So...anyone using FreeBSD here?

Mostly I've been a Linux snob since about 1992 when I started messing with the SLS distro...but recently, especially after systemd, I have been experimenting with FreeBSD. And liking it, a lot.

My main server (for my home) runs FreeBSD now. I find that the OS updates are far less intrusive than the usual Debian "apt" based system. I love the ports tree, although the "pkg" system is very friendly to an old Linux fanatic. Mainly I'm running a Plex and Emby server and until recently, a logitech media server (which broke, but that's not unusual).

I still run Linux on my laptop of course, but I still quite like FreeBSD. I find it amusing that my FreeBSD server, running the dreaded "RC" scripts boots faster than my Linux server running systemd.

The AHK Gang! Live on Riot.im. When we feel like it.
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Re: FreeBSD?
By: Chickenhead to All on Fri Nov 01 2019 17:43:36

So...anyone using FreeBSD here?

Mostly I've been a Linux snob since about 1992 when I started messing with t SLS distro...but recently, especially after systemd, I have been experimenti with FreeBSD. And liking it, a lot.

I don't currently run FreeBSD, but i have in the past. I helped a friend
set up a FreeBSD laptop running KDE back in 1998. I have also used
NetBSD and OpenBSD extensively. I love the expertise and friendly can-do attitudes in the NetBSD community, and the ambition and beautifully
written documentation in OpenBSD.

My host machine runs Linux mainly because it has better driver support
and virtualization options. I started with Unifix Linux in 1995. It
came with hardcopy documentation that included important manuals and walkthroughs. I found this helpful because i didn't always have
Internet connectivity.

I feel there is something not quite right about systemd. It mainly has
to do with perceived hostility towards users. The same can sometimes be
said about the OpenBSD project, whose leader is on the record inviting misbehaving users to go kill themselves. That is not necessary. The
world is harsh enough as it is.

What are you liking about FreeBSD so far? I believe FreeBSD was the
first BSD to come out with a comprehensive handbook. In my opinion
that is highly praise-worthy.

Peace,
-Ben

---
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Chickenhead wrote to All <=-

So...anyone using FreeBSD here?

Not lately, how's the state of BSD nowadays?

I started my *nix exposure running SunOS and BSD/OS (a commercial version of 4.4BSD), then moved to FreeBSD for my public-facing stuff. Linux just wasn't ready yet, this was 1997-2001.

I had a web server, DNS server and FTP server for a gaming company running
on 2 boxes, we ended up handling 400+ concurrent FTP downloads when a
popular beta dropped. I was so proud of the setup at the time.


... Did you find what you were looking for?
--- MultiMail/XT v0.52
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Re: FreeBSD?
By: Chickenhead to All on Fri Nov 01 2019 05:43 pm

So...anyone using FreeBSD here?

I have experimented with FreeBSD, but I am an OpenBSD user myself. I mostly run Slackware Linux and OpenBSD these days.

I think FreeBSD has its merits, but it always felt to me like a BSD licensed Linux. I can't really point what it was what made me feel that way.
---
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Re: Re: FreeBSD?
By: poindexter FORTRAN to Chickenhead on Sat Nov 02 2019 09:31 am

Not lately, how's the state of BSD nowadays?

I can't speak for the other BSDs, but OpenBSD has been doing a lot of work regarding blocking memory that is marked both as writable and executable at the same time(which is bad), have introduced privilege/capabilities syscalls for security purposes, and have started working hard in virtualitation.

They have also introduced binary updates for both base and ports. The case used to be that you were supposed to compile the updates haha.
---
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Chickenhead wrote to All <=-

So...anyone using FreeBSD here?

Manjaro here. I've used many other flavors, Mint, Suse, Ub/lubuntu, Mandriva, CentOS, whatever flavor of the month. Never tried FreeBSD, though.
Might have to d/l and check it out.

Grease
darkmatt.synchro.net
... It was good BBSing with you @TOFIRST@
--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
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On 11-02-19 09:31, poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Chickenhead <=-

@VIA: VERT/REALITY

Chickenhead wrote to All <=-

So...anyone using FreeBSD here?

Not lately, how's the state of BSD nowadays?

I played around with a friend's FreeBSD system back in the mid-late 90s. Certainly a solid OS, and back then, FreeBSD had a very good reputation, but most of my projects from then on required some form of Linux, and *BSD wasn't always supported.

I started my *nix exposure running SunOS and BSD/OS (a commercial
version of 4.4BSD), then moved to FreeBSD for my public-facing stuff. Linux just wasn't ready yet, this was 1997-2001.

I remember my first Internet (shell) account was on a BSDi (commercial BSD variant) host. That seemed rock solid too.

But yeah I have no idea where any of the BSDs are at now.


... File not found. Should I fake it? (Y/N)
--- MultiMail/Win v0.51
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Re: FreeBSD?
By: Chickenhead to All on Fri Nov 01 2019 05:43 pm

Mostly I've been a Linux snob since about 1992 when I started messing with the SLS distro...but recently, especially after systemd, I have been experimenting with FreeBSD. And liking it, a lot.

We used it at work for a server. I liked it okay, but I'm happy we're on Linux now... Better support for libraries and things we were needing.

--Josh

////--------------------------------------------------
BiC -=- http://breakintochat.com -=- bbs wiki and blog

---
� Synchronet

Re: FreeBSD?
By: Bencollver to Chickenhead on Sat Nov 02 2019 12:01 pm

Re: FreeBSD?
By: Chickenhead to All on Fri Nov 01 2019 17:43:36

So...anyone using FreeBSD here?

Mostly I've been a Linux snob since about 1992 when I started messing with t SLS distro...but recently, especially after systemd, I have been experimenti with FreeBSD. And liking it, a lot.

I don't currently run FreeBSD, but i have in the past. I helped a friend set up a FreeBSD laptop running KDE back in 1998. I have also used
NetBSD and OpenBSD extensively. I love the expertise and friendly can-do attitudes in the NetBSD community, and the ambition and beautifully
written documentation in OpenBSD.

My host machine runs Linux mainly because it has better driver support
and virtualization options. I started with Unifix Linux in 1995. It
came with hardcopy documentation that included important manuals and walkthroughs. I found this helpful because i didn't always have
Internet connectivity.

I feel there is something not quite right about systemd. It mainly has
to do with perceived hostility towards users. The same can sometimes be said about the OpenBSD project, whose leader is on the record inviting misbehaving users to go kill themselves. That is not necessary. The
world is harsh enough as it is.

What are you liking about FreeBSD so far? I believe FreeBSD was the
first BSD to come out with a comprehensive handbook. In my opinion
that is highly praise-worthy.

Peace,
-Ben

I ignored the systemd controversy when it first appeared but...the more I looke dinto it, the more I hated it. I'll go on record right here saying that RedHat hired astroturfers to support it. When Debian capitulated to systemd, I knew something was very wrong. Lennart Pottering, the creator of systemd, also made the shit-tacular pulseaudio system infecting every linux system.

I like the attitude of FreeBSD. They're not as extreme as OpenBSD. I think they are carrying the standard of the original BSD team. I love the FreeBSD handbook. It does a great job of explaining everything. RTFM in one handy document.

The AHK Gang! Live on Riot.im. When we feel like it.
---
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Re: Re: FreeBSD?
By: poindexter FORTRAN to Chickenhead on Sat Nov 02 2019 09:31 am

Chickenhead wrote to All <=-

So...anyone using FreeBSD here?

Not lately, how's the state of BSD nowadays?

I started my *nix exposure running SunOS and BSD/OS (a commercial version of 4.4BSD), then moved to FreeBSD for my public-facing stuff. Linux just wasn't ready yet, this was 1997-2001.

I had a web server, DNS server and FTP server for a gaming company running on 2 boxes, we ended up handling 400+ concurrent FTP downloads when a popular beta dropped. I was so proud of the setup at the time.

... Did you find what you were looking for?

I started out with an old laptop running Linux. And I decided one day to just put FreeBSD on it. It was great...it was like the OLD Linux days in the early 90s.

I feel like Linux has gone the wrong way. My main (System 67) laptop running Linux is my main go-to appliance but...when it comes to the server side, I use FreeBSD.

The AHK Gang! Live on Riot.im. When we feel like it.
---
� Synchronet � Vertrauen � Home of Synchronet � [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net

Chickenhead wrote to All <=-

So...anyone using FreeBSD here?

I've actually started running FreeBSD on my laptop for quite some time now. I'm astounded at how compatible my stuff are to it and I have had less than 10 issues migrating my workflow to it. I wish FreeBSD had good Steam support so that I can wholly jump ship to it. But as it stands right now, I have to keep my desktop running Linux on the off-chance that someone invites me to play a casual game every once in a blue moon.

But other than that, I'm liking how FreeBSD handles things. It might sound overly cliche but all their talk about stuff being clean and easy to understand is true. I don't consider myself a technical expert on lower level stuff but the way they wrote their handbook and their system manpages are just awesome and really approachable. I used to say that I learned a lot about my computer using Linux as compared to using Windows but now I can say that I learned a lot more about computers using FreeBSD than using Linux.

... You want to delete me right? Yeah, you sure do. You slut.
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Re: Re: FreeBSD?
By: Atroxi to Chickenhead on Wed Aug 26 2020 04:15 pm

Chickenhead wrote to All <=-

So...anyone using FreeBSD here?

I've actually started running FreeBSD on my laptop for quite some time now. I'm
astounded at how compatible my stuff are to it and I have had less than 10 issues
migrating my workflow to it. I wish FreeBSD had good Steam support so that I can
wholly jump ship to it. But as it stands right now, I have to keep my desktop runni
Linux on the off-chance that someone invites me to play a casual game every once in
blue moon.

But other than that, I'm liking how FreeBSD handles things. It might sound overly
cliche but all their talk about stuff being clean and easy to understand is true. I
don't consider myself a technical expert on lower level stuff but the way they wrot
their handbook and their system manpages are just awesome and really approachable.
used to say that I learned a lot about my computer using Linux as compared to using
Windows but now I can say that I learned a lot more about computers using FreeBSD t
using Linux.

... You want to delete me right? Yeah, you sure do. You slut.

FreeBSD is nice. It feels a lot like a BSD-licensed Linux at times, though. When I
want a BSD experience I usually end up running OpenBSD, but that is a different beast.
If you run that one, expect to do some software porting if you want to make the most
out of it :-)

--
gopher://gopher.operationalsecurity.es

---
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Re: Re: FreeBSD?
By: Atroxi to Chickenhead on Wed Aug 26 2020 16:15:00

But other than that, I'm liking how FreeBSD handles things. It might sound overly cliche but all their talk about stuff being clean and easy to understand is true.

I use FreeBSD at work a little bit and also have it here at home on a couple of SBCs. I don't know that I'd call it easy to understand as much as very well-documented. (Though the evbarm/aarch64 side of things are sorely lacking in documentation, but that's kind of to be expected.) Mind you, some of that documentation can be mildly absurd; their wiki in particular used to be really bad about beginning with outdated (often by a decade or more) information at the top followed by successive sections newer and superceding the last. "As of early 2013 this no longer works and you have to blah... Starting with 6.8rc3 in Jan 2015, you now must blah blah... " and so on for ten paragraphs.

My biggest complaint has always been the unwieldiness of the ports system, and how hard it is to find things you don't necessarily know the (package) name of, compared to, say, using apt or yum on Linux. Evidently there are now frontends / package managers that make this a little less painful. But I've been a Linux user/admin for close to 20 years, so maybe it's just a case of being very used to the Linux way...

One thing I find irritating (and I believe this is also applicable to, e.g. NetBSD and OpenBSD) though is their philosophical refusal to allow one to view information about the CPU(s) from userspace. Good luck figuring out what frequency your cores are running at (or indeed, on some evbarm/aarch64 platforms that take cores offline to prevent overheating, even just figuring out how many cores are active), something that's trivial on Linux.

---
� Synchronet � Starboards! [dot SPACE!] SSH and more

Starman wrote to Atroxi <=-

I use FreeBSD at work a little bit and also have it here at home on a couple of SBCs. I don't know that I'd call it easy to understand as
much as very well-documented.

I'm looking forward to loading it up on my new home lab this morning
- downloaded the install ISO yesterday. I bought a book on Amazon a
while back that I used heavily when using it in Production - "The
Complete FreeBSD" by Greg Lehey. I don't know how useful it'll be
now, or if it's anything more than printed out man pages, but it was
helpful back in the day.


... Remember quiet evenings
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Re: Re: FreeBSD?
By: Atroxi to Arelor on Thu Sep 10 2020 02:33 pm

FreeBSD is nice. It feels a lot like a BSD-licensed Linux at times, though. When I want a BSD experience I usually end up running OpenBSD, but that is a different beast. If you run that one, expect to do some software porting if you want to make the most out of it :-)

I'm curious, how come is it a "BSD-licensed linux"? Yeah, OpenBSD is this th in the back of my head that I wanted to try out just for the sheer novelty o it but I don't know if it will fit my usecase. But we'll see.

It is hard to point at the cause, but when I did things with FreeBSD I was thinking "this reminds me so much of Linux" all the way. Probably the abstraction layers it has installed by default.

OpenBSD feels a lot like its own thing. They have this bsd_auth going on, unveil(), this thing with users that belong to specific loging classes, and this chroot+privilege drop combo for lots of daemons. NetBSD feels very unique too, in a different way, which is interesting because OpenBSD comes from NetBSD.

--
gopher://gopher.operationalsecurity.es

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Chickenhead wrote to All <=-

So...anyone using FreeBSD here?

<deleted stuff>

... You want to delete me right? Yeah, you sure do. You slut.

LMFAO!

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