Why do you use FreeBSD?

I always found it funny that people choose OS that will run on their shiny new hardware, rather than hardware that will run on a shiny, new, and secure OS.

Please continue.
 
bbzz said:
I always found it funny that people choose OS that will run on their shiny new hardware, rather than hardware that will run on a shiny, new, and secure OS.

I agree and find it odd when people state that BSD or Linux has poor hardware support. Is this an issue? Chuck your shite hardware away and get hardware that does work with BSD / Linux. ;)
 
Lorem-Ipsum said:
The one thing keeping me back is that I like a bleeding edge system on the desktop and there doesn't seem to be a *BSD that fills that category.

On the contrary, I preferred BSD for this.

Why?

I can run a fairly stable base OS and compile updated software easily from ports.
 
I first tried FreeBSD because of zfs and several recommendations that it is an fairly easy to administer zfs-server.
I then discovered that it is also more unified and easier to understand than e.g. Linux or Solaris. Well, for an old fart like me anyway...
Thus I'm currently building a server for FreeBSD.

Things I do not like so much:
* The convervatism sometimes seems a little extreme (conversion from CVS to svn in 2012, really?).
* Sorry to say, but I'm not a big fan of the X11 desktop. There are some good applications of course, but this is basically the worst part of the Linux user experience ported to FreeBSD. Yes, it's not FreeBSD's fault and no, I don't have any better idea. But then, I use OS X, so many of you guys will just laugh at me anyway <smile>.

To close on a positive note: I hope I can find a way to make myself useful.
Subscribed to some of the lists to do some janitorial work at least.
 
Um.. because my co-worker setting up the web server uses FreeBSD and so he set up a FreeBSD web server. Now I get to start learning the "BSD-way" and how it differs from the "Linux-way" and "Windows-way".

I'm just going to try to come to BSD with an open mind and see where it takes me. Who knows, if things work out I may try it on my (test) laptop, but I'll make not promises (yet)! :e
 
Have you read these FORUMS at all?
Most people here tell others to go use another Distro when asking questions.



Amzo said:
Well, everyone has their different reasons for using FreeBSD, whether it be on a Desktop or a Server. I am curious as to why people choose it over other operating systems such as Linux, Windows or OSX.

Personally for me, I have numerous reason, the first most is, that there seems to be more professionalism involved. The community seems more mature, while compared to the Linux community (Even though it doesn't apply to everyone in that community) which seems to be filled with elitism, arrogance, ignorance and prepubescents wanna be hackers. Who generally believe to be more knowledgeable than they actually are. I think this comes because most have been Windows users, and the little jump from Windows to Linux has fueled their ignorance.

The license was also another reason, while there is the above that also applies to the license of the users being fanatical about the license, with general responses to anyone who doesn't use GNU/Linux being "Why do you hate Freedom" because I generally don't agree with GPL. They're like contradictory religious fanatics. If I write some code, whether it be based on someone else's code and I extended, freedom to me would be deciding whether or not my code be proprietary. GPL doesn't offer this freedom, while BSDl does.

As well as those two issues I have, another is with Linus and Richard Stallman them selfs. They seem to fit in with the elitism of the community, and generally troll, preach and show complete arrogance and closed mindedness.

Overall it seems like a complete cesspool or arrogance, prepubescents and general annoyance, with little professionalism at all.
 
You must be talking about something else than FreeBSD and some other forums, FreeBSD does not have "distros" ;)

As for why I'm using FreeBSD? As lme@ said, because I can. Also I'm old enough to recognize the value of organization vs. uncontroller chaos.
 
I'm using FreeBSD at home and at work for Desktop, Office, Internet, GIS, Coding.
The only software missing for my job is an efficient AutoCAD-like (and some times Games).
 
Simple, I use it because wants demonstrate that can be better, IMHO like people try to be...
 
I grew up with MS-DOS. Then along came Windows (first 3.11, then 95/98 and then NT) but I still liked DOS better. Then came university and I learned about IRIX, HP-UX, SunOS (later Solaris) and later even Linux. Linux was good because you could run "UNIX" on your PC. Then at some point out of curiosity I tried FreeBSD (3.2 or 3.3 it was) and I've never looked back since.

Fonz
 
I use FreeBSD on my servers because it's a stable operating system, and happens to have the features I need.
And by stable, I mean 'running stable', but also that the project as a whole is steady. Changes happen with good reason, not just "because we can", unlike some other project philosophies.

It has served me well for more than a decade. And I hope it will serve me well for years to come. :)
 
GreenMeanie said:
Have you read these FORUMS at all?
Most people here tell others to go use another Distro when asking questions.
No, when someone asks about PC-BSD, FreeNAS, etc. we suggest that they will probably get a more relevant response if they ask their question on the forum(s) dedicated to those releases. [Cite]

Since this forum doesn't have a dedicated advocacy section, some discussion of "<other> vs. FreeBSD" happens here in the general forum. A real question like "why does gettimeofday() benchmark so badly compared to <other>?" will usually generate a useful discussion. Posting something like "<some other forum> says FreeBSD is dying" and more extreme types of trolling may get some snarky replies and/or moderator action.

As to the original poster's question, I started using FreeBSD because of a natural progression from 4.4BSD-VAX -> BSD/OS i386 -> FreeBSD amd64. Nothing has happened (yet) to make me decide to move along to the next thing (whatever that may be). Some recent changes / behavior / decisions have made me think about it, though.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
Oh you can't leave that hanging out there like that.
No one thing, but off the top of my head:

Springing the "CVS is dead" on everybody and still not having equivalents of net/cvsup-mirror and net/cvsup-without-gui available to work with SVN, nor any clear and concise directions for doing it "from scratch". Bonus points for pushing a whole lot of commits into CVS with only the $FreeBSD committer tag changing (no actual changes).

The apparently-intentional breakage of the ports infrastructure on old, unsupported FreeBSD releases. While I know there's no obligation to do anything regarding those, in the past the attitude has always been "try not to break things".

Lack of communication about what's going on with releases. The main page says "9.1-RC3 upcoming". If you click on that you get to a page where you can download some ISO images or look at the status page, which was last updated on 10/10/12. Sure, maintaining documentation isn't as sexy as coding, but find somebody to do it, please...

Ports breakage due to a number of reasons. One that comes to mind is security/py-fchksum which was removed due to unreachable master site, but a number of other ports still require this.

Whatever problems caused at least one long-term committer (dougb) to leave.
 
Terry_Kennedy said:
No one thing, but off the top of my head:
Whatever problems caused at least one long-term committer (dougb) to leave.

Doug Barton left!? When did that happen? That's a terrible loss!!!

Is there a mailing list post detailing his departure? I'm quite saddened by this ...
 
Terry_Kennedy said:
No one thing, but off the top of my head:

Springing the "CVS is dead" on everybody and still not having equivalents of net/cvsup-mirror and net/cvsup-without-gui available to work with SVN, nor any clear and concise directions for doing it "from scratch".
I wonder if someone might someday put up a third-party cvsup equivalent...

Possible From Scratch procedure, in the meantime... ( ignores pkgng anything, sorry [ignorance on my part].)

Code:
mv /usr/ports/distfiles /usr/distfiles
mv /usr/ports/packages /usr/packages
mv /usr/ports /usr/ports.bak
/bin/rm -rf /usr/ports.bak/distfiles
/bin/rm -rf /usr/ports.bak/packages
svn co svn://svn0.us-west.FreeBSD.org/ports/head /usr/ports  # or east
# wait...
mv /usr/packages /usr/ports/packages
mv /usr/distfiles /usr/ports/distfiles
# delete unwanted files in /usr/ports.bak ...
# later, to csup.
script -a /tmp/svn_today29.log svn up /usr/ports
# an rsync exclude file
- /ports/.svn
- /src/.svn
- .svn
# end of rsync exclude file
cd [FILE]/usr/ports[/FILE] && make fetchindex
That *might* be a from-scratch procedure, may take more than a half gigabyte of
additional disk space vs /usr/ports without .svn, even more if many files/directories are used by ports.bak...
 
nslay said:
How can we evolve Unix for the modern computing world (tablet/phone/cloud/etc)? We need some innovation ... FreeBSD is always playing catch-up it seems.

I see no hope in trying to offer OS alternatives to tablet/phone etc. OSes. What the manufactures offers for their devices will be much superior for the average user, even for enthusiasts/hobbyists. That battle is already over for Linux/BSD/other unix like OSes.

The FOSS concept has worked on desktop and laptop computers so far because there have been a force that pulls together the development and that's compatibility with the PC platform and interoperability with Microsoft's operating systems. Also the lack of quality in the early offerings for everyday operating systems heavily contributed to the success of open source OSes.

Now on tablets and mobile phones that goes out of the window and there are no hardware compatibility requirements (except for peripheral devices, USB etc.), only software level compatibility demands that can be fullfilled with many wildly different hardware and software combinations.

Somehow I don't mourn this development at all. It's Darwinian evolution really.
 
The reason I switched to FreeBSD was for a couple of reasons. I came from Windoze (too much like, well, Windoze). Tried Apple products (too controlling). Tried Linux of many flavors (Arch, Debian, DSL, Ubuntu, etc) and found it too chaotic. So I went to BSD. FreeBSD (out of the BSD family) has the most documentation, and a very nicely organized ports tree. You have to have basic computer knowledge, and you can't be afraid to completely redo your hard drive if you drastically mess up (hey, that's learning!). And you have to have some spare time on your hands. I've been with FreeBSD for two years, and I love it.
 
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