[HN Gopher] FreeBSD at 30: Its secrets to success ___________________________________________________________________ FreeBSD at 30: Its secrets to success Author : open-source-ux Score : 90 points Date : 2023-07-05 16:25 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (issue.freebsdfoundation.org) (TXT) w3m dump (issue.freebsdfoundation.org) | tiffanyh wrote: | Love FreeBSD but ... | | Really wish there wasn't a split between FreeBSD & Matt Dillon | 20-years ago, since DragonflyBSD is so strong and yet FreeBSD | hasn't benefited from it's innovations. | | They'd truly would be better together than apart. | | Can only imagine how much stronger the BSD ecosystem would be | overall today, if the past 20-years these teams had been | together. | | https://www.dragonflybsd.org | | Announcement: | | https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2003-Jul... | | EDIT: "stronger together" meaning, FreeBSD would benefit from the | technology innovations, architecture simplicity and performance | that DragonflyBSD brings ... and DragonflyBSD benefiting from the | larger install base that FreeBSD has (and it's brand | recognition). | infofarmer wrote: | Complexity management is key in any project. Lots of successful | forks reduce total complexity. NetBSD and OpenBSD are excellent | examples -- one could argue that their goals and innovations | (in portability and security) would also be useful in the | <<mainline>> FreeBSD, but that would explode complexity. | | The FreeBSD community is carefully watching progress across | many forks and cherry-picking / importing a lot of the cream. | tiffanyh wrote: | As an outsider, I've actually seen the most engagement | between OpenBSD & DragonflyBSD. | | E.g., there's active exploration of bringing the Hammer2 | filesystem from DragonflyBSD to OpenBSD. | | https://github.com/kusumi/openbsd_hammer2 | philjohn wrote: | That makes me feel old. I was running FreeBSD back when that | split happened, I can't believe it's been 20 years. | | I think the BSD ecosystem was harmed more by the SCO lawsuit, | and the rise of Linux than by the Dragonfly/FreeBSD split. | vermaden wrote: | I also would prefer that this split would not had place and | that DragonflyBSD would never start ... but yet it happened ... | so what? | | Recently (as a seasoned FreeBSD user/sysadmin) I tried | DragonflyBSD to check how it went ... and it lacks a LOT of | things that FreeBSD has - like for example the GEOM framework. | | On FreeBSD its quite easy to list block devices like: | FreeBSD # geom disk list | | ... but on DragonflyBSD its not possible as there is no GEOM | ... so the only thing you can do is to: DFBSD | # camcontrol devlist | | ... but its far from usable and its very limited. | | On FreeBSD I was able to write lsblk(8) Linux replacement ... I | would not be able to do that on DragonflyBSD. | | Yes - its a pity that such a talented person such as Matt | Dillon left FreeBSD project - but DragonflyBSD is not a better | replacement also ... | | Regards, vermaden | wkat4242 wrote: | I have to say FreeBSD itself is also totally fine on the | desktop. You don't need DragonFly for that. FreeBSD is my daily | driver. | wk_end wrote: | Not necessarily in disagreement, but some points to consider: | | * The nice thing about free software is that FreeBSD _can_ | benefit from Dragonfly 's innovations! | | * Dragonfly certainly would benefit from FreeBSD's (relatively) | large userbase; but it could also be hurt, because FreeBSD's | larger userbase would be more demanding of the kind of | stability that could slow down innovation. | | * ...and, likewise, FreeBSD might suffer if all those | innovations harm the OS' reputation for robustness and | stability. | tw04 wrote: | It's been a long time, but IIRC the split was due to direction | on SMP. From what I recall, the FreeBSD team made the right | call at the time. | | https://people.freebsd.org/~kris/scaling/dfly.html | loeg wrote: | It was also a clash of personalities. | darkhelmet wrote: | It was all truly unfortunate. But sometimes there are no | clear right answers - but you have to make a choice between | multiple bad options. When doing nothing isn't an option | either then you have to make a call as to what you think | the least terrible outcome will be and history will be the | judge as to whether you were right. | | Similar issues contributed to there being multiple *BSDs. | It's never that simple of course, but it was certainly a | part of it. Technical/ideology and Personality all play a | part. | blodorn wrote: | 20 years later, who made the right call? | [deleted] | User23 wrote: | And the number one secret: making it easy to use Linux drivers. | icedchai wrote: | I've been running FreeBSD since the 2.x days. I worked at an | early ISP where we used it for DNS, mail, and NNTP. Eventually I | started running it at home. | CodeCompost wrote: | > success | | Can somebody elaborate on FreeBSD's "success"? | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | Frankly, the fact that it _survived_ 30 years (and is still | very actively used and developed and deployed) counts as | success in my mind. | DeathArrow wrote: | macOS is based on FreeBSD. | qbrass wrote: | While it has a bunch of FreeBSD code stuffed into it, it's | not actually based on it. | wkat4242 wrote: | Yeah I hear this statement a lot too but macos is based on | nextstep much more than it was on FreeBSD. | | Of course nextstep borrowed some userland from FreeBSD and | I think this is where the confusion originates. The actual | kernel is totally different though. | pjmlp wrote: | Being used as foundation for PlayStation OS, Netflix and | others. | | Being available alongside Linux distributions as official | supported OS on major cloud vendors. | | Maybe the contributions to upstream could be better, but that | is the choice they decided to make. | throw0101c wrote: | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_based_on_Fre | e... | pseudonym0us wrote: | >Being used as foundation for PlayStation OS, Netflix and | others. | | Isn't that thanks to its license? They literally can be used | in closed source software without a word of credit. | throw0101c wrote: | Netflix gives back quite a lot. You'll see "Sponsored by: | Netfix" quite often in commit messages: | | * https://www.freshsource.org/commits.php | | There isn't much special secret sauce that Netflix has at | the OS layer of things, so there's not much reason for them | to keep the patches in-house (and then have to maintain as | the public source rolls forward). Other vendors that give | back are Dell EMC Isilon (keeping their OneFS code | private), Juniper, Netgate, etc. | | Sony is unique in that it was a one-time fork, and now that | the product is out there's not much churn in things. | | Most vendors have learned that keeping things in-house just | causes pain down the road when you have to re-base with the | latest FreeBSD release. | Zambyte wrote: | > They literally can be used in closed source software | without a word of credit. | | This is not true of any of the "acceptable licenses" listed | by FreeBSD. | | https://www.freebsd.org/internal/software-license/ | | See: the clauses saying "must reproduce/retain the above | copyright". | pseudonym0us wrote: | >See: the clauses saying "must reproduce/retain the above | copyright". | | Yeah, you will see the copyright if you are working at | the company. Outsiders would never know it's a fork. | Zambyte wrote: | Read the licenses more closely. | codetrotter wrote: | Sony based the OSes for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and | PlayStation 5 on FreeBSD. | | Netflix uses FreeBSD in production on parts of its | infrastructure. | | Those two alone are pretty nice success stories. | | And in addition to those are countless other companies quietly | running FreeBSD on their servers. | lockhouse wrote: | The Nintendo Switch is based on FreeBSD as well. Also Juniper | Networks and several other enterprise networking equipment | manufacturers make extensive use of FreeBSD in their | products. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_based_on_Free. | .. | Lutzb wrote: | The switch kernel / Horizon/NX is not based on FreeBSD. | This has been debunked over and over. The wikipedia list is | not correct in that regard. | | see e.g. https://youtu.be/Ec4NgWRE8ik?t=700 | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27109219 | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17534593 | [deleted] | tristor wrote: | I love FreeBSD and have been running it as a primary OS in my | home and in my work since the late 90s. Unfortunately, there's | some long-standing bugs that seem to have no traction to be | resolved around booting from USB storage that impacted me in my | home and some systems had to be rebuilt on Linux, making me not | Linux-free at home for the first time in over a decade. I love | FreeBSD and I hope it has another 30 years of success. | ta47856857 wrote: | Personally I've had to ditch my opnsense APU2 recently, as its | failing on USB3 boot media. Even tried USB2 CD-ROM and no dice. | voytec wrote: | On page 27, Michael W. Lucas starts his entry in a rather weird | way. | pjmlp wrote: | Congratulations. | | I would really like to buy a new edition of "The Design and | Evolution of FreeBSD", if it ever happens. | pengaru wrote: | In case you haven't already, you might want to check out the | McKusick courses (available as videos). They're not cheap | though, maybe you can find pirated copies. | | I was fortunate enough to see some back in the VHS days when | someone in a local LUG convinced their employer to buy them as | a way to support FreeBSD and give the team something to watch | together (and recruit from the LUGs via hosted viewings no | doubt). | | https://www.mckusick.com/courses/ | ysleepy wrote: | I assume s/Evolution/Implementation/, it is a good book. | codetrotter wrote: | I have the 2nd edition of the book from 2014 both in paper | back and in digital format. | | It's a nice book. I bought it years ago. | | I haven't finished reading it yet, as it is a lot of pages | and quite heaving reading. | | But I like it a lot. And I will continue to read it. | pjmlp wrote: | Yeah, typing from memory, so got it wrong. | [deleted] | wejick wrote: | https://issue.freebsdfoundation.org/publication/?m=33057&i=7... | | This part of FreeBSD history in Japan is also very interesting to | read. | glassfish wrote: | I have been using FreeBSD for the last 2 years on a 2015 Intel | MacBook Pro, and I have been a long-time Linux user. | | Things I appreciate about FreeBSD: | | - init system (with real PIDs). | | - FreeBSD documentation. | | - installation experience (fast and hassle-free). | | - stability, consistency and low memory usage. | | - DWM / XFCE works great. | | - ease of configuring PF | | However, there are some main impediments that prevents me from | using it as my daily driver: | | - WiFi drivers don't work unless it's a ThinkPad I think | (specifically Broadcom 4360 on old Macbooks), I bought a Realtek | USB WiFi adapter, which works but with reduced performance. | | - There are sketchy sound driver issues with the laptop speakers, | resulting in tinny sound. | | - Bluetooth doesn't work at all, although my BOSS system shows up | on hcinquiry. | chinabot wrote: | Agree with the documentation, its rock solid and NOOB friendly. | 7 years ago I had to rebuild and restore an embedded server for | a client and with no BSD experience at all it took me a few | hours and has been working flawlessly since. | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | > init system (with real PIDs). | | I like FreeBSD's init system too, but what do you mean about | PIDs? | | > WiFi drivers don't work unless it's a ThinkPad I think | | That's not it; FreeBSD works fine with the wifi in my Dell. I | grant that the driver coverage is probably more spotty than | Linux, but it's just on a per-device (card/chipset) basis. | open-source-ux wrote: | FreeBSD Journal: FreeBSD 30th Anniversary Special Edition: | https://freebsdfoundation.org/past-issues/freebsd-30th-anniv... | mistrial9 wrote: | was it really constructive for this pioneering tech to choose the | actual "devil" as a logo? then the move to shiny plastic look for | the logo? long-standing public divisions with no end.. niche | opinionated choices sure, but dont be surprised at the results. | kjs3 wrote: | It's a daemon [1]. Like the process. | | 30 years ago it wasn't divisive nor a niche opinionated choice. | Kinda the obvious choice. But I guess some people really want | it to be [2]. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_Daemon [2] | https://www.ign.com/articles/someone-complained-to-ad-standa... | codehalo wrote: | Well, blame the daemon being a background process... but yes, | marketing wasn't a consideration back then. | wkat4242 wrote: | It's not a devil but a daemon and I don't think this has ever | caused people to not use it. | | I mean beastie is super cute and wears green sneakers. You'd | have to be really hardcore religious like Amish to take that | seriously and they abhor computers anyway :) | | I like the new logo too. It's just a ball with two cones | really. | assimpleaspossi wrote: | Created by John Lasseter who also directed Toy Story. Do you | want to question the beginnings of Toy Story, too? Do you also | hate Jesus?!!! | Jtsummers wrote: | Is anyone actually offended by a mascot based on a joke about | "Unix daemon"? Do they just not get the joke or are they really | that sensitive? I imagine it's the same sort of person that | opposes table top games like Dungeons & Dragons and shares out | Chick tracts (often highly offensive and rude, ostensibly | Christian, cartoon tracts denouncing Catholics, Jews, and | Muslims, in particular, as well as other groups; we had someone | leaving them in our office for a while). | fluoridation wrote: | Apparently a tiny minority of people are bothered by it. I | was looking for information about the logo a few weeks ago | and stumbled upon this anecdote: | https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- | chat/2011-Novemb... | | >I just got a call from the owner of a hotel for which we | provide hotspot service. She says that a guest spotted the | "Powered by FreeBSD" logo at the bottom of the login page, | and was offended; the guest was convinced that either we or | the hotel management "worshipped the Devil" and refused to | stay at the hotel unless the logo was removed. | wkat4242 wrote: | If you really search for it, you will always find someone | offended by anything. | | Only a few years ago there was this German guy that bullied | VS Code into removing their cutesy Santa hat which doesn't | even have any religious context, it's originally a coca | cola thing :') | | Anyway, having ubiquitous usage is not a goal of FreeBSD. | People are free not to use it if they don't feel like it. I | guess there's not much overlap in people being offended by | penguins and those offended by daemons so I might have | another suggestion :P | psychphysic wrote: | Has it been successful? NetBSD seems to be more popular. Last | time I used freeBSD was as a child circa 18 years ago. | wkat4242 wrote: | If that's how you judge popularity? | | FreeBSD is far more of a general OS, NetBSD is more known for | its minimalism and extreme breadth of hardware support. It can | run on almost anything. | | But in terms of usage numbers I'm pretty sure FreeBSD trumps | it. | assimpleaspossi wrote: | Can't provide a source but the last one I saw showed NetBSD | usage as miniscule by comparison. | whalesalad wrote: | direct pdf link to avoid this obscure reader tool | https://cdn.coverstand.com/33057/794483/9a09afdf5fb325213a55... | chungy wrote: | Thanks. I don't know why these custom viewers are attempted. | They're invariable terrible. | SpaceInvader wrote: | I'm using FreeBSD on my servers non stop for 20 years. It has | some quirks, but it's rock solid. | tiffanyh wrote: | > "but [FreeBSD's] rock solid" | | Curious to hear your feedback of FreeBSD v5-8. Since many | consider those releases (years) very bumpy. | njt wrote: | I've been an erstwhile FreeBSD user since v2.x (ca. December | 1996), running FreeBSD on my own machines since v4.x (ca | 2001), and started using it as my primary laptop/desktop | daily driver since v5.3 (ca. November 2004). Prior to that, | SunOS/Solaris was my drug of choice. | | In the past, I would update the OS and ports religiously, | sometimes rebuilding world and packages on a weekly basis. | I've never once experienced any bumpiness between v5.x and | v8.x (or any other version, but see my comments on v13 | below). The OS has always been rock solid. | | I have occasionally experienced some package issues, usually | when upgrading a port that had lagging dependencies -- some | packages written in PHP come readily to mind. The number of | times this has happened is more than 2 and less than 6, and | in each of those cases, using portdowngrade and waiting it | out a few weeks did the trick. | | Apart from OS-independent hardware issues, the only real | FreeBSD issue that I've ever encountered was in the v12->v13 | upgrade. If you were running ZFS, there was a gpart bootcode | command you needed to run as part of the upgrade process, | which I sometimes forgot to do, which caused the post-upgrade | reboot to hang. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, you | just insert the rescue CD and run the command and be on your | way 2 minutes later; but at that time I had a number of my | servers running on a VPS provider that didn't allow you to | mount your own ISO, so I had to wipe the machine and | reinstall the OS from scratch and restore stuff from backups. | I don't really count this as a FreeBSD issue per se, just an | obtuse service provider. (I've since moved most of my digital | properties oceans away from that company.) | | Nowadays I upgrade the OS and packages far less frequently. I | upgrade the OS with every minor release and also if there are | any security issues that affect me. I upgrade the packages | every couple of months, or if there is a bugfix that affects | me, or if I need a new feature only available in a newer | release. | | Since I started using it, there have been a number of | developments that have made my FreeBSD life so much better: | cperciva's portsnap and freebsd-update, pkg-ng, and of course | the biggest one: ZFS. All of these allow me to maintain and | upgrade the systems very easily. | | I stick with FreeBSD because of its consistency and ease of | use, so I'd be curious to know what you mean by "bumpy"? | boomboomsubban wrote: | If they started using FreeBSD 20 years ago, 5.x would | probably be what they began with. | readingnews wrote: | Not to be mean, but I started using Linux in 1992 (yes that early | on, from the usenet posting), and I seem to recall hearing a lot | more about FreeBSD or the *BSDs about 30 years ago than I do now. | | In my UNIX circles that I run around in, no one talks about | FreeBSD. Honestly asking (yes, I guess I did not read the | article) is most of its success on the commercial side? I think | it is used in NAS boxes and routers/switches a lot, right? | postmodest wrote: | That's because 30 years ago, BSD was getting sued by Ma Bell ( | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc.... | . ), which is probably the only reason Linux exists. | | ...though I guess you could also argue that people felt like | they had more stake in GPL than BSD-licensed code. | unmole wrote: | > and routers/switches a lot, right? | | Juniper's boxes all used to run a FreeBSD derivative. But even | they have introduced Linux based products. | forinti wrote: | I did some experiments to find out what is the bare minimum I | would need for remote work (VPN+RDP). It turns out it would be | possible, albeit a bit slow, on a Pi B (512MB of RAM) using | OpenBSD or FreeBSD. The latter was a bit faster. | | With Raspbian, I would need more memory (1GB did the job). | | On the negative side, there aren't as many packages for the | BSDs on ARM. | | Anyway, it got me interested enough to buy an x86 laptop just | to run FreeBSD. | textread wrote: | Its secret to 'survival' is more appropriate. This article has | a lot of fluff. | | eg: Specifically, companies needing redundancy | require more than one operating system, since any single | operating system may fall victim to a failure that could | take out the entire company's infrastructure | | What sort of argument is this. We need multiple political | parties. Therefore, our existence is important even if we | secure insignificant votes? | | Or does he mean BSD license vs GPL? In which case, I agree with | his idea of diversified choices. | kjellsbells wrote: | I think the statement is poorly worded. Perhaps a better | formulation is that a monoculture carries a special kind of | risk (it also holds benefits to a business of course). Same | is true in politics where having a strong ruling party and an | enfeebled opposition is not healthy. You need some external | energy into the system to keep it on its toes. | garenp wrote: | Imagine an OS specific bug that could lead to failure. Now | imagine you're using that single OS everywhere. | whartung wrote: | Wasn't there some kind of issue with a leap second sending | machines (Linux machines?) off the deep end years ago (and | all about the same time)? Conceptually, if you're running a | mix of OSs, then there's much less chance of something | undiscovered wiping out your entire infrastructure. | | There was a story I heard that when working on the avionics | for one of their planes, Boeing mandated three separate CPU | architectures, with the code developed by three different, | isolated, teams, using three different toolsets (languages | and runtimes) to minimize the risk of some Unknown Unknown | commonality taking them all out. Dunno what actually | happened. Could be completely folklore. | throw0101c wrote: | > _What sort of argument is this. We need multiple political | parties. Therefore, our existence is important even if we | secure insignificant votes?_ | | Yes, it keeps userland code honest if you follow the | published API and not a specific behaviour. See for example | the _fsync()_ saga on Linux: | | * https://lwn.net/Articles/752063/ | | * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19238121 | | * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19119991 | | It's the same reason why porting to obscure CPUs can be | useful: DEC Alpha was never popular, but supporting it kind | of forced Linux to be 64-bit clean in some ways, so when | amd64 came along there was already a bunch of infrastructure | in place. | | And having 'external parties' that are not part of the same | 'tribal structures' and same zeitgeist / group think can | allow for experimenting of ideas. | textread wrote: | Thanks a lot for the lwn article suggestion. | | Dave Cutler(Windows NT) too found the DEC support to be a | safety test for cleanliness. | tw04 wrote: | Netflix runs a massive fleet of FreeBSD servers. NetApp and | Dell/EMC isilon are built on it. The previous Compellent | product was based on NetBSD. | | You can infer others if you look at the historical sponsor | pages: https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-donors/donors/ | | There are plenty of companies that may not use the full BSD | stack but pull bits and pieces of code as needed. Microsoft is | known to have built off BSD networking code for Windows. | pjmlp wrote: | Anyone playing PlayStation uses a FreeBSD based OS. | | PlayStation OS is basically the FreeBSD kernel and a custom | userspace tailored to the console. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-07-05 23:01 UTC)