Yeah, that was the reason holding me back. It was the boot up time.
You kid and aren’t wrong, but this was a huge metric when I was first getting into Linux. I remember seeing it prodominantly posted on Ubuntu’s site … I wonder which version… I think 4 or 6?
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Your local power plant approves of this mesaage!
The more interesting story here is that in 2023, FreeBSD was still using bubblesort. They made it go 100 times faster than a really slow thing, and we’ve known it’s slow for a long time.
I like the idea of FreeBSD, but I can’t see the point of giving up on my Linux conveniences to switch over to it. What advantages does it provide, and are they worth the switch, considering I’m losing a lot of software, as well as any semblance of gaming?
The advantage is that you can rebrand it, close the source and sell it as your invention.
Btw, did you know that Apple invented Unix?
Apple invented Unix?? What the hell are you talking about?
Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna at Bell Labs developed and invented Unix.
This was a joke about how Apple just takes open source stuff (in this case, they used FreeBSD as a basis for MacOS/iOS/iPadOS/tvOS/watchOS), rebrands it and then claims it was theirs.
💀
Where do they claim it was theirs? macOS is FreeBSD at its core, but Apple has built a lot of shit on top of it. It’s absolutely not FreeBSD with a name change.
What advantages does it provide
ZFS, mostly. There are some smaller peripheral things (like much better manpages), but these days the big one is probably ZFS. Zero licensing conflicts allows it to be an integral part of the kernel.
FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE switched to the OpenZFS implementation[1]:
The ZFS implementation is now provided by OpenZFS. 9e5787d2284e (Sponsored by iXsystems)
So no big differences now, except for the licensing.
Can you explain the differences between the license like I’m five?
Linux is licensed under the GPL, which is described as “copyleft.” The GPL requires that if you want to use GPL code you need to license your modified code under the GPL.
FreeBSD is licensed under the BSD license, which is a permissive license. Basically as long as you stick the license statement in your documentation you can do whatever you want with BSD-licensed code. This is why commercial uses (like the Wii’s OS) tend to be BSD-based rather than Linux-based.
like better manpages
I want them now! I want the better manpages! Has someone decided to create inproved manpages for Linux? I think this could be a great idea for a project or an organisation. Manprove, the organisation to improve Unix manual pages.
Isn’t this actually impossible because manpages are maintained by distros? And the benefit of freedbsd being everything is created by the same team? Aka FreeBSD being a complete distro and not just a kernel?
The source code used to be cleaner and easier to customise if you needed something specific. And if you leaned that way (of closing up everything), the license is much more lenient of course.
Other than that, nothing much. It’s interesting for the sake of it, but bsd has lost the Unix race (which isn’t necessarily a good thing).
If you’re losing software and are no longer gaming, much of complicated driver compatibility issues from peripherals like GPUs won’t matter to you.
FreeBSD is the *nix OS which is stable like Debian but doesn’t use Systemd
like, similar to distributions like Gentoo/Antix/Slackwaredeleted by creator
By “like”, I meant “akin to”. I mentioned those distributions because they don’t use Systemd
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I plan to use simple services like a hypervisor, rsync, ZFS, and NFS/Samba. This is for a NAS
Systemd is not inherit to Linux. There are loads of distros out there that dont use it. I reluctantly use it but would still remain on Linux if I wanted to drop it
Most linux distributions have adopted Systemd. My distaste grew as even Arch and Debian opted to use it. I do not like using it out of principle. Of course, I realise that there are distributions that do not use Systemd, but I have yet to come across a system meant for stability (similar to how Debian is perceived in the linux world but with Systemd) without Systemd. Slackware comes close, but having to use an unofficial package manager doesn’t seem great when things break.
Void linux?
At some point, the same could have been said with win -> linux.
Yes but the advantage of Linux over windows is obvious. It’s open source. Where’s the advantage of FreeBSD? Companies can make their own proprietary fork and give nothing back?
The advantages on the server side were always clear. Same with development environments for things that run on those servers.
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Open Source
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More privacy
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More customisability
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Better performance
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More choice
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Better software security
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Features that Windows doesn’t have or is only now implementing (floating bars, file manager tabs etc.)
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Better command line experience
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Better scriptability (if that’s a word)
Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
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Dont think BSD is ever going to be a Linux competitor, it’s not meant to be honestly. But there’s always space for a lightweight and fast general purpose OS that can (among other things) boot up really quickly.
On AWS Firecracker
How about on baremetal?
Best I can do is 8 seconds.
“You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.”
I wanted to comment on this being a cool read, but there’s too much happening in this thread that is beyond my knowledge. But anyway, cool that this guy is optimizing things like a mofo.
I also thought it was a fascinating read and wanted to comment, but your comment made me scroll down and now I don’t even know what Linux is anymore.
I think some gentoo with “bare minimum to boot” bootloader, kernel and init would beat that
So 2ms increase? It was 27ms WITH bubblesort???
Still dont get the point of freebsd.
Unbreakably stable, cohesive (no need to fit and manage tens of different pieces to get a get a functionning OS), performant, bhyve, BSD licensed (can be a pro or con tho). It has quite a lot of stuff that makes it worthy of Linux or other BSDs.
EDIT: Almost forgot ZFS.
Not to mention that generations of Playstation and Nintendo consoles run on top of their work, and Apple’s macOS also has deep roots into the BSD history
There’s an old saying: “Linux users use Linux because they hate Windows. BSD users use BSD because they love Unix.” Obviously this is not true for every individual user, but I think it describes a trend or pattern.
I’ve heard “Linux is a PC operating system that’s like Unix; BSD is a Unix operating system that runs on PCs.”
Much smaller footprint than Linux. If you’re running a server, it’s much less vulnerable to malicious exploits.
Yeah, BSD is now in the situation that Linux was in the early 00s. Smaller, faster, and more reliable than the “other guy”.
Faster and more reliable are far closer for BSD and Linux than Linux and Windows, but now it seems that BSD is possibly there.
FreeBSD is the tool you don’t know you need, and then suddenly there’s the perfect use case, because those BSD alchemists never get tired of tinkering on it and suddenly BSD overtake Linux or Windows in some areas. You think Linux is everywhere, same with BSD its just better at hiding.
and then suddenly there’s the perfect use case
Yeah but like WHAT?
Like when you want to have a fully-fledged OS that you can rebrand, close the source and sell as your invention.
The NAS community seems to have standardized on BSD for reasons outside of my understanding. If you’re looking to roll your own NAS you might end up with BSD rather than Linux.
ZFS is baked in by default and the os is rock solid stable. It follows the same philosophy as Debian really, only the most tried and tested code makes it into the os.
Similarly there is pfSense for firewall/router/vpn/etc. It’s just rocksolid and stable.
The BSDs are very popular for wifi routers and modems
How can I know? it’s something people need to research when they choose OS for their projects.
BSD overtake Linux or Windows in some areas
Any examples? besides the well known security, lower footprint and simplicity. genuinely curious.
ZFS? pf?
The tooling is just superior in some cases.
zfs is available on Linux just fine
Yes, finally . But only after being available in FreeBSD for years.
Sure, but as a reason for why BSD is better, the present is what’s important.
I’m not downplaying it tho
25ms boot time?
I know the points you mentioned but I don’t really follow much about BSD, but I have respect for it and knows it’s there the day I need it.
I’ve ran a freebsd based version of TrueNas on consumer hardware for well over 400 days straight. It’s the most stable system I’ve ever run.
How do you mean? Like, how is this different than someone saying “I don’t get the point of Linux”?
Haha yeah actually I wonder whether people actually did ask this when Linux started making the rounds. If I read the history right BSD was already almost 15 years old at the time!
It was, but there wasn’t an i386 BSD yet (which is where OpenBSD and NetBSD enter the picture). Linus Torvalds has said if OpenBSD had been available when he started the linux kernal, he would have just used that instead
Yes. Yes they did.
BSD that’s easier to run in places than OpenBSD or NetBSD
Still , as with Linux, you spend hours in configuring something that in windows just installs and runs … not saying windows is the best OS , but as all companies … it is less time consuming and everything just runs on it.
When was the last time you ran a distro and how awful was the hardware to have this experience? In the past 10 years all of them have been fairly “hit the ground running” for me unless it had something weird like Nvidia Optimus
Anything involving Nvidia, really.
I installed Xubuntu on an old laptop with a Geforce 635M. During installation I checked “Install proprietary drivers”. So it installs the current Nvidia driver instead of the correct legacy one for my GPU, even though it obviously would be able to tell which GPU I have installed.
So then I uninstalled the current one and installed the correct legacy one, but the driver still doesn’t work. Took me quite a while that apt remove/install only removes/installs the packages but doesn’t actually load/unload the drivers from the kernel.
So I loaded the legacy driver into the kernel, but it still didn’t work. Apparently, the current driver takes precedence, even though it doesn’t even support the GPU at all.
In the end I had to reinstall the current one, unload both drivers from the kernel, uninstall the current driver and load the legacy driver.
This took me a few hours and I am pretty sure that someone who doesn’t have an IT degree would probably just not have a working GPU and that’s that.
Then I spent a few hours to get Optimus to run, but couldn’t figure it out. So now this laptop cannot be used without a battery source for any decent amount of time, because the GPU is constantly running and consumes massive amounts of energy just to render e.g. a browser window.
Edit: And for sure, anyone who says they have ever had difficulties with anything regarding Linux is directly getting downvotes. That’s also a big issue regarding Linux. Whenever someone has trouble or asks for help, there’s always some helpful fanboy ready to downvote and call you a noob. Funnily enough, these fanboys usually are running Linux for two weeks so far.
In the context of the post this one is interesting. Nvidia packages their driver for FreeBSD as well, and there is potential that it works better there because they aren’t actively fighting against it, as the Linux kernel does (that doesn’t mean it really does run better, but potentially).
That’s just Ubuntu being broken every time something slightly out of the ordinary happens. That is normal.
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Kind of hard to believe people still say stuff like this…
There is plenty of stuff that Linux does much better than Windows, for example containerized service and applications, which is why Windows needs a Linux subsystem at all. It’s possible that the main reason you think Linux is bad is that you aren’t as familiar with it.
The biggest downside to Linux remains official hardware and software support, though that’s a business economics issue and not a technical limitation.
I honestly could not imagine a circumstance in which I go back to using Windows or switch over to Mac, because Linux does basically everything I want and then some.
The point about the WSL doesn’t really hold as a con - the NT kernel is a microkernel so it uses subsystems by design. Iirc there’s even a hypervisor running below it by default. Architecturally Windows is absolutely marvelous, they just decided to make about the worst out of it.
I think you’re missing my point. I’m not saying WSL is a con, I’m saying that the reason Microsoft ships a Linux subsystem is that there are useful programs and things that can be done with Linux.
If you like Windows just use it. Don’t yuck someone else’s yum, bud.
I don’t know what sort of bubble people live in, or if people convinced themselves that a computer getting slower over time because of OS clutter is normal, but every Windows PC I ever had had shit ton of problems, getting slow to the point of feeling like I have a $100 laptop instead of a $2000 one being the most common.
And can’t say MacOS is much better, at least judging by my gf getting freezes all the time and having to reboot by holding the power button.
My Kubuntu work laptop is also getting slower and slower, same as my Android phone. That’s just what happens if you useany OS extensively.
Cleaning and maintenance is necessary on any OS.
Also, with a bit of skill and care, a Windows PC can easily be kept fresh for a decade.
I use my PC extensively and my Linux PC doesn’t get noticeably slower just because I’ve installed a few things.
More context please. There are a ton of things that “just work” on Linux, just like Windows. I have spent hours troubleshooting and configuring things on Windows as well.
With either OS, time spent configuring and installing things is heavily dependent on the experience of the user and their ability to interpret logs and error messages. With most OS’s, configuration and troubleshooting is just a matter of “knowing where to look” combined with understanding how the OS itself works.
Server services are much easier to configure on Linux, IMHO. Additionally, I find configuration to be much more flexible and (generally) more intuitive than Windows but that is my opinion. However, I have worked with both Linux and Windows since they were created, so I have a good number of years of experience.
My point is that it really depends on what you are wanting to do.
(Rant: Deep troubleshooting in Windows has always sucked and the methods to do so have changed a thousand times over the years. It’s a royal pain to keep up, TBH. Very rarely have I needed “reinstall Linux” because something was broken beyond fixing.)
The guy before isn’t exactly wrong.
Many things that “just work” on Linux are things you just don’t do on Windows. E.g. swapping the DE or theming/customizing the whole thing usually works great out of the box. But on Windows you just don’t do that.
On the other hand, getting e.g. legacy Nvidia drivers working correctly and setup so that it automatically switches between the power-consuming dGPU and the power-saving iGPU is a major pain in the rear. On Windows that just works. Mostly Nvidias fault, but to the user who has to deal with the situation it doesn’t matter who is at fault.
And in general, if you come from Windows with a lot of Windows experience and then have to dive into Linux, you mainly notice the things that don’t just work on Linux.
Also, fixing problems in Windows might take you through the registry or arcane wizards. But you hardly ever get into CLI and never into config files. So if you swap over to Linux, where almost any help you find online will go straight into CLI and config files (even if a GUI solution would be available), that can be pretty jarring.
I’ve been using Linux professionally for ~15 years and privately for ~5. But I still remeber getting into it very vivdly.
Very good points. I remember the drama of trying to get simple things like USB, Bluetooth and even WiFi working on Linux quite a few years ago. However, even though those could be problematic, I did learn a ton about how drivers interacted with various chipsets. That, in turn, led me down the path of how to apply specific patches and build my own kernel modules. It was absolutely a double edged sword.
It really is a shame that most GPU vendors haven’t spent more time developing better drivers for Linux, but in some ways, I feel their pain. (I am leaving out the open vs closed source debate on that.) Windows does provide consistency, through all of its shortcomings. Linux can be very … eh… interesting between different distros, for sure.
But yeah, I didn’t rush to downvote the above commenter as they were speaking from their own perspective and experience. No shame in that.
Uh, Wifi drivers in the 2000s on Linux… That was painful. I remember one specific Wifi USB stick, where the Linux driver just came as source code. I mean, good for them for making an open source driver, but back then I was just a teenager with very little coding experience, and they had no guide on how to compile it at all. Also it was written for an older version of gcc than what I had, and gcc threw a ton of errors because that. So I had to go through the whole driver source and fix all these compiler errors, even though I had no C++ experience at all. Just to get a dumb Wifi stick to work.
In Windows, back than, it was just “plonk it in, double click the driver on the CD and be done”. I don’t miss those days.
It always funny to me to hear this sentence.
Just look how it is to install software on Windows.
You need to open the menu and type the browser name(/click on a shortcut), open the browser, search for your software, check you’re clicking on the right site and not some scam website, [sometimes you need to go few pages until you end up in the downloading page], clicking on the download button, and… *if* the download completed successfully… there’s still more…!
Now installing…
On Unix-like systems-
<package-mangager> <install-command> <software-name>.
Ex:
apt install i3. That’s it!Or you can use the software store gui which is present on most systems. More clicks instead of clacks.
Yeah I’m pretty sure I could go Google and search for notepad + website and download plus install before you finish typing that. I use Linux Mac and Windows and Windows is definitely the easiest most user friendly. Mac is second (And by far most restrictive os) with Linux last for ease of use. Doesnt mean it’s bad but bro go tell my mom to type what you said and your argument crumbles. I can tell her to do what I said and she can get by.
You genuinely think it’s faster to make a Web query, wait for search results to show up, click and wait for the correct webpage to load, navigate to the download page, download the exe, run the exe and go through the pop up menu than it is to type
apt install x?Yeah because I’d have to Google how to install X on Linux so I’d be stuck reading till I found the command. You don’t just guess what X is you either know or you gotta look it up. Most people are used to windows and it’s fine. Linux people that hate windows are just weird…they all do cool things but y’all crazy if you think 95% of people will be faster on Linux in the current state of the world. We have all been using Windows for 30 years.
I don’t want to agree with this comment. And in fact I would say most of the time I don’t. Most stuff “just works” nowadays. But I do occasionally have to fight with something I wouldn’t in Windows. Easily worth it IMO but that’s not going to be everyone’s take.
