Thoughts on BSD

Gullible Jones · 2008-12-04 15:05:03

Yeah, Slitaz is starting to look more awesome by the day...

LTSmash · 2008-12-06 02:26:29

Redroar wrote:

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.

+1

Hopefully one day

pawels133 · 2008-12-10 19:03:17

Redroar wrote:

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see no reason to use ports compared to packages, except for the fact that their packages are badly managed and horribly out of date (on FreeBSD, at least).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.

You must be kidding. I never found *bsd faster or more stable than any Linux distro (simple command could hang openbsd...). Kubuntu was faster for me than FreeBSD 7.x, Gentoo and Arch Linux just eats it for breakfast. Sched ULE is disappointing - even Scheduler Deadline is faster in benchmarks, CFS crushes it... My dream is to people stop repeating myths about *bsd and to find out themselves . Dou you consider that freebsd is cleaner just because of IpTables? xd

string · 2008-12-10 22:27:08

Speed - the ultimate turn on of Linux users all around.

pawels133: What if I now said that I've been using FreeBSD for <X> years and that I found it to be better/faster/stronger than "any Linux distro"? What would be the conclusion one could draw from reading your post and mine?

By comparing the development models of the Linux and FreeBSD kernels I suppose the latter should come as a clear winner as far as stability goes. Is this the case in real life? Hard to tell.

Here are a couple of the things I appreciate FreeBSD for: 1. I find the kernel configuration to be an easier task than it is with Linux; 2. Their documentation is far superior to that of any Linux distribution I have ever heard of -- say what you want, but I'll take good documentation over "0.2 seconds faster" any day.

Last edited by string (2008-12-10 22:27:36)

Roberth · 2008-12-10 23:35:20

To look at the three largest BSD OS'es as three kids in the schoolyard:

OpenBSD is the weird nerd that run's around with silver foil on his head and think's that aliens is about to abduct him, NetBSD is the quiet kid on the corner which doesn't care about any, and either do any of the kids about him and FreeBSD is the little kid which tries to be as good as his older brother but simply never is.

To be more objective, the reason why I am sticking to the Linux World is basically, all the BSD OS'es has way to limited soundcard support the only chipsets I can get which is supported by the BSD os'es is the a intergrated one, which is like downgrading from the soundcard I got at the moment and also requires me to buy a new motherboard, cpu and ram.
FreeBSD is the most ideal BSD OS for me today simply because that it has a nvidia driver, I can use OSS v4 with it, games with wine works, and got all the software I need in ports.
But I like the idea and concept of NetBSD better, I got a impression of it beeing faster, lightweight and even more simpler....but no HAL support, OSS v4 support, I'm very unsure about NetBSD and wine with games, no nvidia driver, no conky, no haskell support from pkgsrc on AMD64, which means for me no xmonad and....well I think thats all.
About OpenBSD.....well I dont like silver foil....

By the way.... BSD with pacman would sound kind of epic.

Last edited by Roberth (2008-12-10 23:36:30)

Jerry · 2008-12-11 06:12:28

I have tried openbsd and freebsd, and i must say that the biggest selling point for me is the amazing documentation. I have read the freebsd documentation from top to bottom, once, last april and it was where I came to appreciate it over google+forum+irc. The killer for me at the moment is acpi, there are other issues like jack, kvm, etc but it looks like this is going to be fine will newer releases.

pawels133 · 2008-12-11 06:24:41

string wrote:

Speed - the ultimate turn on of Linux users all around.
pawels133: What if I now said that I've been using FreeBSD for <X> years and that I found it to be better/faster/stronger than "any Linux distro"? What would be the conclusion one could draw from reading your post and mine?

It doesn't matter, but I didn't started

By comparing the development models of the Linux and FreeBSD kernels I suppose the latter should come as a clear winner as far as stability goes. Is this the case in real life? Hard to tell.

Clear winner is system which uses Open Development model in my opinion, so it's Linux. There's a lot of advantaged over Closed Development Model. Linux systems have the highest uptime - one system is still running for over 12 years, so you can't say that Linux systems are less stable than Unix like systems.

Here are a couple of the things I appreciate FreeBSD for: 1. I find the kernel configuration to be an easier task than it is with Linux; 2. Their documentation is far superior to that of any Linux distribution I have ever heard of -- say what you want, but I'll take good documentation over "0.2 seconds faster" any day.

There's great LDP which is growing fast, but right now FreeBSD has probably better documentation. One of the greatest Linux advantage is that Linux can just take FreeBSD code (but I must check if it's 100% correct).

string · 2008-12-11 10:50:57

For a moment there I thought you'd bring ESR into the discussion (I hate that guy -- and his "work"). I won't get into a "Cathedral" / "Bazaar" (ahahahaha) fight, however: there's something simply wrong with saying that the linux kernel development process focuses on stability and that this is reflected by machines with high-utpime. A machine that's been up for X years has not had a kernel upgrade in at least X years, so its uptime is not a testament of the stability of the development model. Proof would be a stable machine on which the kernel is updated regularly.

Alas: uptime - another great turn on of Linux/BSD/whatever users. You affirm that Linux systems have the highest uptime, I remember that no so long ago NetCraft reported that the top "highest uptime" http servers were running some variant of BSD.

The LDP project was started back in 92/93 .. seeing as it's "growing fast" it should be extremely high-quality and thorough by now.. is it?

--

BSD and hardware problems: One must keep in mind that many-a-time it's not BSD's fault .. just like it isn't Linux' fault that various pieces of sh.. uhm .. hardware .. don't play well with anything other than Windows.

pawels133 · 2008-12-11 17:17:43

string wrote:

For a moment there I thought you'd bring ESR into the discussion (I hate that guy -- and his "work"). I won't get into a "Cathedral" / "Bazaar" (ahahahaha) fight, however: there's something simply wrong with saying that the linux kernel development process focuses on stability and that this is reflected by machines with high-utpime. A machine that's been up for X years has not had a kernel upgrade in at least X years, so its uptime is not a testament of the stability of the development model. Proof would be a stable machine on which the kernel is updated regularly.

I didn't read book you mentioned. I suppose that stability means for you keeping with old code, slowly upgrade and add new features. That's one of approaches. Linux way is different, more innovatory and probably no one can proof if Linux is more or less stable than FreeBSD etc. Btw. I never had problems with Linux stability. Hey, you can use older kernels if you want to have super stability and as far as I know kernel 2.6.27 will be maintained for long time as 2.6.17 (or similiar).

Proof would be a stable machine on which the kernel is updated regularly.

But you have to shut down this machine and it concerns FreeBSD as well :>

Alas: uptime - another great turn on of Linux/BSD/whatever users. You affirm that Linux systems have the highest uptime, I remember that no so long ago NetCraft reported that the top "highest uptime" http servers were running some variant of BSD.

Linux and Solaris uptime counters reset much earlier than FreeBSD. People also shutdown Linux machines to gain new features which brings every new kernel.

The LDP project was started back in 92/93 .. seeing as it's "growing fast" it should be extremely high-quality and thorough by now.. is it?

Dunno, probably mainly Kernel hackers read it :> Thanks to Linux Foundation quality is much better now.

oli · 2009-04-04 17:55:02

>People also shutdown Linux machines to gain new features which brings every new kernel.

True, but on desktop only - surely not on a server.

jumzi · 2009-04-04 20:32:39

A server might need a reboot for new kernel stuff from time to time -- although you (depending on the setup and use) might have to plan it very well

Anyway, is it only just me that can't see the point of *bsd? Of what ive understood from interviews with kernel developers from bsd, the reason for bsd is that they believe it's impossible for Linus Thorvalds to examine all the code that goes in to the kernel, and that the kernel generally is hacky, unsecure and unreliable.

Is that true?

Sure there has been, and surely are, some questionble questions in the kernel source code as "Does this go here?" But in my general experience... That where supposed to be there. And generally the reviewing done by both Andrew Morton and Linus Thorvalds has been very good, well... as long as linux has been considered stable.

But i dunno, i haven't been "in the game" so long, so maybe there has been problems with the linux kernel that demands a new unix like kernel and system?

On a side note i would like to praise project like gnu hurd and plan 9, i especially like plan 9, although i miss the gpl. They tries to address some problems in a really sweet way (once again, plan 9 *druul*)

Last edited by jumzi (2009-04-04 20:34:11)

finferflu · 2009-04-04 21:36:04

My thoughts so far are that I would really love to give FreeBSD a fair shot (i.e. using it as my desktop OS for a while), but I'm stuck with the lack of support for BCM43XX wireless cards. I have been tinkering with ndis for hours with no results. No internet, no game
It's a shame really, since it looked like a very elegant system.

yingwuzhao · 2009-04-04 21:56:24

ArchBSD, +1.
A Dare and Great Dream!

Damnshock · 2009-04-05 04:49:29

Guess why, FreeBSD _is_ source based.

That's totally *NOT* true. FreeBSD is only source based if you wanna have a bleeding edge system. Period. FreeBSD is a *stable* and *usefull* system only on its binary packages. No need for source management.

Damnshock

oli · 2009-04-05 09:14:27

>FreeBSD is a *stable* and *usefull* system only on its binary packages.

That is utter nonsense, the usual FUD! Ports aren't bleeding edge and there are many control instances before an update happens or a new port gets included in the tree (it's a network of trust and experience). Furthermore we're testing _all_ ports on FreeBSD 6, 7 and 8 (current) at the same time, always. So you'll get small updates rather fast and huge updates rather late (later than most Linux distros). It is more or less like in Debian testing.

Packages are made only at releases, so if you're working with packages only you'll not get any security updates or software with legal issues. Of course you could use packages from the stable tree, but then using the source I'll get more consistency aka more stability.

Updating/upgrading FreeBSD is _now_ possible without building world, at least with a generic system (think about security fixes). So considering all these things, FreeBSD _is_ of course a source based operating system by nature and it's rock stable. We do have more than 20.000 single ports at the moment, none of them are required to build the userland (to get a usable operating system at all), we don't count different architectures like in Debian. About 136 ports are broken at the moment - and this I call stability you can get only with a system grown since decades.

So in the end stable has got a different meaning in the world of software engineering, than in the world of 'just for fun'. And if this sounds like a flame for you, just think about it in terms of quality instead of quantity. *BSD is dying since almost three decades, however it powers systems at Cisco, Nokia, Juniper, Yahoo, DARPA, ISC, NASA and so on. Less hype, more quality. I'm a lucky Slack-User since eraly versions of it, I'm using BSD since several years and sometimes I'm happy using Arch for real bleeding edge :-)

oli · 2009-04-05 09:18:37

jumzi wrote:

A server might need a reboot for new kernel stuff from time to time -- although you (depending on the setup and use) might have to plan it very well
Anyway, is it only just me that can't see the point of *bsd? Of what ive understood from interviews with kernel developers from bsd, the reason for bsd is that they believe it's impossible for Linus Thorvalds to examine all the code that goes in to the kernel, and that the kernel generally is hacky, unsecure and unreliable.
Is that true?
Sure there has been, and surely are, some questionble questions in the kernel source code as "Does this go here?" But in my general experience... That where supposed to be there. And generally the reviewing done by both Andrew Morton and Linus Thorvalds has been very good, well... as long as linux has been considered stable.
But i dunno, i haven't been "in the game" so long, so maybe there has been problems with the linux kernel that demands a new unix like kernel and system?
On a side note i would like to praise project like gnu hurd and plan 9, i especially like plan 9, although i miss the gpl. They tries to address some problems in a really sweet way (once again, plan 9 *druul*)

No the reason for *BSD has nothing to do with Linux or Windows, the reason was a patchset to original UNIX:

http://www.oreilly.de/catalog/opensourc … rkmck.html

... and nowadays a different development style.

oli · 2009-04-05 09:47:54

finferflu wrote:

My thoughts so far are that I would really love to give FreeBSD a fair shot (i.e. using it as my desktop OS for a while), but I'm stuck with the lack of support for BCM43XX wireless cards. I have been tinkering with ndis for hours with no results. No internet, no game
It's a shame really, since it looked like a very elegant system.

http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=2477

... if you've got some spare time.

finferflu · 2009-04-05 11:00:14

Thanks a lot oli. After extensive googling I didn't come across that page. I'll surely try it out

Damnshock · 2009-04-05 13:23:28

oli wrote:

>FreeBSD is a *stable* and *usefull* system only on its binary packages.
That is utter nonsense, the usual FUD! Ports aren't bleeding edge and there are many control instances before an update happens or a new port gets included in the tree (it's a network of trust and experience). Furthermore we're testing _all_ ports on FreeBSD 6, 7 and 8 (current) at the same time, always. So you'll get small updates rather fast and huge updates rather late (later than most Linux distros). It is more or less like in Debian testing.
Packages are made only at releases, so if you're working with packages only you'll not get any security updates or software with legal issues. Of course you could use packages from the stable tree, but then using the source I'll get more consistency aka more stability.
Updating/upgrading FreeBSD is _now_ possible without building world, at least with a generic system (think about security fixes). So considering all these things, FreeBSD _is_ of course a source based operating system by nature and it's rock stable. We do have more than 20.000 single ports at the moment, none of them are required to build the userland (to get a usable operating system at all), we don't count different architectures like in Debian. About 136 ports are broken at the moment - and this I call stability you can get only with a system grown since decades.
So in the end stable has got a different meaning in the world of software engineering, than in the world of 'just for fun'. And if this sounds like a flame for you, just think about it in terms of quality instead of quantity. *BSD is dying since almost three decades, however it powers systems at Cisco, Nokia, Juniper, Yahoo, DARPA, ISC, NASA and so on. Less hype, more quality. I'm a lucky Slack-User since eraly versions of it, I'm using BSD since several years and sometimes I'm happy using Arch for real bleeding edge :-)

Well, I disagree on what you understand by source based. Just an opinion different from yours.

And, on my experience, there are far more broken ports than it is usually belived.

app4des · 2009-04-05 20:41:21

Some days ago I tried to mess with FreeBSD to test a server config on my amd64 system and I wanted a standard openbox environment to open up multiple terminals. Too bad after installing openbox and obconf from ports, obconf always dropped segmentation fault...

Ports have their problems. Some times I do "make fetch-recursive" so I can build things offline but in the make install process distfiles are missing later.

Many people here suggest to get pacman into FreeBSD and generally on other distros. What exactly does pacman do better compared to aptitude/apt-get/dpkg or even yum. Yesterday while pacman was installing some updates I accidentaly pressed ctrl-alt-del (I thought I had the Windows box keyboard) and after the "safe init way" restart I ended up in an unrecoverable pacman configuration, that I couldn't repair with any of the documentation provided by arch (man pages, wiki etc).

Arch Linux is the best binary rolling release distro out there, and because of that it has the best hardware support and you always get the latest features (and unfortunately the latest bugs that come with them), and many times the best performance.

However those come at the cost of stability, and difficult system management. If you use debian stable, and all your hardware works, you know that will not have any serious problem in the next 2+ years whatever packages/updates you install.

FreeBSD is more of a tool, than a distro, as it combines -OLDRELEASE -RELEASE, -STABLE and -CURRENT branches and all are workable. For example the -STABLE branch for some time now has support for the new ati drm + drivers, not even arch has gotten them to core/extra yet. Compared to linux generally, The sysctl interface is better, the audio subsystem is better, the kernel/userland mix is more handy, the kernel and module configuration is better, filesystem hierarchy is better, performance in latest versions is better and of course the documentation is superior.

What sucks on FreeBSD is hardware support, and that is as usual a showstopper. I still haven't owned a system that is fully supported by FreeBSD (Even if the components exist in the release notes), I always end up doing workarounds. FreeBSD 8 is going to solve many bugs on some basic generic drivers, and add generalized subsystems, so I am looking forward for it.

keenerd · 2009-04-06 15:14:35

I am surprised no one has mentioned DragonFlyBSD.

They've got some wild innovations and a fairly brilliant set of developers. The HAMMER filesystem looks like it gives ZFS or Reiser a run for their money. Crazy multiprocessor/clustering support is their next big project.

They've got a live USB image, no harm in trying.

Last edited by keenerd (2009-04-06 15:15:48)

pawels64 · 2009-04-09 13:50:35

app4des wrote:

FreeBSD is more of a tool, than a distro, as it combines -OLDRELEASE -RELEASE, -STABLE and -CURRENT branches and all are workable. For example the -STABLE branch for some time now has support for the new ati drm + drivers, not even arch has gotten them to core/extra yet. Compared to linux generally, The sysctl interface is better, the audio subsystem is better, the kernel/userland mix is more handy, the kernel and module configuration is better, filesystem hierarchy is better, performance in latest versions is better and of course the documentation is superior.

If you don't give any proofs your words mean nothing. Actually Linux is faster:

http://www.nabble.com/ISC-DNS-performan … 09156.html (notice that Linux kernels in this test were MUCH older than freebsd)

Can you point me in what audio subsystem is better as OSS is marked legacy in Linux (they would use OSS rather than ALSA if this would be better)? Compared to freebsd generally, The sysctl interface is better, the audio subsystem is better, the kernel/userland mix is more handy, the kernel and module configuration is better, filesystem hierarchy is better, performance in latest versions is better [and of course the documentation is superior]. I said almost the same what you said, but I gave one example.

Btw. HAMMER is much worse when it comes to features when compared to ZFS.

Last edited by pawels64 (2009-04-09 14:29:23)

Alphalutra1 · 2009-04-09 18:58:50

pawels64 wrote:

If you don't give any proofs your words mean nothing. Actually Linux is faster:
http://www.nabble.com/ISC-DNS-performan … 09156.html (notice that Linux kernels in this test were MUCH older than freebsd)

Firstly, that was also a much older FreeBSD for -CURRENT. Secondly, you can pick and choose specific benchmarks for various parts of the system (this only tested DNS...) and linux or freebsd will come on top. What matters is they are comparable in performance overall, with each being better at certain tasks. Thirdly, the testers actual knowledge of FreeBSD and the other BSDs (just read the rest of the message) is quite hilarious and brings into doubt their ability to setup the system.

pawels64 wrote:

Can you point me in what audio subsystem is better as OSS is marked legacy in Linux (they would use OSS rather than ALSA if this would be better)? .

OSS v3 is marked legacy, OSS v4 is the OSS linux/netbsd/freebsd can install that is independent of the base system. The OSS included in freebsd is something they develop independently, and is quite remarkable from my experiences.

pawels64 wrote:

Btw. HAMMER is much worse when it comes to features when compared to ZFS.

They really are were designed with completely different things in mind... Hammer is also relatively young compared even to ZFS.

Cheers,

Alphalutra1

pawels64 · 2009-04-11 07:18:34

Alphalutra1 wrote:

pawels64 wrote:
If you don't give any proofs your words mean nothing. Actually Linux is faster:
http://www.nabble.com/ISC-DNS-performan … 09156.html (notice that Linux kernels in this test were MUCH older than freebsd)
Firstly, that was also a much older FreeBSD for -CURRENT. Secondly, you can pick and choose specific benchmarks for various parts of the system (this only tested DNS...) and linux or freebsd will come on top. What matters is they are comparable in performance overall, with each being better at certain tasks. Thirdly, the testers actual knowledge of FreeBSD and the other BSDs (just read the rest of the message) is quite hilarious and brings into doubt their ability to setup the system.
pawels64 wrote:
Can you point me in what audio subsystem is better as OSS is marked legacy in Linux (they would use OSS rather than ALSA if this would be better)? .
OSS v3 is marked legacy, OSS v4 is the OSS linux/netbsd/freebsd can install that is independent of the base system. The OSS included in freebsd is something they develop independently, and is quite remarkable from my experiences.
pawels64 wrote:
Btw. HAMMER is much worse when it comes to features when compared to ZFS.
They really are were designed with completely different things in mind... Hammer is also relatively young compared even to ZFS.
Cheers,
Alphalutra1

Thanks very much for your response. I totally agree with all you wrote. I just wanted to make clear that saying one system is faster than another is stupid. This thread should describe diferences beetwen Linux and FreeBSD (say userspace, utilites etc. not imaginary advantages like some people want to show).

Alphalutra1 · 2009-04-13 01:11:37

pawels64 wrote:

I just wanted to make clear that saying one system is faster than another is stupid. This thread should describe diferences beetwen Linux and FreeBSD (say userspace, utilites etc. not imaginary advantages like some people want to show).

I completely agree with this. Often for me, it comes down to my mood as to what I choose. In the end, both get the job done, and I often have to stop flipping between the two in order to actually get some actual work done.

Cheers,

Alphalutra1

Arch Linux

#51 2008-12-04 15:05:03

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#52 2008-12-06 02:26:29

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#53 2008-12-10 19:03:17

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#54 2008-12-10 22:27:08

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#55 2008-12-10 23:35:20

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#56 2008-12-11 06:12:28

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#57 2008-12-11 06:24:41

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#58 2008-12-11 10:50:57

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#59 2008-12-11 17:17:43

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#60 2009-04-04 17:55:02

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#61 2009-04-04 20:32:39

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#62 2009-04-04 21:36:04

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#63 2009-04-04 21:56:24

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#64 2009-04-05 04:49:29

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#65 2009-04-05 09:14:27

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#66 2009-04-05 09:18:37

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#67 2009-04-05 09:47:54

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#68 2009-04-05 11:00:14

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#69 2009-04-05 13:23:28

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#70 2009-04-05 20:41:21

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#71 2009-04-06 15:14:35

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#72 2009-04-09 13:50:35

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#73 2009-04-09 18:58:50

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#74 2009-04-11 07:18:34

Re: Thoughts on BSD

#75 2009-04-13 01:11:37

Re: Thoughts on BSD

Board footer