The Case for FreeBSD

essdodson writes "Scott Long of FreeBSD release engineering team describes some of the finer points where FreeBSD continues to innovate and display its mature development environment. Items such as netgraph, geom and incredible desktop support by way of Gnome and KDE." From the post: "While I strongly applaud the accomplishments of the NetBSD team and happily agree that NetBSD 2.0 is a strong step forward for them, I take a bit of exception to many of their claims and much of their criticisms of FreeBSD."

hmmm

I just installed FreeBSD this morning... I must say, straight off the iso, a quick install had me up and running pretty darn fast... much quicker than any linux distro I've tried in the recent past... Now if only I could figure out how to get visual studio to run under it, I could ditch windows... stupid work... stupid requiring development on Windows...

One serious thing about FreeBSD over linux distro's... It feels like it has more of a structure, especially when installing utilities and apps... I find with linux distros, the stuff included feels like it's all over the place, hard to find where things end up installing... but I'm really a vxworks fan... so take what I say with a grain of salt... ;)

Re:hmmm

Some linux distributions are more fragmentary than others. Gentoo linux in particular tends to put things in the same place every time; /etc/conf.d for commandline and environment options, and /etc/ for that package's config files. On the other hand I've been mulling over the possibility of putting QNX on my laptop, which has only 128MB ram :)

Who cares about this battle?

I don't see why people are so worried about advocacy. If you're not making money, what is the difference? Continue to refine the thing and get what you want out of it, and if other people don't get it, who loses? Personally I have a use for only a couple of operating systems now, and they are Linux and netbsd. netbsd because it runs on just about everything, and Linux because it's most supported. It's nothing against FreeBSD, which I simply don't need. The point is, I use whatever fits the job and if that was FreeBSD then I'd use that. The best fit is determined partially by functionality and partially by familiarity...

Re:Who cares about this battle?

You see, people are worried about advocacy because these create mindshare. Without advocacy, people won't understand what the advantages are with using/supporting whatever it is you are advocating.

Without advocacy, your product/whatever will seem inadequate, small, meaningless. This will make your whatever simply useless in the eyes of those who have not decided for themselves at the moment.

People who are not making money out of this have all to lose if they don't get the advocacy they need. They don't have marketing might, and advocacy is all they have. The moment they lose advocacy, they lose mindshare, they lose users. They will them either wither and cease to exist, or become mediocre and simply unimportant, a relic of the past, with the people unwilling to just move on.

You have already decided what you need/want. This makes advocacy useless for you. For the rest of those who have not finalized that decision, they need this stuff to understand the advantages as viewed by those who use the stuff.

Of course, you are also advocating Linux and NetBSD by stating you use those. You didn't give hard facts, but it's still advocacy in a simpler form.

Re:Who cares about this battle?

Advocacy is to free software what marketing is to commercial software

Actually there's a key difference. Most marketing is carefully directed at potential new customers. Most "advocacy" takes place in forums specifically designed for advocacy (comp.*.advocacy, slashdot, ars technica battlefront, etc), where a tiny number of relatively knowlegable users quibble amongst themselves for kicks.

Let's take this very article as an example. Both FreeBSD and NetBSD have relatively small userbases which primarily consists of Unix and BSD-saavy users. Neither project has very much to gain by converting the other's users. (Unless there really is some threat of one or the other dying.) Either project would have much more to gain trying to convert the HUGE market of fleeing commercial UNIX users instead of arguing amongst themselves. You'll notice that's what RedHat is doing rather than trying to pick off Debian customers.

Re:Who cares about this battle?

[If other people don't know about FreeBSD], who loses? Personally I have a use for only a couple of operating systems now, and they are Linux and netbsd.

To answer your question: You lose.

Linus Torvalds has said that the idea behind Linux is "do it yourself". The idea behind BSD -- coming, as it does, from an academic background -- is "there's lots of trash out there. Let's give people something better".

As far as providing people with a better alternative is concerned, writing FreeBSD doesn't accomplish much if everyone keeps on running the Linux distribution of the day.

Not to mention...

...FreeBSD is getting a new logo (well, 0 submissions to date [freebsd.org], but still !

More people need to try and use FreeBSD

Repeat a lie enough, and it becomes true. That lie, mostly being, that FreeBSD is dying, or is some arcane system only to hack around on, similar to Plan9.

In fact, for those who haven't tried it, it's quite an excellent full-featured Unix, with everything you'd find under Linux. In fact, it's fully binary compatible with Linux.

The only difference is that it does things the old way -- vi is vi, not vim, and you get sh, csh or tcsh instead of bloated bash. It doesn't have anyone pushing for "ease of use," though it's about at the level of slackware, except with ports, the greatest package management system known to man. Gentoo's portage doesn't even come close to the flexibility and reliability of ports.

Internally, it runs great, because it's not doing things the kernel shouldn't do to boost benchmarks. It's not deeply involved in corporate America, but remains strong due to good management.

Plus it's far more secure. With how much Linux websites are hacked these days -- see http://zone-h.org/ [zone-h.org] and check out the statistics section, at least 70-80% of website hacks are Linux based -- I wouldn't run it on Linux. FreeBSD is the obvious choice, as it runs its services flawlessly.

Re:Reliability of ports?

A decent number of them are marked BROKEN.

If by "a decent number of them", you mean "1.5% of them" (192 / 12396 at last count), sure.

Gentoo has superior coverage in portage.

Gentoo may have fewer ports which are marked as BROKEN at any given time; but does it actually have fewer broken ports?

I agree

Yes, because the BSDs continue to shine where Linux and Windows seem to fall short IMHO. This is software pakgage management. I am using Debian now and was shocked to find that even for Debian, with its much acclaimed apt tool, Debian got confused and made my system unstable when I decided to upgrade it.

I also heard that Windows used or at least used some BSD work in it's internet capability push years ago. One question will always dog me: Why aren't the BSD's as popular with their very good license at least in the eyes of the IBMs and HPs?

Requiem for the FUD

// Please *don't* mod this up. It has [slashdot.org] already [slashdot.org] been [slashdot.org] done! [slashdot.org] Thx

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004) [internetnews.com]
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004) [netcraft.com]
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004) [slashdot.org]
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004) [slashdot.org]
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (30 Sep 2004) [netbsd.org]

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004) [eweek.com]
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004) [newsforge.com]

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004) [mi2g.com]
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;) [keltia.net]

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

Is it just me?

Is it just me or do BSD people dole out more insults to each other than the Linux community does to them?

Not only that, but most of the jokes I hear from Linux people are often in jest, and not serious in any manner.

To be fair, 5.x has been botched

It has taken the FreeBSD team literally years to get 5.x to an acceptable stage, which is reminiscent of the 3.x issues. Contrary to popular myth, FreeBSD goes through sustained periods in which the latest release is a very weak product.

Also, the development is getting very political, this also scares off people.

Don't focus on microbenchmarks.

Scott has several good points. FreeBSD still has the same level of polish, the same amount of "professional" feel as it always has and it's just as consistent as before. The documentation is fabulous, Netgraph can do a lot of neat tricks, GEOM handles storage pretty well, vendor support is improving, etc. However, I think the most important one is discovered if you read between the lines: "don't focus on microbenchmarks."

Even more interesting than old troll posts.

Mod me down if you like, but if an old rant from an ex developer is considered "interesting", whis should be as well.
Facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004) [internetnews.com]
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004) [netcraft.com]
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004) [slashdot.org]
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004) [slashdot.org]
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (30 Sep 2004) [netbsd.org]

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004) [eweek.com]
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004) [newsforge.com]

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004) [mi2g.com]
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;) [keltia.net]

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

Getting defensive?

NetBSD 2.0 is a higher-quality release than FreeBSD 5.3 on the IA32 platform. There's just no other way to put it.

My experience with FreeBSD is that the 4.x branch is rock-solid stable, fast, and everything works as it's supposed to.

NetBSD has basically reached that level of quality, with better performance.

FreeBSD 5.x has been unstable for me at best. While the userland programs are pretty much the same, the kernel-level changes have killed reliability. Furthermore, some of the much-touted new features simply do not work yet. I'm sure the SMP performance is much better, but I don't have many SMP machines. I've had problems with hard lockups, just doing things like trying to combine vlan and pf. The bridge interface, afaik, also, still doesn't work with pf.

As far as packages go, ports has more packages, true. Still, rarely has there been something not in pkgsrc that I absolutely needed. Pkgsrc is also much easier to work with, and far more friendly when it comes time to upgrade things. Portupgrade is an abortion, especially compared to even *gack* portage from ricerloonix.

There are reasons there's a buzz around NetBSD these days -- and reasons FreeBSD isn't getting the love it used to. I don't know whether the FreeBSD developers bit off more than they can chew, or if they just are rushing things out the door. But until they get their act together and put out a 5.x-RELEASE that truly is release-quality (by which I mean, all the features *work*, and the drivers are supported the same way), I'm going to be using NetBSD and advising my friends to do the same.

VPS Services?

Anyone know where I can get root on FreeBSD for ~$20/month? Right now I'm using a Linux hoster and I'm happy with it but I'd be happier with FreeBSD for something on the Internet.

Their new logo says it all

The one here [linbsd.org] pretty much says it all.

Guys, please!

This is BSD. Sod avocacy if it means in-fighting, mud-slinging, politics and such. We're not Linux or Microsoft so just STFU, code and enjoy. Don't make me come over there... ;-)

just to be clear

The NetBSD team were not criticising FreeBSD: basically, NetBSD stepped up their advocacy as part of NetBSD 2.0 release, including some whitepapers on performance comparision between NetBSD and FreeBSD. If anything, the BSD camps all have decent respect for each other, and honestly, Scott suggested that there was more animosity from the NetBSD camp that I think is the case in reality. All of the BSD camps could do with better advocacy, and Scott's post is more an indication that none of them are doing very good marketing, and as soon as NetBSD stepped up the marketing, the other camps (i.e. FreeBSD) felt they weren't getting a good rap: but really, the issue is, that FreeBSD guys just haven't been out there pushing their case as hard as they should really be.

i found one

this is a really nice case [grief.com] for BSD!

Embedded Features?

As one who is not particularly up to date on these matters, I wonder why so much development must occur? It sounds like Bill Gates argument for bundling IE with Windows: If we don't add more features to the core operating system, we'll die.

But hey, I still use ksh and vi, so what do I know?

A one time try is all that's needed for success

I've been using Linux since around '96 something, first Redhat, then Slackware and recently Gentoo when I got my AMD64. I tried FreeBSD for the first time a few months ago when I had an old 200mhz machine that I just wanted to use for something, and since that seemed to work ok (a very basic install, no X or anything like that) I decided to give FreeBSD/AMD64 a try when I had to do a reinstallation due to hardware changes.

I downloaded a minimal boot CD, burned in, booted installed the base system over FTP and then X, KDE etc via ports...

After only a few hours I was totally confused. Everything just worked!! Well, almost everything. I had some problems with the soundcard, that was solved thanks to great documentation pointing me to a very logical solution.

I'm still a bit lightheaded. An operating system just can't be this good, I'm probably going to wake up soon.

Coincidentily

I just posted an article that's been sitting around on my hard disk for awhile now (I'm testing out nanoblogger). It's about how I'd improve LAMP, but it ended up becoming an advertisement for FreeBSD.

Have a look [bacarella.com] if you can stand an honest critique of Linux (I love and run Linux on everything, so don't accuse me of FreeBSD shilling).

Why?

Linux appears to be way more popular than BSD these days, and there appear to be more apps and hardware drivers available for Linux than BSD.

So why would anyone consider BSD over Linux?

Where's the Java

I've been nothing but disappointed with FreeBSD's inability to get a binary ditribution of Java for the platform. I have used, and continue to use, FreeBSD for my main server, but next round will be OSX.

There are plenty of reasons why it hasn't happened, and plenty of workarounds - but I don't care (welcome to the customer).

acpi

"A team of FreeBSD developers works closely with engineers at Intel to provide the best ACPI power management support available in an open source operating system."

Is this true? I would really like S3 suspend/resume to work. I can't make it happen cleanly with linux 2.6.10. Does FreeBSD do a better job? From reading section 11.16.3.2 Suspend/Resume in the FreeBSD manual, it doesn't sound like driver support is much better than Linux. Anyone have good ACPI experiences?

Fix the threading model and I am on board

'nuff said.

GEOM IS BLACK MAGIC

Where are all the geom HOWTOs?

The linked man page is "tasty" n'all, but details on implementing such magical wonders, until recently, have been rather scarce.

This man page [freebsd.org] is better than the one linked to in the original post. There's also some information from committer (read: major contributor to ggate [freebsd.org]) Pawel Jakub Dawidek in Poland [freebsd.pl].

Not that the info isn't there now, right under man, but for a while it was all very vague.

When searching about all that is BSD, don't forget Google's special google.com/bsd [google.com] section.

You can also search the freebsd-geom [freebsd.org] mail list archives to learn more.

geom-gate [kerneltrap.org] sure looks nifty! [freebsd.org] It's akin to block-level NFS (though that's most likely an extremely oversimplified view). All the fun things you can do with geom you can do over your network. Need worldwide distributed, encrypted, multi-level RAID? Go right ahead!

Pretty slick. We'll be hearing more about this.....

zerg

I'm happy that the FreeBSD people like their OS. Call me when they fix SMP.

About politics rather than functionality

One thing that always turned me off about the BSD projects was the amount of ego and politics. The only thing the BSD crowds hated more than Linux was the other versions of BSD. Meanwhile Linux supporters where much more concerned with the real threat, Microsoft.

FreeBSD / NetBSD

Brian: Excuse me. Are you the Judean People's Front?
Reg: Fuck off! We're the People's Front of Judea

I'm always struck by the similarity.

Let's not forget that BSD is about cooperation

I think the other messages in the thread on FreeBSD-current are also worth a glance, especially this one [freebsd.org] by Robert Watson, which stresses the strong cooperation and code sharing that is actually connecting the BSD projects.
--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

"FreeBSD 5.3 ships with x.org, which is **BROKEN**

A quote from the 2005/2/22 review FreeBSD vs. NetBSD: ready for primetime? [bsdfreak.org]:

...
* FreeBSD's installer has always been, and still is, better than NetBSD's.

* FreeBSD 5.3 ships with x.org, which is **BROKEN**. Sorry, guys, but you don't earn any rating but broken when you can't even produce a usable TWM display on a Radeon 9200.

* XOrg on FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE (or -STABLE, take your pick) still dies on this machine. This indicates that insufficient testing was done before the switch to xorg. Obviously they can't test everything, but a radeon 9200 isn't THAT old!* FreeBSD 5.3 ships with x.org, which is **BROKEN**. Sorry, guys, but you don't earn any rating but broken when you can't even produce a usable TWM display on a Radeon 9200.
...

Poor Java support

Tried FreeBSD recently and gave up on it due to the difficulty getting Java working. On a machine of limited capabilities trying to compile it is too much. It claimed to need 1.7GB of space for the compile! I didn't believe it until the system slowed to a crawl and I found the build directory eating all free space on the partition.

Too bad, seemed good otherwise. I'm falling back to good old Gentoo for now.

pros and cons

Like all OSes -- including Microsoft Windows and Apple's OS X as well as the various Linux distributions and other BSDs-- FreeBSD has it's pros and cons. Choosing which to use boils down to prioritizing what you need the system to do and what's less hassle for you. If you're a Windows admin primarily, it's going to be immeasureably easier for you to set up LDAP on an AD box; if you're primarily a unix admin, you can just as easily do the same thing on a *nix.

misinformed

Ha! That article is so misinformed. In fact, FreeBSD has the worst most buggy networking stack of all the BSDs due to the buggy "SACK" code which does not properly implement SACK, according to the authors of the SACK spec. FreeBSD 5.3 Release went out with a thoroughly buggy TCP stack. It's hilarious how FreeBSD is touting their SACK code when it's actually something to be ashamed of.

Ditto for the SMP locking they're touting as an achievement. They've been fumbling around for a year and it's still not right.

*The* case for BSD?

I recommend this [custommade.com].

Re:First post "bsd is dying"

I've been using linux for couple of years, several times i thought about trying one of bsd systems, but didn't have enough courage to reccucitate it. If i see something that i like about them, then i might give it a try though.

Innovative death cycle

What really sets FreeBSD apart is its robust death cycle. No other BSD at any price dies so reliably and consistently, with painless migration between deaths. It's clear that the FreeBSD development team has death as its highest priority and the result is easy to see in the product.

Re:Incredible desktop support?

Why FreeBSD? Why go half-way? Why not switch to Mac OS X? It has everything that FreeBSD has, plus the best GUI there is or ever will be!

Because you're forced to use Apple's overpriced hardware.

Re:MODS?

Didn't you even read the comment? The AC posted an article by a former FreeBSD developer. And it's completely related to the topic in question. You should be the one modded down.

Re:Does FreeBSD really need to prove itself?

"so of what consequence are NetBSD's criticisms?"

Just because NetBSD has fewer users doesn't mean its criticisms are without consequence. After all, by that logic FreeBSD's criticisms of Linux would also be without consequence.

indeed

if BSD is dying /dead , then its one hell of a zombie.
I use three OSs, debian GNU/linux , freeBSD and Mac OS X.. and i think all three are as healthy as ever
im not sure on the whole of apples market share I think about 5% , but considering that OS X has its roots firmly in BSD from its NeXT heritage not to mention the programs it has from the FreeBSD project, then its safe to say that BSD is more alive than ever .

Re:Incredible desktop support?

"Why FreeBSD? Why go half-way? Why not switch to Mac OS X? It has everything that FreeBSD has"

Except PF, jails, ports, etc.

MacOS is an excellent desktop OS, but it can't touch FreeBSD as a server. Even the server edition is behind FreeBSD.

Re:My OS is better than your OS. Sheesh!

Here Here

And what about just having a choice or preference.
Doesn't it make sense to just use what you like.

I have never used BSD, but I know lots of folks who do and love it. Great!

I know lots of people who love Windows XP....great!

I know lots of people who love various flavors of Linux. Awesome.

Why is it bad for people to choose what they like?

I would hate to think that I had to choose something cause someone else decided it was best....for everyone.

Re:Incredible desktop support?

Off topic, but for your information:

Multiple desktops are trivial in any version of Windows. There are lots of free or very inexpensive 3rd party tools to give them to you.

There's of course the official MS powertoy [microsoft.com] but this is largely a piece of crap.

There's DeskSelect [gbs-design.com] $9.95

There's Cool Desk [shelltoys.com] $24.95

There's a whole section [tucows.com] of them at tucows.

There's Multidesktop [8848soft.com]

There's Virtual Desk [easyfp.com]

There's Enable virtual desktop

Open Source, there's Virtual Desktop [sourceforge.net], Virtual Dimensions [sourceforge.net], VirtuaWin [sourceforge.net], etc... etc... etc..

Unless your company won't allow you to install any software on your local computer, there's no excuse to be whining about lack of virtual desktops.

Re:FreeBSD 5.x; as reliable as a moldy sock

4.5 stable was the last release to be trusted. I don't know anybody that would use a later version - or any version of Linux that's as good as this.

Re:Developer Laments: What Killed FreeBSD

I feel your pain Mike, but you haven't gone into specifics. It just looks right now like you've not gotten your way about certain directions the core is going, and you've taken your marbles home.

Good luck to ya, I hope you can take your expertise with BSD and make Apple's offering that much better. I just am saying that your post is lacking specifics.