Whilst BSD isn’t linux per se, it still has a lasting legacy in the unix like space and notably has been used in game consoles like the PS4.
For you in your personal use case, have you tried a bsd distro? What was better compared to the average linux distro?
Apparently BSD is more modular with its jailing system and seems to have a lower resource usage.
I look at ones like NETBSD and FreeBSD and think, "what exactly do I get out of them that I wouldn’t with Linux say, Ubuntu or Void as an example?
What are your thoughts on BSD, you use FreeBSD before?
One thing no one mentioned is the license. I won’t touch BSD because if any BSD system gets good enough, a big corpo can fork it, get slightly ahead, and then never give back.
Source: MacOS
BSD developers: who cares about that. And, it is already happen. Android libc use lots of code of OpenBSD libc. OpenSSH is used everywhere.
GNU’s ssh implementation seems to be some abandoned trash, even though it was started in 1998, before OpenSSH. If OpenSSH doesnt exist, we can hope that everyone will be using differently broken ssh implementations; I’d expect gnu ssh to be a buggy, unreliable implementation which support hundreds of thounsands of flags and configuration options. Workers everywhere will be punished because of their buggy implementation of ssh. Why workers in every companies have to make their own ssh implementation? They should be doing something else.
That’s a very good point. If memory serves Netflix streaming servers did a similar thing.
I use OpenBSD as my daily driver on the desktop.
In my opinion Linux over the years got too caught up in politics and involved with big corporations having influence on certain non-trivial decisions.
But I also think the BSDs are better actual Operating Systems in contrast to Linux being only the kernel of which different projects make use of to provide their final products to the end user, its way more fractured.
I tried PC/BSD on a desktop quite a few years ago and it was pretty good, apart from having to build a lot of my software from their ports tree. That ultimately put me off and I went back to Linux. I tried FreeBSD on an old laptop last year and no matter what I tried, I couldn’t get it to recognize my Wifi adapter. I gave up after a couple of days.
So, if your hardware is supported BSD is good, but if it’s not than it’s really not.
OpenBSD is the easiest to use.
I use it every day. On my MacBook running MacOS 😬
Seriously though, I tried putting FreeBSD on my Linux laptop a few years ago and it was not a fun time. Reminded me a lot of running Linux on desktop in the 2000s when I first discovered Linux.
I’m rooting for them though. I like the idea of keeping development and documentation so tightly integrated and maintained by a single dedicated company.
Linux is grown. BSD is engineered
I used FreeBSD before I used Linux. It was still really complicated to set up at the time. I can’t speak to modern versions. I also used openbsd more recently to make a router out of a sun ultra 5 I trash picked. Learning pf and seeing up a router all by hand was a good learning experience. Then the hd crashed and I didn’t have a backup of my configs. I didn’t have enough ambition to start from scratch, and there are plenty of modern distros that are ready made routers.
I’ve tried FreeBSD and in my experience, it was just like clunkier, worse documented linux. I specifically remember having issues with wifi drivers not working and drivers as a whole being a huge pain. I’ve also tried setting up OpnSense in a VM (for testing purposes) and that was just as clunky.
I’ve also thought of trying TrueNAS core… But the way I see it, it’s just clunkier TrueNAS scale without proper virtualization and with more limitations.
And those my thoughts on FreeBSD. Clunky.
E: All of that and it’s just licensed under the wrong license… I like the BSD license, I just don’t think it works for an OS.
I remember so odd not so transparent stuff not working well when I tried it years ago, like throttling of cpu/gpu, fan control, sleep modes, stuff like that. Provided your hardware is fully supported though I think they provide an excellent experience.
Maybe I should try to rebase my home server to freebsd …
I have a FreeBSD time server that will be hooked up to a GPS at some point and my router uses OPNSense, so FreeBSD as well. I haven’t really used it much, but to a journeyman who will never write much if any code, they each have their own use case. I have a Mac Mini and a MacBook Air (really my wife’s), so I technically use it there.
Linux dominates and will dominate the desktop space between the two for a good long while (newer packages, more support, etc…). It also currently wins out with regard to gaming between the two. There is nothing wrong with Docker/Podman/LXC, but I don’t know enough about jails to really comment on which is better. Support is massive for docker though, virtually everything self hosted has a docker image. So I think that Linux takes the application server space for the most part.
FreeBSD keeps better time as I understand it, so that is why I chose it for my time server. Network Devices often use FreeBSD and do so very well, although there is also OpenWRT and others that do routing well, but are children compared to OPNSense and pfSense for example. I am thinking about spinning up a matrix server and and/or an email server on a FreeBSD box just to see how well they do.
Controversial segment follows:
Although there is substantial overlap, each major OS works its own brand of magic pretty well due to the support that people give it. I use Windows for my gaming PC for example because Playnite and better game support. MacOS, which is based on BSD btw, still has the market cornered on the creative pursuits. Apple products in general have the most robust and well put together user experience and will for a very long time. Android has the market cornered on bombarding you with a thousand ads near constantly via phones, smart TVs, and digital signage if that is what you are looking for. Its big use is in its ability to be hacked and shaped by more tech savvy users.
