this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 months ago (2 children)

“We had a huge chunk of our engineering staff spending time improving FreeBSD as opposed to working on features and functionalities. What’s happened now with the transition to having a Debian basis, the people I used to have 90 percent of their time working on FreeBSD, they’re working on ZFS features now … That’s what I want to see; value add for everybody versus sitting around, implementing something Linux had a years ago. And trying to maintain or backport, or just deal with something that you just didn’t get out of box on FreeBSD.”

I still hold much love for FreeBSD, but this is very much indicative of my experience with it as well. The tooling in FreeBSD, specifically dtrace, bhyve, jails, and zfs was absolutely killer while Linux was still experiencing teething problems with a nonstandard myriad of half developed and documented tools. But Linux has since then matured, adopted, and standardized. And the strength of the community is second to none.

They'll be happier with Linux.

[–] pastermil 8 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I'm pretty much a Debian person at this point. I've been trying to have some love for the BSDs, but honestly it's been hard. Any advice?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

To add some more : Done FreeBSD and OpenBSD installations here this month. Having FreeBSD on a Raspberry Pi was much easier than expected and boots from USB (yay!). Installing OpenBSD with disk encryption was also much easier than before because the installer has build in support. One day I'd like to have an OpenBSD server running with Honk on it for simple micro blogging, and maybe wireguard VPN.Perhaps with https://openbsd.amsterdam

[–] pastermil 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I got a spare RPi3. Seems the hardware support is great, even with wifi. RTC seems to be unsupported tho. Such a shame since I got a DS3231 just for the Pi.

How's your overall experience?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I got a spare RPi3. Seems the hardware support is great, even with wifi. RTC seems to be unsupported tho. Such a shame since I got a DS3231 just for the Pi.

What's DS3231 ?

How’s your overall experience?

So far I've only been using ssh to log in to the FreeBSD stick on the pi4, and have been testing it with a GELI encrypted USB disk to explore that and learn some more, besides using LUKS with Linux. I have been thinking about making desktop backups to the Geli disk via rsync. I find it interesting to learn some more internals of BSD again (like years ago). For example in Linux the default command to check your own local IP address is ip. The command ifconfig has been deprecated on Linux. But on FreeBSD and iirc OpenBSD it is - tada! - ifconfig. I'm curious to have a look at Bastille given enough time.

[–] pastermil 2 points 3 months ago

DS3231 is an I2C based high accuracy RTC chip, usually comes in breakout modules. Mine was packaged in such a way you can plug in the header directly to the expansion pins of the Pi.

What you just described sounds wild to me. I'll check it out!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

RTC chip, IIRC

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

If you're trying to use it as a workstation or a laptop, you won't find much compelling. It's built with the intent to act as a server. In fact, as a web server or networking server it's second to none.

Administrating BSD is lovely. It's well documented and everything is very stable, understandable, and predictable.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Much depends on your use cases I figure. Here's an example about my mixed feelings for Linux : I use Debian among others on the desktop. I noticed that when I log out from the GUI and return to the Display Manager a lot of processes keep running in the background all owned by my user. Maybe not a problem but I do not like it so much. I compared it with an OpenBSD installation I have. The same happens except for less processes and none of them is owned by my user.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

loginctl user-status

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

Not to mention FreeBSD is not protected under copy left so good luck with custom Roms or learning how things work.