Why FreeBSD over Linux for desktop?

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rufwoof said:
OP has posted 3 times, two recent, 1 in Jan 2016 !!!
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Your point being? Or just a point of contention?

I'm sure they had their reasons and maybe will stick around a while this time. I just returned from a hiatus of several years last month and am more active than ever.


rufwoof said:
But asks a question about the comparison of a kernel (Linux) with a OS (FreeBSD).
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Yes, that's another plus. FreeBSD is a full fledged Operating System, with a small but dedicated team of developers all working toward one goal, that can directly trace its roots to Research UNIX and Berkeley Software Development UNIX proper.

Linux is a kernel developed by Linus Torvalds with applications piled on top and no coherent direction or goal.


rufwoof said:
Must already know that the base Debian provision is far far larger/more extensive than the FreeBSD base (that unlike NetBSD doesn't even include X)...
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A plus I already pointed out. The basic FreeBSD build comes with the base system and a terminal. I get to build it from the ground up with only the programs I choose to install resulting in a custom desktop unlike any other out there.


rufwoof said:
... and that packages provided outside of that are far more rigorously managed/maintained compared to FreeBSD. Some effort has gone towards improving that deficiency [Mod: Link to troll site removed] .... https://wiki.freebsd.org/FreeBSD-ng ... but still a long way to go yet. for instance

In FreeBSD, anyone may submit a new port, or volunteer to maintain an existing unmaintained port. No special commit privilege is needed.
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https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/why-port.html
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Have you actually read the Porters Handbook? You make it sound like anybody can submit a port and have it published to the ports tree for anyone to compile. That is not the case:

Being a ports committer is not enough to commit to an arbitrary port. Remember that ports usually have maintainers, must be respected.
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https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/security-fix.html

There is a long and arduous process to go through before a port ever hits the ports tree.

Checking ports in the PR database will both make it faster for us to commit them, and prove that you know what you are doing.
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https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/porting-dads.html

So either you have not read the whole Porters Handbook or are quoting bits and pieces of it to back up a flawed argument and making the case of drhowarddrfine for him.

Edit: Posting that same out of context quote to the profile page of Loala is propaganda, FUD and trolling at best

rufwoof said:
Compare Freebsd base with linux kernel and a similar base cli os ... and generally freebsd likely comes out ahead on the stability front subject to the choice of kernel/os blending (but is less flexible i.e. choice of kernel and os blend).
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Another flawed argument. You clearly state that in comparison FreeBSD "comes out ahead on the stability front subject to the choice of kernel/os blending" yet you bemoan there is not more choice of kernel and OS blending?


rufwoof said:
Beyond that ... adding third party programs ... and freebsd falls behind. So as a predominately cli server type setup ... freebsd. For a desktop ... other choices are better. The ideal desktop might perhaps be freebsd base + debian main repositories ... but that doesn't work (other than in a very limited manner) and that gap is widening as more upstream program providers will tend to link in more systemd.
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FreeBSD was designed as a server Operating System. Hence the motto "The Power To Serve" associated with it. Other choices being better is opinion only, one I do not share.

If it's a continued debate over the merits of systemD you're after I suggest you take it to a Linux forum where you will find a vast number of Linux users opposed to it to present your case to.


rufwoof said:
Popularity can be a indicator of relative measure ... and distrowatch suggests that some choices of desktop setup/system are better than others, according to a form of voting by feet.
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Popularity of something being associated with many undefined variables, including fad, laziness, ignorance, and fear of the unknown. Being "better" a matter of opinion only, yet you continue to interject it as if it had substance,

Of the 100 listed, half of the total number of Linux distros, at a glance I see 7 that are BSD related including FreeNAS and firewall oriented implementations like pfSense.

The rest are all Linux distros and back up my assertion that Linux has no coherency or general goal, and with the introduction of Lennart Pottering and systemD into the mix it's become more fragmented than ever with more infighting existing in the Linux community than you will ever see among members of the BSD community.


rufwoof, you are trolling here and risk your "self-imposed ban" becoming official. If you find Debian more suited for your needs your "feet" know how get there. I see you are a member of that forum...
 
OJ said:
Actually, I think you nailed it there. I also use Linux and have always been irritated by the number of very large programs that they INSIST I must have installed by default on every single computer. Why, if I put Linux on 3 boxen, would I need to have to spend time and resources downloading and installing 3 copies of the huge programs *Office and the Gimp on each and every single one? That's just pure dingbat idiocy! The up side, I suppose, is that it teaches patience and tolerance - though why that should be a major mission of an OS is beyond me. :)
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You should try Arch GNU/Linux it does not come with that bloatware like others GNU/Linux distribution does, or Crux who it's also minimalistic like FreeBSD and the init is rc not systemd like that in Arch GNU/Linux.
 
Why FreeBSD over Linux? Portability, or rather that it has reminded me that portability is important. I came from a Mac desktop with Solaris and Linux experience, as GPLv3 came along and GNU tools started falling behind with shipped versions of non-Linux based systems I found it increasingly difficult to keep new scripts working. Switching to FreeBSD has kept me towing the POSIX line, my scripts generally work without tweeking across *BSD, macOS, Solaris, and Illumos. Linux may require some workarounds when they deviate from standards.

FreeBSD has good support for ZFS, and I use it on my desktop and laptop. That includes inside a VM with 4GB RAM. It doesn't bloat my system, infinitely hogging RAM, but gives me data integrity, snapshotting, cloning, and generally more flexability than most other systems I've used.

FreeBSD Ports repository is extensive enough for me, and the couple of exceptions I've found (www/gohugo and sysutils/zfs-snap-diff) have been easy enough to create Ports for.

I trust FreeBSD and the developers. From what I have seen they are good engineers with understanding of the consequences of their actions. I know the Linux ecosystem is bigger, but the drama that comes with Linus and other high-up devs doesn't amuse me, and I have a hard time trusting them. I've seen integration issues that comes from tools being developed in isolation or alongside specific distros, selfishness that seems to exist just to prevent tools being adopted by other systems, and an unwillingness to take good examples of engineering from other projects thus blindly reinventing the wheel.

FreeBSD works for me, its philosophies harmonise with my own. That is why I choose FreeBSD over Linux for personal servers and desktops alike.
 
Minbari of course I'm familiar with all those. :) Who isn't? The trouble is that I got used to Debian about 14 years ago. I don't want to spend time learning the quirks of a dozen different distributions. To my way of life, that's a complete and utter waste of time and in some ways even counter productive. I don't want to be an IT expert or some kind of nerd. I respect other people's choices in that regard, but my own preference has led me to only putting effort into keeping up with one OS. That is why I now have chosen FreeBSD and have been a user since version 7.

Indeed Arch would probably have been a good choice for me had I spent some time getting to know it better a few years back. Perhaps I bet on the wrong horse when I chose Debian - it certainly didn't turn out to be the conservative and principled choice that I thought it was going to be. Now it is actually just another fashion based distro. Somewhat embarrassing actually. But whatever . . . I can't do everything, and that is the reason I landed with FreeBSD. It still works the same way that it did when I started. That methodology works really well for an amateur like me. And I have a suspicion it works well for professionals as well.
 
... rufwoof, are you aware that the site about pkgng and apt you are referring to is a very well known troll?

rufwoof said:
For a desktop ... other choices are better.
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This is really subjective.

rufwoof said:
Popularity can be a indicator of relative measure
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Very relative: according to this criterion Windows (since we are talking of desktops) shoud be the non-plus-ultra of OSes.

kuroneko, simply put: because you like it more, or it have tecnologies and features that you like/need having in an OS. :)
 
French Fries said:
Take firewalling: iptables firewall is the worst logger on earth, so you can be sure that 99,9% of GNU/Linux users are not logging their firewall.
If you are a security agency, you can simply probe the OS and if it is GNU/Linux, you know there is no real logging.
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At the risk of going a little offtopic but I definitely disagree with that. Now, it has been quite a while since I actively used IPTables but I never had issues with logging. It even has limiters in place to prevent a DoS cascading effect. Not to mention that the logging itself is usually handled by syslog.

If Linux users often keep firewall logging turned off then I think that says more about the users/admins than the IPTables system.
 
OJ said:
......... but what you are describing has nothing to do with normal reality. All kinds of things can be done by a user that wants to spend a lot of time and effort learning IT. I've spent too much time myself on occasion. Anybody with a life doesn't have that kind of time, and assuming that they do sounds somewhat arrogant. :) You can't compare operating systems like that.
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Comment of the reality, besides, FreeBSD has 20 years of history, and still in diapers of start early systems that were using the console with methodology old of the time. Look at what happened with Devuan, do not have 3 years of life, and they released their first stable version with a graphical desktop standard and support universal, if you look at the DistroWatch, is located in the rank 32 very close to FreeBSD.
 
teo said:
Look at what happened with Devuan
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All my Debian boxen are changed, or being changed to Devuan. :) It was working fine even before their first release. I even stuck it on a new laptop and "all the things" are working out of the box. I'm liking it. My main machine is staying FreeBSD though. :)

Edit to add: I just realized that you said "with graphical desktop standard". I must say, that I try to avoid doing that. I install a minimal Devuan and add the GUI stuff to taste later. FreeBSD does it the right way. Installing a GUI as standard is just good for when you're quickly setting something up for a Windows user. Those of us who are familiar with computers, don't benefit from it.
 
teo said:
Look at what happened with Devuan, do not have 3 years of life, and they released their first stable version with a graphical desktop standard and support universal...
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Nobody here that I'm aware of, with the possible exception off Linux proponents, wants a graphical desktop included with the base system.

And if so, which one will be chosen for me? The one you like best? Because I don't want a Desktop Environment at all and prefer a WM.

It's all about choice, and whether to use FreeBSD or some other OS is a choice, too.
 
Trihexagonal said:
Nobody here that I'm aware of, with the possible exception off Linux proponents, wants a graphical desktop included with the base system.
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I would go so far as to say that it's actually a real nuisance when a distro comes that way. :) I would actually call it primitive.
 
Trihexagonal said:
Have you actually read the Porters Handbook? You make it sound like anybody can submit a port and have it published to the ports tree for anyone to compile. That is not the case:

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/security-fix.html

There is a long and arduous process to go through before a port ever hits the ports tree.

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/porting-dads.html

So either you have not read the whole Porters Handbook...
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Re read The Porters Handbook introduction for yourself, on its very first page, reproducing in full
Chapter 1. Introduction

The FreeBSD Ports Collection is the way almost everyone installs applications ("ports") on FreeBSD. Like everything else about FreeBSD, it is primarily a volunteer effort. It is important to keep this in mind when reading this document.

In FreeBSD, anyone may submit a new port, or volunteer to maintain an existing unmaintained port. No special commit privilege is needed.
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PERIOD. The entire introduction ... Disincentive to read any further and enough to put most opening that document for the first time off from using a system based on that as it portrays ... a bunch of amateurs collective works of programs intended for use in FreeBSD that anyone can change willy-nilly or for ulterior motives. Fair enough you have indicated that is not the case and as such I will revisit the document. My immediate reaction upon having read that was to search around rather than reading through all 17 chapters, (which led me to a article that has been suggested as being a Trolls web site/article) and remove all pkgs/ports and consider whether just the FreeBSD base system might be utilised in isolation ... a cli/ncurses type setup, with just a very limited few additional external programs added (mc, sc-im, vim ...etc.). Such a filemanager, spreadsheet and split screen editor setup however isn't very satisfying as a desktop setup - way too yesteryear.
 
rufwoof said:
a bunch of amateurs collective works of programs intended for use in FreeBSD that anyone can change willy-nilly or for ulterior motives.
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That's not entirely true. While anyone can submit new ports or updates to existing ones there are only a couple of people that can actually commit. And those people are bound by various rules and are managed by the ports management team.

https://www.freebsd.org/portmgr/
 
Just to clarify I wasn't saying that Sir Dice, just suggesting that the Porters Handbook relatively brief introduction can instill that type of thought.

SirDice said:
That's not entirely true. While anyone can submit new ports or updates to existing ones there are only a couple of people that can actually commit. And those people are bound by various rules and are managed by the ports management team.
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Why then does the introduction specifically state otherwise? (rhetorical). Its pretty limited in what it does say, odd choice of specifics.

What about programs that are no longer developed/supported by the third party(s), or the 20% (or whatever the more recent figure is) of ports/packages that have no maintainers? (Again rhetorical, I'll read/investigate that further myself). A security product cannot (should not) have a single weak link. Nice in theory, nigh impossible in practice. Security is a practice ... that requires understanding before a best practice can be defined/adopted.
 
rufwoof said:
What about programs that are no longer developed/supported by the third party(s)
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They are marked for deletion and removed after some time.

rufwoof said:
or the 20% (or whatever the more recent figure is) of ports/packages that have no maintainers?
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They are "maintained" by the ports team. That's to say, they make sure the port builds and doesn't cause problems with the rest of the tree. It's up to the community to supply the updates, or, preferably, take over responsibility as a port maintainer. They're the so-called "orphaned" ports and are in dire need of someone to adopt them.

https://wiki.freebsd.org/PortsTasks
 
rufwoof said:
My immediate reaction upon having read that was to search around rather than reading through all 17 chapters...
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I thought as much.


rufwoof said:
... a cli/ncurses type setup, with just a very limited few additional external programs added (mc, sc-im, vim ...etc.). Such a filemanager, spreadsheet and split screen editor setup however isn't very satisfying as a desktop setup - way too yesteryear.
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That's funny to me because the very first 3rd party program I build is misc/mc.

What you and others in this thread consider "yesteryear" or remnants from the "XX century" I consider old school and hold in high regard.

But then again, you've already stated the primary interest in UNIX is for geeks and nostalgia purposes and care not that FreeBSD can trace its roots back to UNIX proper, so that shows where you're coming from.

Which begs the question, why are you here?
 
ILUXA said:
For me FreeBSD is MUCH easier to use then GNU/Linux,
Linux is very glitchy and difficult to understand, with its systemd features,
while FreeBSD is clean, secure, stable and easy to use UNIX-like operating system with very good performance.
On my home PC and laptop, FreeBSD — is the only one operating system, that I use, and I really love it.
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I agree. For me it was easier to set things up and to know how it works. It wasn't as complicated and as hard to understand as Linux.

By the way, I got it fully installed (or almost, maybe need to set up some little thing here and there) and it works fine and I have a desktop environment and everything it's all working and thanks to the members of the forum I can fix the problems that I don't understand very well. So far I'm happy with it more than I was with Linux.
 
I suspect its simply familiarity = easy. I have both Debian and FreeBSD dualboot desktops setup up near identically now and booting/using either reveals no obvious operational differences. The only visual clue is that I'm using OpenOffice in FreeBSD, but LibreOffice in Debian, so the tray launcher icon gives it away as to which I'm running.

Broadly, with freebsd you get a base system of just a cli. With Slackware for instance you get a whole lot more included in that base system (KDE, Xfce ..etc.), and with Debian you get a whole lot more on top of that all within the base system. I haven't tried Slackware yet, and as its middle between I have little temptation to do so. I do however like the large base system that's managed/maintained by a single provider; And having become familiar with systemD configuration I personally now find it relatively easy (but it is different so you hit that initial learning curve that makes it seem difficult).

No harm in installing/learning/using both as I have ... and with time one or the another will likely tend to become the dominant boot choice. A handy feature is that you can use the other as a backup/admin type account. I made a squashfs of my sda1 ext3 partition the other day using freebsd and after total erasure of the ext3 partition content and a restore of that squashfs it all worked fine (my understanding is that freebsd can rw to ext3 but does so as ext2 i.e. without journalling).
 
I think each OS has it's pros and cons..... :) I think, at least for now, that FreeBSD doesn't support as much Hardware as Linux..... :) I could, of course, be VERY wrong about that.... :) On this Laptop, which had Linux, FreeBSD works dang near as well, so as someone who just started committing to FreeBSD, as well as Linux, I have to say..... This is one cool OS!..... :D Plus, you gotta' love Daemon..... ;D
 
Datapanic said:
I'm having trouble keeping up with all these FreeBSD vs. Linux threads. Can we consolidate them all into one thread called "Who Cares!?"
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I must agree they're not quality threads. I'm guessing the underlying problem is that some people either can't make up their own minds or they have some kind of passive aggressive thing going against people who can.
 
OJ said:
I must agree they're not quality threads. I'm guessing the underlying problem is that some people either can't make up their own minds or they have some kind of passive aggressive thing going against people who can.
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With an underlying theme of why can't FreeBSD be more like Linux.
 
OJ said:
I must agree they're not quality threads. I'm guessing the underlying problem is that some people either can't make up their own minds or they have some kind of passive aggressive thing going against people who can.
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As for me, I just like both..... :) :D
 
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