Why FreeBSD, if I may..

Linux is bad. If Linux is used by 97% of non-Windows/non-Mac users, it doesn't mean it's the best thing out there. Same when 90% of people use Windows doesn't mean Windows is the best thing out there, in fact the opposite is true, as you know.

Yes, mass psychosis is real, people can go crazy in big droves. 100 million people can all go crazy at the same time, entire countries, even entire continents can go insane at the same time. There has actually been three-letter agencies type of research decades ago how to induce mass psychosis on large scales, and they have pretty unlimited resources, so mass psychosis on the planetary scale is not just science fiction but probably a long accomplished feat. Just look at how popular Windows is on the planet.

And if you think you are immune to mind ****ery, look at how long you've used Linux all while FreeBSD people were enjoying this incredible powerful stable well-designed platform.
 
It's a big toolbox. After a few weeks of trying early Xfce and lots of ports. I found out I could copy the entire filesystem to another PC with nfs. That was always a problem with Windows and Mac. It was at the start of the Pentium time. PC's were worthless. I had plenty and kept FreeBSD running on a few. Now I boot any PC with ny live USB system. The native disks became only storage.
 
1. The BSD license.
2. Reliably installs ZFS on root with Boot Environments with no fuss. The best foundation to build upon.
3. A mostly complete operating system. Still a complete operating system for standards compliant consoles and serial terminals but sadly has a dependency on Linux DRM for GPU support.
4. Timely security fixes.
5. A good package and ports system that has reliable production delivery and the ability to have private builds using Poudriere.
6. A well behaved intelligent community that doesn't act like NPCs.
 
What's the old saying? "Linux is for people who hate Windows. BSD is for people who love Unix."

This is much more reality now than ever before. Most of the people I see flocking to Linux nowadays are doing so because they can run an installer, click three times, then have a fully functioning system that is 100% automatically configured. Then all they have to do is download and run Steam, and they can play games without configuring their system at all. All that automatic applicance-like system comes at the cost of the power that comes with knowing how your system works. I seriously think it is easier to customize a Windows installation than an Ubuntu installation. That may be because I know Windows better than Ubuntu. I know FreeBSD better than either of those, but my knowledge of FreeBSD does not translate well into knowledge of customizing and tweaking Ubuntu. I know Ubuntu better than I know Fedora or SUSE, but when I try those out, my Ubuntu knowledge does not translate well into working with those distributions.

But with FreeBSD, I must learn the system in order for it to do what I want. I must read the documentation in order to setup the system. Granted, it is much easier now than it was when I first started learning the system nearly 15 years ago, but I still need to refer to the documentation often. Because of this, when I want to change the system up a bit, or something doesn't work the way I want to, I find that it is rather easy to do, and I know where to go to find information. I can also be fairly assured that instructions written in 2016 are still relevant to 2026.

To directly address the OP, I would recommend diving in and seeing for yourself why we love this OS. For some people it is ZFS. For others it is the network stack. For many, it is the coherence and consistency of the system. Some may choose FreeBSD simply because they prefer the aesthetics of Beastie over Tux! Whatever reason you have, FreeBSD stands there ready to serve you, how you want to use and learn the system. That is what is meant by "The power to serve."
 
loveydovey said:
Linux is bad. If Linux is used by 97% of non-Windows/non-Mac users, it doesn't mean it's the best thing out there. Same when 90% of people use Windows doesn't mean Windows is the best thing out there, in fact the opposite is true, as you know.

Yes, mass psychosis is real, people can go crazy in big droves. 100 million people can all go crazy at the same time, entire countries, even entire continents can go insane at the same time.
Click to expand...
Main psychosis is for Android.
 
jardows said:
I seriously think it is easier to customize a Windows installation than an Ubuntu installation.
Click to expand...

Let's not overdo the Linux hate. If you think Windows gives more user control than Ubuntu then you didn't use anything after Windows 7.
Ubuntu still uses GNU and FOSS stuff which still have (and always will have) normal user interaction patterns. You run "man this" or this --help and you get something out of it. On Windows you run a tool, it spawns "Invalid arguments" message box. Then you run it with /? and it does the same. Either by approaching the arcane MSFT cabal or by manual tracing via cabal tools (sysinternals) you realize the tool opens Registry and tries to fetch some cryptic hex shit from a node labeled {hafsjdf-sdfjhk2-sdjfks0-2jksdfj}. And then the update is pushed and behaviour changes.
 
eternal_noob said:
I chose FreeBSD because it is the only BSD that has an official forum.
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It's the only major BSD OS with an official forum. A few minor BSD's have a forum on their website, thus making theirs official for theirs.

I stopped trying to see it as official, when a BSD doesn't have a hosted forum. The German and French language forums are an asset. Can't read their languages, but I've seen their usernames from here from past active to there, more recently active. Some are active contributors to software. Other general BSD forums are an asset too.

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The importance of ZFS is data preservation. For typical use, there's little point in using it for OS files. Where it's useful is for directories with important files. These need their own partitions. What happens with UFS or most other filesystems, is a computer may be shutdown incorrectly, and there's data loss or corruption. If it isn't cleaned up with fsck on the next reboot, important data can be lost. As for filesystem files, just copy the file from the mirrors. I would give ZFS partitions their own harddrive. Also, HDD disks would be preferred. As when they lose data, it's piece by piece. With ZFS there's a big chance to recover almost everything. As for solid state SDD, the whole drive can fail at once and be completely unrecoverable, which even ZFS wouldn't make a difference, unless you had this across multiple harddisks, but at least one should be HDD. From a same or related cause, multiple SDD's could fail at once.
 
dorijan said:
Simple as that.
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I can appreciate a pile of hacks that can get stuff done (and maybe overhaul the hacks one or five 🤪 times until they are not very hacky), with Linux, but, also, I appreciate "ok, well, what if we took a bit to figure this out." Unfortunately most people accept the former as enough.
 
Zare said:
Let's not overdo the Linux hate. If you think Windows gives more user control than Ubuntu then you didn't use anything after Windows 7.
Ubuntu still uses GNU and FOSS stuff which still have (and always will have) normal user interaction patterns. You run "man this" or this --help and you get something out of it. On Windows you run a tool, it spawns "Invalid arguments" message box. Then you run it with /? and it does the same. Either by approaching the arcane MSFT cabal or by manual tracing via cabal tools (sysinternals) you realize the tool opens Registry and tries to fetch some cryptic hex shit from a node labeled {hafsjdf-sdfjhk2-sdjfks0-2jksdfj}. And then the update is pushed and behaviour changes.
Click to expand...
I have FreeBSD, MX-Linux, Artix-Linux,Mint-Linux, Redcore-Linux installed. When it fits I boot, Mostly FreeBSD. Why ? It's very homogeneous.
 
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