[HN Gopher] FreeBSD is an amazing operating system
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FreeBSD is an amazing operating system
Author : hggh
Score : 73 points
Date : 2020-01-20 21:50 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.unixsheikh.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.unixsheikh.com)
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| How well is it on a Macbook Pro? I just cant run FreeBSD for the
| same reason I cant be bothered to use Slackware Linux anymore. I
| love Slackware but too much manual labor when there are plenty of
| useful UI utilities to achieve more with less. I prefer user
| oriented KISS not just developer oriented KISS.
| saghm wrote:
| Last time I checked (maybe a year ago), FreeBSD didn't have
| wifi drivers for a early 2015 Macbook. I think even Linux
| doesn't have drivers for the wifi card in the touchbar-era
| Macbooks, so I'd be very surprised if Freebase did.
| huh_lost_email wrote:
| Isn't Mac based upon freebsd? I've never used freebsd itself,
| so I'm not sure what the actual difference is besides ux.
| otterley wrote:
| Not really. The roots of OS X/MacOS are in NeXTSTEP. It uses
| a Mach microkernel that originated at CMU, as opposed to the
| FreeBSD kernel (or anything like it, really).
|
| That said, a bunch of FreeBSD userland code and utilities
| were ported over to make the OS POSIX-ish.
|
| It's probably easiest to think of a Mac as an amalgam of many
| different influences and operating behaviors, as opposed to a
| direct descendant of any one particular lineage.
| keyle wrote:
| DarwinBSD was/is the base of MacOS but many will argue that
| it is its own `thing` now.
| znpy wrote:
| this is a common misconception. no, it's not.
| _paulc wrote:
| To be honest it's probably not worth running FreeBSD on a
| laptop/desktop - it's really a server operating system. If you
| are looking for a well engineered, stable, 'traditional' UNIX
| system sitting in a rack and happy with a terminal interface
| it's an amazing OS. Lots of people however seem to be trying
| out on laptops/desktops and being disappointed which isn't a
| huge surprise.
|
| (FreeBSD user since 2.0.5 - 1995)
| atomize wrote:
| FreeBSD is the reference for OS X, but they used different
| kernels. Many of the BSD flavored behaviors are/were retained,
| however.
| cinnamonheart wrote:
| As a long time fan of Gentoo, I felt very at home on FreeBSD, and
| quite liked how everything in it worked. I remember my
| frustration was more around software and hardware issues. In the
| end, it wasn't Linux; I felt left in the cold if I ever wanted to
| use something that wasn't made for FreeBSD.
|
| FreeBSD itself was a pleasure and I wish I could use it more.
| I've not found a linux distribution I've found quite as nice.
| roboman wrote:
| I think OpenBSD is still more secure than FreeBSD
| type0 wrote:
| It is, and also less useful
| atomize wrote:
| Nice to see some love for FreeBSD. My intro to +nix in the mid
| 90s started with FreeBSD as well. Back then, I used to tag along
| with my dad in the summer to work occasionally (two working
| parents, and dad ran/runs a small telecom business). In the
| supply closet I saw a shelf with boxes lined up that all had a
| cool-ass little devil on them. Being interested in computers from
| my fathers influence, I asked him what the 'Devil Software' was
| in the storage closet, and he explained that it was an operating
| system like Windows sort-of (which at the time I was already well
| in to understanding how to re-install =), but that it ran on
| Voicemail Servers - stuff with specific needs - because it was
| very 'flexible in configuration', as he put it. He then gave me a
| voicemail box and the manual, and said he would give me $20 if I
| could get the 'Devil Software' installed on the machine from a
| blank HDD. This. was. huge. $20 to a 13 yr old was serious dough.
| Eventually I was successful (to his surprise? or dismay? haha
| since he was out 20 bucks). He was proud, and that made me proud,
| and that started the journey that is still ongoing to this day.
| Will note, father exploited me for cheap labor throughout my
| teens as my interest/experience with BSD, and eventually
| GNU/Linux increased =). Although I am a GNU person these days,
| FreeBSD is always close to my heart, and helped me understand the
| +nix ecosystem from an early age.
| whalesalad wrote:
| I would probably daily drive FreeBSD or OpenBSD if the desktop
| situation was better. I don't know how people survive open-source
| desktop environments.
|
| I've spent the last couple of weeks trying to build a reasonable
| HiDPI desktop environment on a variety of open source platforms
| and nothing has the level of fit and finish I am looking for. So
| far I have been happiest with Elementary OS and their treatments
| to Gnome... but it preturbs me that getting a new rig setup is so
| fickle and unrepeatable. You can spend hours tweaking shit and
| experimenting with no reasonable way to save your changes to be
| applied later to a clean install or even a different platform. I
| wish I could check my entire configuration into git.
|
| Would love if the hackers here would share their FreeBSD (or any
| Nix) desktop environment configuration (including window manager
| etc...)
| Lammy wrote:
| KDE has the best HiDPI support I've seen, but I don't really
| care for KDE itself and as soon as I step outside the QT
| ecosystem all bets are off.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| With gnome, you can export the gconf database and check it into
| git if that's your thing.
| iagovar wrote:
| I always struggled with linux, because there's so many of
| everything. It's too much choice. I don't really have many
| sysadmin skills and discovering FreeBSD has been a blessing for
| me. When I have a problem the documentation is... IDK,
| consistent? It's like I can follow it, and it's useful, same with
| forums and the helpful community.
|
| I'm so thankful, honestly. I finally can have my VPSs without
| feeling like I'm dumb or I need to devote so much time and effort
| to sysadmin skills that I don't have nor I enjoy.
|
| I still use Xubuntu in my laptop and Windows in my desktop,
| because of the lack of drivers and because they work out of the
| box (well, almost with Xubuntu), but still, for some reason I
| really feel confortable with FreeBSD, and this is coming from
| someone who just wants to spin DBs, sites, and cron scripts, and
| I don't have enough knowledge to appreciate jails and so many
| other things that other people likes about FreeBSD.
|
| So guys, thank you.
| bureaucrat wrote:
| If I want lot of work and an amazing operating system, I'd' ve
| built an operating system myself.
|
| Since I'm a person with a job, run serious things and has a
| deadline, I use linux.
| deepspace wrote:
| My experience with FreeBSD started more than 20 years ago when I
| built my first home file server, managing a whopping 200G of
| storage (huge for the time).
|
| Since then I built several more generations of file server, all
| running FreeBSD and all absolutely rock solid. They all typically
| had a 3-5 year service life, with uptimes of 1-2 years at a time.
| Each of them were only replaced for capacity reasons, with the
| previous generation server typically serving as a backup target
| for the next one.
|
| Around 2002, broadcast and cable TV was still a thing, and
| rudimentary PVRs were becoming available but were pricey with few
| features. So I decided to build my own.
|
| I started with Linux, thinking that it would provide better
| hardware compatibility, but stability issues soon drove me back
| to FreeBSD, and I managed to create a very complete FreeBSD based
| PVR solution, complete with remote control, automatic program
| scheduling, multiple simultaneous recording and viewing streams,
| auto DVD ripping and very intuitive remote (web) and onscreen
| user interfaces. That thing ran rock solid for 10 years, until
| replaced by Netflix.
|
| I guess the point I am trying to make is that I fully agree with
| the author. FreeBSD is in a different league than many other
| operating systems in terms of capability and stability, while
| being surprisingly compatible with a lot of hardware.
| bauerd wrote:
| If only one of the BSDs had a container runtime, it's the only
| real showstopper for me
| [deleted]
| _sbrk wrote:
| One "make world" and your world is changed.
|
| Not to mention the absence of systemd and its overly-complex
| solution to non-problems.
|
| FBSD-er since '98.
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