this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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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.
[email protected] ;)
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.
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).
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]:
So no big differences now, except for the licensing.
[1] https://www.freebsd.org/releases/13.0R/relnotes/
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.
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?
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/Slackware
By "like", I meant "akin to". I mentioned those distributions because they don't use Systemd
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.
The advantages on the server side were always clear. Same with development environments for things that run on those servers.
Open Source
More privacy
More customisability
Better performance
More choice
Better software security
Features that Windows doesn't have or is only now implementing (floating bars, file manager tabs etc.)
Better command line experience
Better scriptability (if that's a word)
Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
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.