AV or my first PowerPC 601, I was even happy with the first iMac despite the low quality built-in screen.
 
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