Thoughts on BSD

Gullible Jones · 2008-10-27 21:33:48

So, I recently decided to give FreeBSD and some other BSDs a try... My thoughts so far...

1. pkgsrc is great. FreeBSD's package system, not quite so much, at least as far as I can tell.

2. FreeBSD 7.0 actually feels less snappy than Linux. Applications take longer to start, etc.

3. On the other hand, it boots faster, thanks in part to the wonderful device filesystem it uses. I really can't get over how good the device filesystem is; it eliminates the need for an initrd that you see on so many Linux distros. IMHO it would be awesome to see something like that on Linux, although I don't have high hopes, thanks to udev.

(And yeah, I am saying I'm a little unsatisfied with udev. On the one hand, I know you want to handle stuff outside the kernel if possible; on the other, having udev run in userspace means that, if you want to have a minimal kernel and load modules as you need them, you have to use something like Arch's dual-stage klibc-udev system, which I frankly think is a bit of a kludge. Maybe I'm off base on this - I am not a kernel developer, after all, and probably never will be - but procfs and sysfs are already handled in kernel space, and it just seems to me like it would be simpler to do the same for /dev.)

4. Where was I... Oh yeah, hardware. Hardware compatibility = not so great; in the case of my laptop, for instance, ACPI support conflicts with the ethernet driver, causing my ethernet interface to disappear if ACPI is enabled. Not good. My wireless card isn't detected either, which is actually a little surprising, since OpenBSD (IIRC) was the first to develop non-blob support for Atheros 5k series cards. On the other hand, sound support is very good, good sound quality and much louder than on Linux or Windows - also interesting, as last time I tried OSS4 on Arch it was very quiet.

Also, FreeBSD et. al. recognized my power button, and what ought to be done when said button was pressed... Not bad.

5. The init system is actually not as simple as e.g. Slackware's. It's not a Redhat-style maze of symlinks, certainly, but (at least to me) stuff like 'gnome_enable="YES"' to start a bunch of gnome-related services, none of which are actually called "gnome", seems a little opaque. Then again, I may just be dumb.

The general feeling I get is that FreeBSD and its derivitives - particularly DesktopBSD - are ready for the desktop... But not the laptop, unfortunately. I'll give them a bit more time.

Sjoden · 2008-10-27 21:43:56

I think #2 is a symptom of #3. It probably loads less libraries starting up, making the boot time quicker, which in turn makes the application startup time longer because it is loading more libraries when it needs them, not preloading.

Anyways, I've fiddled around with BSD before but I didn't know what I was doing, and the naming of some things confused me. I should probably give it a try again.

Last edited by Sjoden (2008-10-27 21:44:45)

lucke · 2008-10-27 22:09:53

Have you recompiled the kernel to use the ULE scheduler? If not, I'm curious whether you'd still find it less snappy after enabling ULE.

cardinals_fan · 2008-10-28 00:09:35

I really like NetBSD. The lack of proprietary NVIDIA drivers keeps it off my main desktop, but I use it on my secondary (which couldn't run Google Earth if it wanted to).

Gullible Jones · 2008-10-28 03:19:04

What keeps NetBSD off my machines is the lack of a lot of binary packages for i386... modular xorg, for instance, is only available as binaries for x86-64. This is problematic, because I just don't have the time to compile huge things like xorg.

Misfit138 · 2008-10-28 20:35:34

cardinals_fan wrote:

I really like NetBSD. The lack of proprietary NVIDIA drivers keeps it off my main desktop, but I use it on my secondary (which couldn't run Google Earth if it wanted to).

I do too, probably because it reminds me of Arch so much..like an incomplete Arch, though.

cactus · 2008-10-28 23:47:45

I use OpenBSD on a few boxes. Some things seem a bit 'goofy' to me, but overall it is an awesome OS.
FreeBSD is certainly nice too. I find myself liking the BSD's more, the more I have used them.

ArchGh0ul · 2008-10-29 09:21:54

I use FreBSD on 2 servers and it gets the job done OK...not great.
I also used it on my laptop for a few months...liked it at first...then on the way I moved back to archlinux...
My apps would take way longer to start on FBSD, and the internet was very laggy. Same problem as the original poster: ethernet driver was conflicting with ACPI so I had to live without it.
BSD is ok for servers (less exploits and all) but as a main machine I advice you don't use it. The ABS/AUR system is way better than FreeBSD's ports IMO. The only thing I really loved on FBSD was rc.conf (yes I'm easily amused ), but ArchLinux has that too so...

Renan Birck · 2008-10-29 20:51:44

What keeps me from FreeBSD is that all the filesystems on this box are ReiserFS, and last time I checked, FreeBSD had weak ReiserFS support.

Gullible Jones · 2008-10-30 02:16:51

Partly because UFS2 is *awesome*.

Re OpenBSD: I'd thought of trying it, but I get the impression that its developers obsess so much about security that stability is badly compromised. There was a bug with Gnash on it, for instance, which caused a kernel panic if Gnash was compiled with -O2... Now I know optimization doesn't do good things for stability and all, but I'm pretty sure stuff in userland should *never* cause a kernel panic. I don't think it ought to, anyway.

Gullible Jones · 2008-11-01 14:21:16

Ah... I discovered how do get APM working on the BSDs. I'm going to give this a try...

Edit: Bleh, I can't get HAL automount working on any BSD (most of them don't even have HAL). And FreeBSD also has this bug where removing a USB stick causes a kernel panic... Yowch.

Last edited by Gullible Jones (2008-11-01 17:11:30)

cardinals_fan · 2008-11-01 17:06:57

If you for some reason want to try OpenBSD (I'm not a fan either), version 4.4 was just released.

thoron · 2008-11-03 06:15:01

i've used FreeBSD quite a bit and i must say its awsome. tho in my opinion FreeBSD is more suited for a server enviroment. for a desktop system or laptop i would suggest linux

Redroar · 2008-11-03 14:56:31

My opinion:

With the exception of binary packages, I honestly think the base kernel + userland of the BSDs are far superior to any Linux Distribution's. They tend to be more stable, slightly faster, and much clearer. Compare iptables to pf and you can immediately see what I mean.

But....most likely because of the lack of desktop use, laptop hardware support, DE support, USB support, and roaming wireless support are severely lacking. Since it's difficult to use a BSD for the desktop, people use Linux, which directs more desktop support towards linux, which makes linux easier day by day while the BSDs largely stand still in that area.

Also, I see no reason to use ports compared to packages, except for the fact that their packages are badly managed and horribly out of date (on FreeBSD, at least). Plus, there's no way I'm compiling X on a laptop!

PC- and DesktopBSD are valiant attempts towards desktop systems, but unfortunately I think the tide has already shifted to favor Linux distros.

My dream is ArchBSD....BSD with pacman. If I had that, then maybe I'd be able to work through the rest of it, but I frankly can't stand using anything but pacman these days.

Xauthority · 2008-11-03 15:26:47

I`ve used PC-BSD and FreeBSD a lot before, but returned for some main reasons
==> GPL vs BSD-Licence (but that don`t stopped me using it of course )

==> actually none of the BSD`s supports my hardware (even Linux only 2.6.26 and above out of the box, else I have to change some BIOS
settings to get it properly installed)

==> wine isn`t working as *good* as in Linux

==> until KDE 3.X I used only KDE, but with the 4 series, that changed, so I use GNOME (or Terminal of course )
but BSD and GNOME, well expect problems.

==> As a Linux user I can start a flamewar anywhere with some Windoze users

Vistit http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid … 8685685343, but over all I like BSD maybe I try it with FreeBSD 8 again...

RiceMonster · 2008-11-04 06:29:28

I honestly have not tried a *BSD yet. I'd like to, but I don't really have the time to fiddle around with a new OS with college and all right now.

Obi-Lan · 2008-11-10 13:58:48

I'm testin PC-BSD which is basically preconfigured FreeBDS and it seems interesting. New version based on FreeBSD 7.0 even got my intel 3945 wifi working. Seems a bit heavy but I'd suppose its partly because all preconfigured services and KDE4. Is there any power saving packages for laptops in FreeBSD?

dschrute · 2008-11-11 22:35:02

I used FreeBSD for years, both Desktop and Server setups, but more on the server side. I also played briefly with both NetBSD and OpenBSD. There are many good things about them, and some things that drove me nuts, and a couple years ago I just stopped.

Way back, the BSD ports were actually reasonably well maintained, up to date, and easy to use ay least in the short term. Upgrading installed packages always seemed to be a problem though. And now the ports systems just doesn't seem as well maintained anymore. I always found in the long run it was easier to simply install all the software manually from source, and maintain it myself. This works well on a simple machine that only has minimal layered products installed, but isn't reasonable for desktop or more complicated installs.

Upgrading the base OS was nice, using the make buildworld, make buildkernel, etc. You could "build" the upgrade from source while the machine was up, then go to single user mode to install it, where the install part was only a few minutes so actual downtime is minimal. Nice.

The base system was almost always rock solid, and getting it going was simple. But it includes bind and sendmail on the base ( at least it used to ) and even though they are easy to disable, it always bothered me that they were there no matter what. I much prefer postfix, so why do I need sendmail ??? Minor, but still annoying to me.

As someone already mentioned, pf ( and it precursors ) are IMHO *much* easier to understand and use than iptables. I haven't touched them since I stopped using bsd, and I'm quite confident I could pick up almost where I left off. I've used iptables almost as long, and almost as much, but I'm still not nearly as comfortable with it.

Particularly on the desktop side, but even some "server" stuff just didn't seem to play well with the BSD's. Anything from graphics drivers to some less popular desktop app or a new release of some daemon, I always ran into something that wasn't available as a binary, and I couldn't get to compile. I just didn't have the same issues with Linux.

Anyway, that's my long-winded opinion of FreeBSD. For specific purposes I still think it's a suitable OS. And like almost any other OS out there, if you're willing to invest the time it could certainly be your primary machine. Just don't expect it to be without it's own quirks.

stefan1975 · 2008-11-13 14:49:48

I must say that I really like the *BSD operating systems, I was really thinking about switching my desktops to FreeBSD 7.1 when it is released plus I like their mascot better then "ours" :-)

I'd say the latest PC-BSD 7.0.1 is a great OS for a desktop, although for me it offers a lot besides linux, so I did play around with it and thought it was okay ... I would not switch to it.

On the other hand I have asolutely fallen in love with ZFS and Opensolaris. I think OpenSolaris is close enough related to the BSD's that is should "count" in here, but boy is ZFS a brilliant filesystem, for ZFS alone I am considering switching to OpenSolaris permanently, with the new package manager, the autmatic discovery and selection of x86/x64 kernels and apps, dtrace .... well let's say that if there was KDE4 for opensolaris I would be running it on my laptop as we speak.

I used to work with advfs filesystem on Tru64 and was really sad to see it wither away but with ZFS all that is forgotten, I never saw a FS that fast, easy to manage, robust, expandable, mirrorable, self-healing, etc. I wish we could have it for linux, it beat ext4 with LVM any day of the week and twice on sunday.

stefan

kensai · 2008-11-13 15:26:14

FreeBSD 6.x is great, snappy, at leas in my system, I used it as my primary OS some years agofor like 6 months, and I could configure everything to work. I tried to use FreeBSD 7.0 when it came out, and well, bye bye snappiness, not even recompiling the kernel and taking out what was not needed helped, ULE scheduler made not much of a difference. I even rebuilt world with my CPU optimizations to no avail. Mouse skipped while compiling applications and sound skipped as well.

Anonymo · 2008-11-13 18:31:54

Obligatory

Obi-Lan · 2008-11-13 18:49:46

For some reason my laptop runs quite hot when running PC-BSD... I checked frequency scaling atleast seems to work. Also need to check how Xen works.

moljac024 · 2008-11-13 19:18:04

Anonymo wrote:

Obligatory
http://www.churchofbsd.org/bsd-vs-linux-s.jpg

That one never gets old

oli · 2008-11-14 02:13:42

dschrute wrote:

I used FreeBSD for years, both Desktop and Server setups, but more on the server side. I also played briefly with both NetBSD and OpenBSD. There are many good things about them, and some things that drove me nuts, and a couple years ago I just stopped.
Way back, the BSD ports were actually reasonably well maintained, up to date, and easy to use ay least in the short term. Upgrading installed packages always seemed to be a problem though. And now the ports systems just doesn't seem as well maintained anymore. I always found in the long run it was easier to simply install all the software manually from source, and maintain it myself. This works well on a simple machine that only has minimal layered products installed, but isn't reasonable for desktop or more complicated installs.
Upgrading the base OS was nice, using the make buildworld, make buildkernel, etc. You could "build" the upgrade from source while the machine was up, then go to single user mode to install it, where the install part was only a few minutes so actual downtime is minimal. Nice.
The base system was almost always rock solid, and getting it going was simple. But it includes bind and sendmail on the base ( at least it used to ) and even though they are easy to disable, it always bothered me that they were there no matter what. I much prefer postfix, so why do I need sendmail ??? Minor, but still annoying to me.
As someone already mentioned, pf ( and it precursors ) are IMHO *much* easier to understand and use than iptables. I haven't touched them since I stopped using bsd, and I'm quite confident I could pick up almost where I left off. I've used iptables almost as long, and almost as much, but I'm still not nearly as comfortable with it.
Particularly on the desktop side, but even some "server" stuff just didn't seem to play well with the BSD's. Anything from graphics drivers to some less popular desktop app or a new release of some daemon, I always ran into something that wasn't available as a binary, and I couldn't get to compile. I just didn't have the same issues with Linux.
Anyway, that's my long-winded opinion of FreeBSD. For specific purposes I still think it's a suitable OS. And like almost any other OS out there, if you're willing to invest the time it could certainly be your primary machine. Just don't expect it to be without it's own quirks.

Regarding the ports, if you have such big problems then your problems are probably more related to your hardware or some 'error' apart from the OS.

>I always ran into something that wasn't available as a binary, and I couldn't get to compile.

Guess why, FreeBSD _is_ source based. Packages(!) are available only at the release. Nice place to gather some essential information (you don't need to google): http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO885 … /handbook/

Furthermore there are 19372 ports at the moment http://www.freshports.org/ - 157(!) are broken. To proof you wrong further: http://portsmon.freebsd.org/ read the realtime stats. So you don't have to guess anything and spread FUD, you can see it actually! Some stats for problem reports in FreeBSD and/or ports and how fast they are closed: http://www.oook.cz/bsd/prstats/states.html

See the increase of the ports during the years: http://www.freebsd.org/ports/growth/status.png and no more than 100-200 broken ports! And last not least you can send PRs or query the PR database, sometimes you will find a solution too: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?

Most Linux people do have one big problem: they think Linux! *BSD is no kernel with some more or less complete user-land build to copy something similar to 'UNIX'. It's designed, you don't tinker with the kernel, you don't have to tinker after every update etc. pp. If you know how to do it - and you can learn it without googling - then it's one of the best free UNIX derivatives you can get. So please stop whining about something you don't want to understand. It's different. Period.

If the hardware isn't supported - okay major showstopper, if you don't like a professional operating system and prefer something 'just for fun' - it's your decision. But it's childish to compensate a massive lack of knowledge with FUD!

>Just don't expect it to be without it's own quirks

Who would expect a computer without any quirks? Nobody I guess. But with *BSD you will get less quirks. Or better: it sucks less.

And this: http://www.freebsd.org/portmgr/ I call software engineering!

Last edited by oli (2008-11-14 02:18:13)

aport · 2008-11-16 21:57:31

I enjoy FreeBSD thoroughly. I love ports, I like the init system. I like the simplicity and overwhelming flexibility.

Of course, those same reasons are why I like Arch! Just replace ports with ABS. On the desktop I use Arch. My embedded systems are FreeBSD.

Arch Linux

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