Guest post by Deep End’s Paul Venezia wonders why more folks aren’t using FreeBSD on the desktop. ‘There used to be a saying — at least I’ve said it many times — that my workstations run Linux, my servers run FreeBSD. Sure, it’s quicker to build a Linux box, do a “yum install x y z” and toss it out into the wild as a fully functional server, but the extra time required to really get a FreeBSD box tuned will come back in spades through performance and stability metrics. You’ll get more out of the hardware, be that virtual or physical, than you will on a generic Linux binary installation.’
In the FreeBSD 2.x (I like to pretend 3.x never existed) and 4.x series, this was absolutely, totally and irrefutably true. FreeBSD was faster, more stable, made better use of available memory, had a better file system and even oftentimes had better hardware support. Since the Linux 2.4-series stabilized though FreeBSD has been totally outpaced. Support for modern video cards isn’t there, stability isn’t necessarily there, UFS is showing its age and ZFS is a bloated cow. Not to mention the major desktops, KDE and Gnome are using OS features only available on Linux, which leads to a degraded experience on FreeBSD.
He cites examples like DTrace, which is really a developer tool, not something a desktop user cares about. He cites examples of companies using BSD, even Apple, so it must be good, right? No! What it DOES have is the best license for this purpose.
I am a HUGE BSD fanboy, but I don’t even find Linux suitable in some cases for desktop use and FreeBSD is much further behind. The author of this article is reminiscing about the good-old-days (which I like to reflect on too) of FreeBSD, and is unfortunately out of touch with the current state of things.
A linux user calling BSD bloatware?
And you have anything better than ZFS?
Stability isn’t there? Give me an example of that.
Troll…
Edited 2011-11-08 02:48 UTC
you question a few of his points and call him a troll, ignoring all the points everyone knows. ZFS is hacked together in BSD, just like it is on Linux. Not a big shocker there. As for stability, I dont really know anything about that. But I do know that BSD is falling way behind and its the license that is the problem. Corporations are not willing to dump resources into a BSD licensed project that anyone can then steal without contributing anything back. And Linux has taken off in the business sector. It may not be that BSD support has waned, it just hasn’t grown like Linux support. And the license is the reason.
Edited 2011-11-08 03:12 UTC
Hahahahahahaha….ha…
Tell me when ZFS got in Linux source tree.
Apparently (from others postings) ZFS is stable in BSD. I wasn’t aware of that. In Linux, I think you have to run it through user space, which puts a big hit on performance. Nothing wrong with ZFS, I just wonder where its going. Oracle doesn’t seem to be real forthcoming with Solaris technologies.
First, ZFS is stable and production ready in FreeBSD, as of 8.0
http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=197221
Second, the license issue isn’t something that can clearly be pointed at for Linux’s success over BSD. There are plenty of projects that have permissive licenses that are actively developed by many contributors who don’t seem to worry about their code being misappropriated.
Those would be more specialised projects. But it’s not that the companies are afraid that their code will be misappropriated, it’s rather the requirement of the changes be released under the same license.
How much of OSX has got back into any of the BSDs?(a genuine question)
Quite a bit actually. Apple has hired Robert Watson from the FreeBSD project to work on most of their security related projects over the last few years. Some of the work was later added to FreeBSD and other times improvements from the Apple implementation made it back in.
audit and file system ACLs come to mind.
Then there’s the availability of software in the other direction. Robert did the first port of libdispatch to FreeBSD. Now, we see ports to Solaris, Linux and Windows.
Because of this work, my project has these features now. Also, Apple has been contributing to LLVM; FreeBSD is in the process of switching to LLVM and some of that code came from Apple.
This whole lie that Linux zealots push about code sharing is silly. BSD projects have advanced because of code contributions from several major companies including Yahoo, Juniper, Cisco and Intel. It is true that we don’t require code dumps, but it’s often the case that things are upstreamed eventually as the vendor doesn’t want to support their version for a long period of time in-house. Better yet, we get the code back after they’ve worked out all the bugs in it. We don’t get the first buggy, unstable POS version because it’s required by the GPL.
A) it’s not falling “way behind”
B) the license is not a problem
Really. That sure explains the success of Python, Perl, X, Apache, Ruby on Rails, Django and all the other big, successful projects licensed under more permissive license than the GPL. You might notice that many of them are BSD/MIT style licenses. Yes, surely no company ever poured resources into any of them…
You are confusing things. Python’ license is GPL compatible. Perl is dual licensed (GPL and Artistic License). Apache license is also compatible with GPLv3.
Ruby on Rails uses MIT which is GPL compatible. Also, Rails is only popular because of Ruby (the language), which happens to be dual licensed with its own license (which is GPL compatible) and also uses the GPLv2 (check Wikipedia).
Django is BSD, ok, but who uses that?
Projects that don’t use the GPL hardly succeeds. Copyleft is the key, and the GPL is unique in what it does.
Just see Theo de Raadt whining because he doesn’t get enough contributions in his BSD projects.
Edited 2011-11-08 17:00 UTC
This is a fantasy. Take javascript frameworks for example. Most of them are either dual licensed or under a permissive license.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_JavaScript_frameworks
If the GPL were superior, everyone would be using ExtJs instead of jQuery, Prototype, Dojo, Yahoo UI, …
How about web servers? The number one web server on the planet is Apache HTTPD. That is not under the GPL.
Databases? Ignoring commercial (only) products, several of the major databases are under the GPL but there’s also Postgres which is doing rather well under the BSD license.
DNS Servers.. last I checked BIND wasn’t under the GPL.
X servers.. oh wait that’s MIT licensed.
The GPL is really popular, but if you consider how many things linux would not have without other licenses, it’s clear that many viable projects do exist under other licenses.
jQuery is dual licensed (GPL or MIT). Check Wikipedia.
BIND is licensed under ISC license, which happens to be GPL compatible.
Good luck choosing a license that isn’t GPL compatible.
Edited 2011-11-08 17:44 UTC
I didn’t say I wanted to pick a license that was not GPL compatible. I was pointing out how many projects are not GPL licensed or can be used without GPL restrictions.
The BSD license is also GPL-compatible but that’s not the point. The Apache license is not GPL, the Artistic license is not GPL, the MIT/BSD is not GPL, the Python license is not GPL. The projects I mentioned are not GPL licensed and they’re all successful projects.
GPL-compatible is not the same as being GPL. Using BSD/MIT/Apache/Artistic or any other “GPL-compatible” license does not mean your projects is GPL licensed.
OSS > GPL.
Flaunting your ignorance, I see.
Except all the ones I listen and many more.
Nobody is whining but you.
Really?
I don’t know about you, but have you actually did some research about Theo de Raadt?
If those things here aren’t complaints I don’t know what they are:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Theo_de_Raadt
Complaints mostly about contributions even.
Also, look at this blog post:
http://www.trollaxor.com/2010/06/why-i-left-openbsd.html
Just some quotes from that blog:
I can keep going, but I’ll stop now.
To me, the GPL is a better license, specially when it comes to Free Software. The reason is its strong-copyleft nature.
If I give you something, I want something back. And I don’t want some greedy company to close what I made open in the first place. Plain and simple.
Edited 2011-11-08 18:21 UTC
The word “trollaxor” didn’t clue you in? It’s about as accurate as Linux-Haters’ blog.
Good for you. We’re not talking about what you personally like though. Your personal feelings regarding the GPL has no relevance to the discussion at hand.
There are many successfully OSS projects that do not use the GPL and your personal preference for the GPL does not change that fact.
I think the big missing point is that those are all applications. Having the GPL on the kernel and core utilities (or just the kernel in Android’s case) seems to be a useful thing; on the other hand it may be that there’s a lot more embedded *BSD than we’re aware of just because the revised license (no advertising clause) doesn’t require companies to tell anybody it’s *BSD.
As for me, I use Linux because I’m used to Debian. I’ve used FreeBSD in VMs a few times (another Dell E6410 user here, so hardware is right out), and there was basically nothing different about it. The main difference, the ports tree, was actually a reason I shied away from FreeBSD. I got over my Gentoo-nut phase, so compiling for hours on end instead of spending a few minutes downloading binary packages seems a bit silly to me.
Oh, and I like Xfce 4.8
I’m sure it’s useful but I’m not sure it’s an advantage over having kernel and core BSD licensed. There’s no reason a commercial company would feel different about contributing to a BSD kernel than to a BSD “pplication. It’s just another application. kernel or not doesn’t really matter to a commercial entity.
In fact, you could argue the opposite. There’s much more competition in the application space than the OS/kernel space so the risk that the competition would “steal your inventions without contributing” is much bigger with an application like RoR, Tomcat etc than with a kernel.
I’m pretty sure FreeBSD has binary packages.
Edited 2011-11-08 20:41 UTC
You mean, “Ruby is only popular because of Rails”
Yeah or that, but the reason Rails is nice is because of the language IMHO.
Many people have implemented Rails-like frameworks in other languages, but I always go back to Ruby for some reason.
I find the language quite pleasant to use, its object model is very carefully made, regular expressions built in into the language, etc. Ruby feels a lot like Perl and Python combined IMHO.
I also prefer more minimalistic frameworks in Ruby, like: Rack, Sinatra, Ramaze, Sequel.
I prefer to work with frameworks/libraries that can be decoupled easily. Rails is too “big” for my taste.
Edited 2011-11-08 23:16 UTC
Not any more: http://www.thinq.co.uk/2011/10/31/ruby-project-ditches-gpl-favour-b…
Fuck that, I’m going to Perl.
I disagree. Companies that use FreeBSD do give back without the need for a license to force it. Blue Coat Systems, iXsystems and Juniper come to mind. Intel and nVidia develop drivers for FreeBSD.
It is definitely not the license.
Hmm… I have found that KDE, for example, works much more stably on FreeBSD than on Linux. I’ve been using FreeBSD as a desktop/workstation since 2003 and the ONLY complaints I have are in the area of hardware support, which is unfortunately mostly out of FreeBSD’s hands, due to proprietary hardware drivers for video and wireless cards.
However, I personally have no need of a 3D rotating desktop, nor do I need my *nix desktop to be a gaming station (alternate boot to Windows for that). What I *do* need is a stable OS that I can leave running for weeks at a time without worrying about malware or hack attacks, and that supports a broad range of tools for handling information. Nothing beats FreeBSD as a power workstation.
I respect your right to use FreeBSD, but what tools are you using that don’t exist on Linux? I think for most people, they want what you want, but they also want the 3D and cool games and all the extras.
I respect your right to use Linux, but what tools are you using that don’t exist on FreeBSD? I think for most people, they want what you want, and if they also want the 3D and cool games and all the extras, they can use nvidia cards which are fully supported in FreeBSD.
Not so simple – at least in my case, 64bit nVidia support under FreeBSD is not as solid as its Linux counterpart.
– Gilboa
In what way? I use that driver on my workstation, and I have no trouble with it. Long ago I did.
If you have trouble with it, you can ask questions on nv News’s forum ( http://nvnews.net/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=47 ). nVidia employees are present there. Also, you can ask on the FreeBSD forum ( http://forums.freebsd.org/ ).
My wireless card. There’s a driver for it, just a pity it doesn’t work. Doesn’t work with USB tethering with my mobile phone either (doesn’t even register in dmesg). Hell, FreeBSD is even weird in accepting USB memory sticks.
In short: to me, with my hardware, it’s just not worth the bother trying to install and configure it. In fact, it’s not even possible to do it, without networking.
And no, I’ve got nothing against FreeBSD. I used it in the 4.x days and liked it a lot, and installed it with the intention of jumping ship if I found it better than Debian Sid currently is (not being quite happy with the current state of things there).
Video and audio drivers.
Oh, of course Linux supports all the same tools FreeBSD does, but doesn’t do so nearly as conveniently for me. The ports systems is a great balance between bleeding-edge and older/stable. A tool like Yum in Fedora, for example, gets you in all kinds of trouble if you want to make some of your packages bleeding-edge, some custom-compiled, and some stable. Also, Linux doesn’t have anything like FreeBSD jail, which makes for very easy experimentation and branching without departing from your base system.
More importantly for me, I hate hate hate the Linux system layout. FreeBSD adheres to hier very carefully and predictably, while Linux tends to just chuck everything inside /usr. Networking and other rc files are extremely simple and logically organized, while Linux configuration is a mess. Once I got used to the sanity that is BSD, I got more and more frustrated with Linux. I manage quite a few Linux servers on my job, so have had to learn all the ins and outs of RHEL and CentOS. I still love going back to the Zen that is BSD for my home system.
As for the 3D desktop and games, they are absolutely doable in FreeBSD if you can get the hardware drivers. Nvidia used to do a good job of serving the BSD community, but I don’t know if they’ve kept up recently. I just haven’t cared to bother with that stuff for the past few iterations of my workstation. Honestly the novelty wears off and what I am left wanting is a desktop that gets me my applications as quickly as possible with minimum fuss. Windowmaker is my WM of choice, although I use many of the KDE apps, due to their great integration of virtual filesystems and networking.
Most people use Windows or a console for gaming, not Linux. The only people who use Linux for gaming are Linux geeks. There really aren’t enough games with Linux support for Joe User to consider it a gaming platform.
As for why BSD isn’t “big” on the desktop, well, not everyone must have as a goal to dethrone Windows and that hasn’t worked out so great for Linux anyway. Linux may be bigger than BSD’s on the desktop but it hasn’t even dented Windows dominance. Ironically the one to dent Windows dominance a little is OSX and it is more BSD than Linux.
Some of your criticism are a bit weird: what don’t you like about ZFS?
Its lack of maturity? The FS equivalent in Linux BTRFS is even less mature..
FreeBSD9 will bring another interesting improvement: capsicum, which will be used by Chrome for sandboxing in a much less ‘hacky’ way than on Linux.
The gap will become bigger as Linux moves further from its dependency on Xorg in favour of wayland server that will bring a nicer experience overall for the end user desktop – which at the end of the day what matters is the end result rather than the individual parts and their awesomeness. For me back when I was using Linux the problem had always been with FreeBSD the real lack of any push to get the basics such as Xorg development that went beyond merely ‘does it compile’ in favour of heavy optimisation and drive writing for FreeBSD. Wireless drivers is another good one when one considers that pretty much today wireless support is a must for any operating system but FreeBSD hardware support in those regards have trailed behind the likes of OpenBSD.
Putting that aside for a moment I think the bigger challenge is having an ecosystem where there are at least 20 programmers within the GNOME and KDE community who can add in the platform specific features so that both can run as first class citizens rather than the current situation – the low level operating system features such as drivers will eventually arrive but the bigger challenge for the desktop/laptop is whether or not there is vibrant advocacy and development community working to bring and maintain both desktops on FreeBSD, something that I have no seen beyond merely ensuring that things compile which is a bit disappointing.
..is like NetBSD’s, an old fork of OpenBSD’s pf, which is still under active development.
They’re not syntax compatible anymore, there have been several significant changes.
FreeBSD/OSX have ipfw, and NetBSD has npf now. If you want to use pf you should probably install OpenBSD.
Edited 2011-11-08 03:22 UTC
Reasons against FreeBSD on the desktop:
1) Laptop support. My desktop is a laptop these days, and has been exclusively since 2007 or so. I have not been able to get suspend/resume to properly work without disabling SMP for years now, and wireless card support is very hackish and pretty much depends on OpenBSD to provide the drivers.
2) Desktop environments have become too Linux-centric. Now that HAL is deprecated, there is a real scramble to get full integration of hardware with the three desktop environments. This isn’t really FreeBSD’s fault, except maybe trusting a Linux technology to remain stable.
3) Xorg driver support sucks on anything that isn’t nVidia. This is because KMS is still not ported over yet, which shouldn’t be an excuse, since OpenBSD has found a way to pretty much mirror the latest Xorg driver support in xenocara for Intel/AMD cards.
I can essentially go one of two ways these days: install OpenBSD and get full hardware support out of the box, or install Linux. The problem with the first option is that I’m going to have to give up some apps…Opera, Dropbox, VirtualBox. With Linux, I’m going to have tons of hardware support, but I’m going to lose nice manpages and a tightly integrated OS. Pick your poison.
Edited to add: BSD foundation donor, not trolling.
Edited 2011-11-08 03:47 UTC
I agree with you, but I think FreeBSD and Linux are similar levels of suckiness at the things you’ve mentioned. Neither is well optimized for your laptop for instance. People complain about battery problems on every distro’s forum.
Not really:
My ASUS 1201N simply works out of the box under Linux. (nVidia w/ nouveau + built in rtk8912se WIFI driver) including all the Fn keys.
Last time I tried booting BSD on this machine (8.0?) I got VESA and no network. (Using ndis is less than ideal…)
True, it is anecdotal example, but in general, Linux does have better hardware support. (Plus, the lack of KMS in FreeBSD may kill it a desktop alternative in the long run)
– Gilboa
Linux may have broader hardware support, but I failed to see where it is better. All the laptops and dektops I have are better supported in OpenBSD, then they are in Linux.
Eg., the laptop I’m writing from – Acer AO531h – doesn’t properly reboot with linux (it hangs when it should actually restart), the audio recording fails (thanks goes to PulseAudio specificly) and the wireless support is faultier. With OpenBSD it does just OK, though it also features WiMax adapter, which is somehow supported in Linux and not supported in OpenBSD.
Another notable example in my zoo — ASUS R2Hv, which didn’t boot with most of 2.6.x kernels at all – it still runs OpenBSD, as it has multiple issues with wireless and ACPI in Linux.
These examples are what they are: examples. But why the hell all of my hardware works better on OpenBSD?
Edited 2011-11-08 10:47 UTC
The last few years the OpenbSD project has put a lot of effort in notebook/acpi/wifi support. I think the end result is often more stable because they write their own drivers most of the time and try not to rely on binary blobs.
Edited 2011-11-09 00:49 UTC
These are all painfully true. While I still stick to FreeBSD on my main workstation, I haven’t used it on a laptop in years due to these frustrations–mainly the wireless. In 2004, my standard Dell Inspiron running FreeBSD 6 was a dream to use. Wireless worked, video drivers worked, audio was BETTER than on Linux… but the world of hardware moved from open/standard to proprietary. Linux had enough political clout to get the manufacturers to (grudgingly) provide drivers, but BSD was just not enough of a household name.
However, all it would take to turn FreeBSD into a much better desktop than Linux would be for a large company to decide it was going to build a strategy around BSD. Personally, I think there is great potential that is being ignored by tech strategists. And for all the whiners about the license, that is not the real reason tech companies haven’t backed BSD. It is simply politics and marketing. Linux has the more marketable story. If anything, the BSD license is more attractive to business since it doesn’t force you to open the code you want to keep proprietary.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. I actually ran into this scenario this past weekend.
I bought a Dell E6410 laptop for the reason it had Intel graphics (better open source support) and great open source support (thinking that Open and FreeBSD would support it nicely).
Nope. Since the lack of KMS support, the only option I have is VESA – NO thanks. Laggy window drags don’t appeal to me at all.
Then the suspend/resume support. BIOS update fixed the kernel panic OpenBSD would give while suspending, but -resuming- still resulted in a frozen black screen (same for FreeBSD). This was verified with the latest releases and snapshots of both OS’s.
Since I bought this laptop for the sole purpose of having a non-Windows computer, I threw xubuntu on there for now. Not my first choice, but at least everything works… And it’s not Windows
The reason I don’t use FreeBSD is complexity. It’s a really great project with excellent software and documentation. But it has the old unix philosophy of RTFM. Well, I don’t care to RTFM when I’m on my own time. I do enough of that at work.
I tried PC-BSD in response, since it’s supposed to be easier to use and more friendly. But it wouldn’t boot on my machine due to the fact I have mixed controllers (both SATA and PATA). So that nixed that. Back to Ubuntu and Puppy for me!
I don’t use FreeBSD on my desktop since my laptop video has a bug that makes the display nearly unusable with the included X.Org drivers. AMD’s proprietary drivers work, but those are Linux only. The latest X.org drivers may work now, but I think I’ll have to build those myself, and I’m not that inclined to do that right now.
The author isn’t representative of normal desktop users because he is talking about rolling his own desktop. So his opinion is only slightly useful. But he’s right anyway.
The FreeBSD desktop (now PC-BSD) has caught up with the Linux desktops because Linux desktops have gone nowhere for 10 years.
a lil FUD-Y don’t you think?
Wayland, KMS, nouveau for FreeBSD?
Nothing interesting, and no innovation ever happens on FreeBSD. Not to mention Linux has better hardware support and also better performance. So nobody cares to run FreeBSD as a desktop OS.
Need I say more?
Edited 2011-11-08 06:01 UTC
No innovation ever happens? You mean like Linux’s epoll, inotify, timerfd, signalfd, all of which are trying to successively copy more and more of kqueue, which FreeBSD had since around 1994, over 10 years earlier?
Where is Linux’s virtual serial port? FreeBSD has one.
KMS and co are being ported, so Intel graphics drivers will work on FreeBSD soon. Only ATi is left out, but hey, their drivers suck on Linux too and always have.
As for Wayland… how successful that is even on Linux remains to be seen. Remember that NVidia warned against the X-on-OpenGL approach to graphics drivers in 2006, saying that it is easier in the short term but creates further problems in the long run (http://download.nvidia.com/developer/presentations/2006/xdevconf/co… page 9 points 6 and 7).
Yeah right. NVIDIA, the company that has stagnated X progress for years. Refusing to implement KMS, proper XRandR, DRI2 and so on in their blob.
NVIDIA, the company that doesn’t give a shit about Linux, BSD, Wayland, FOSS and progress in general. Other than progress in their wallet and business, selling Linux computers to movie studios, and forgetting about everyone else.
And you’re telling me this company knows better than those Freedesktop hackers? Are you kidding me? Tell me another joke.
Thanks God there is Nouveau, which is a great revenge. NVIDIA deserves to get out of business.
Edited 2011-11-08 18:51 UTC
Paul Venezia is not wondering why more folks aren’t using FreeBSD on the desktop: on the first page he tells us about the uptime of his server (which runs FreeBSD) and whatever he has to say about other uses of FreeBSD is on page two — and quoted in full in the summary. In other words, he’s not making a strong case in favor of FreeBSD on the desktop, except for a generic reference to “performance and stability” which, let’s be honest, could be said just about any recent OS.
That said, my desktop of choice is FreeBSD and not because I dislike Linux, but because I like FreeBSD better and, assuming you have the right hardware, it makes for a more than viable desktop. And no, I don’t think that hardware support is as limited as it used to be: for instance my little ZOTAC HD-AD01 is fully supported (video, audio and network all work with a plain FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE).
Anyway, since Paul Venezia also mentions virtualization, I’ll go ahead and leave with a shameless plug about VirtualBSD (http://www.virtualbsd.info) which, as the name implies, offers a virtualized (but desktop oriented) FreeBSD that can be used with VMware or, after a few tweaks, VirtualBox.
Oh, and version 9.0 will be out as soon as FreeBSD 9.0 is ready!
RT.
I’ld like to attach myself here and state: I’m using FreeBSD since 4.0 exclusively on the desktop, of course with thinking prior to buying – this is a requirement if you want to have everything working (which is easy with FreeBSD given the fact you’re using the “right” hardware).
The OS itself is much easier to maintain for someone with a good UNIX background than keeping up with the extending diversity in Linux. Furthermore, FreeBSD has a concept that Linux is lacking: There is “the operating system”, and then there is “additionally installed applications”. Both parts can be treated independently. In Linux, even the kernel can be seen as a package. Of course, this approach doesn’t just give you the advantages a server admin loves, it also gives you the “problems” desktop users often complain about, especially in case of “staying current” (or -STABLE, to use FreeBSD terminology).
The use of “FreeBSD as a desktop” cannot be generalized easily. What actually is “as a desktop”? It depends – because one user loves his desktop in form of KDE with native applications, another user loves his desktop using a tiling windo manager and efficiently tweaked applications to fit his needs. Many functionalities, such as graphics, sound, web, mail and multimedia are often part of desktop solutions. But sometimes, you don’t want a thing to be present (because it annoys you or interrupts your workflow), or you want something “extraordinary” to be present that is not contained in the “mainstream” desktop solutions.
There are even cases that you want to use a certain machine as a desktop, while it serves as a server in the background. With FreeBSD, that’s possible without trouble (if you know how to do it, of course, but you should know that anyway).
In all my years of FreeBSD desktop experience, I could always do what the “cool kids” could do, in many times even before they could, and even when they couldn’t do it anymore.
There are many who say that FreeBSD doesn’t advance the way mainstream advances, and so it won’t be seen as a usable desktop “alternative”. The reason might be that FreeBSD has a different “target audience”. Please keep in mind that I’m not a FreeBSD spokesperson, so everything I say is just my very individual assumption.
Those users who do not advance in a way industry, content providers or marketing divisions want them to advance will soon find FreeBSD a real good solution as it allows them to do things in a way they define, instead of just following the “If you want to see this web page, buy a new PC!” approach that is common in the home consumer market. Just in case you’re not indending to advance, simply because you need to do a special set of activities (e. g. for your work that you need to do in order to have your income), FreeBSD provides the stability that you can keep doing your work for 2, 5, 10 or more years. There basically is no reason you are forced to change your work just because “the new PC wants you to”.
Of course, this approach can also be applied to desktop use, while I’d like to admit that it’s not the typical case. But those who use FreeBSD typically aren’t typical anyway.
As all my desktop systems, workstations and laptops have always been – due to a good selection before putting them into operation.
Nice you’re mentioning it. Unlike common “Windows” stuff, you can easily run that “FreeBSD appliance” on the OS you’re currently running (using VMware of VirtualBox, of course) without actually needing to install or configure a thing.
The author makes three general points:
1) FreeBSD is more stable and has better management features than Linux
Stability at the kernel level depends on many things. At the distro level, see response to #2 below.
I’m not qualified to comment on the usefulness of FreeBSD’s management features compared to those of Linux.
2) A custom-built FreeBSD installation is more streamlined and stable than a binary Linux installation
Apples and oranges. Try Gentoo.
3) FreeBSD is easy to clone in a VM
A streamlined Gentoo Linux installation can’t do the same?
Linux provides a capable and mature desktop, while maintaining enough of it’s Unix heritage to matter. Most FLOSS developers are also developing with Linux as the target platform, with (maybe) some consideration to Windows. In many cases, BSD support is secondary.
So why would most people even consider FreeBSD?
Incidentally, I say that as a *BSD user. But I use *BSD as a truer (in my opinion) Unix environment. Yet I use other operating systems for the “desktop stuff”.
UNIX purity is soooo last century. When the zombies come, you’ll want a terminal…you won’t care whether its bsd, linux, mach, nt….
The technology is undoubtedly sound in the BSD’s. They’re almost as old as UNIX itself. That is a testament to their viability.
However, I’m a desktop user. So for me, I need a platform that is easy, fully featured and has a large array of software and forward momentum.
Normally, Microsoft would fit that bill, but I’m the kind of weirdo that doesn’t like the way MS does their business. That makes me an ABM’er. Apple could fit the bill if I didn’t think they are as bad as MS. So that leaves me with the FOSS alternatives.
Linux maybe a chaotic hodgepodge of disparate technologies, cobbled together as an Operating System, with more variety than the supermarket cereal isle, but it is equally investing in server and desktop technologies. Linux gives me a large array of software, active development, a large supported array of hardware, ease of use developments and reasonable reliability. On top of that there are reasonably open and friendly user communities.
The BSD’s seem to lack the forward momentum, aren’t really desktop oriented, are relatively behind on current FOSS desktop technologies and they seem to have very cautious and closed communities. As a desktop user, the BSD’s simply don’t seem as welcoming to my needs. When push comes to shove, ,I will take the hacky, slightly buggy solution that works 99% now. The BSD’s take the approach that something should be done right, which is good, but that doesn’t help me with my current needs. Paired with the fact that some BSD’s need Linux emulation to get mainstream software working, why not forego the emulation and use the thing being emulated. (Before some wiseguy mentions WINE. I’ve beaten the WINE addiction long, long ago.)
I do think it is good that the BSD’s are around, as they offer choice, but for me, they don’t look like my cup of tea.
These days this is mostly Flash, which, with some luck, will disappear gradually with HTML5. Being a Linux and BSD user, I quite like the capability to run any odd binary I come along. But yeah, you’re quite right, BSDs do lag behind Linux desktopwise. I wish NetBSD in particular would make up its mind whether it wants to be another idiot friendly Unix or not.
Smart guy.
Who would want to use BSD when it’s clearly inferior to all other OSes out there.
Some of the comments here that are so hostile to FreeBSD I find bizarre, such as FreeBSD being second rate or inferior – some on this site might consider me a Linux or Ubuntu Fanboy, but having used FreeBSD to build a couple of servers, I think its great the documentation is certainly great. Unquestionably I found it easier to build a ldap server in FreeBSD than Debian due to the quality of the documentation.
The Port system works and means you build a system for your needs (although there are packages if you wish) – I believe some Linux’s have copied a similar system, the jail system for security works and I have to say that the RAID system, even using gmirror and UFS was easier than mdadm, possibly it would have been even better if I used ZFS. As for speed of set up how often do you build a server? If I can build a box in a few days someone, who really knows what they are doing could build a box in a day and end up with a stable solid server.
For the desktop, possibly using FreeBSD would be an odd choice but PCBSD is basically FreeBSD and if you have moderate software needs that FreeBSD or PCBSD can meet and you have suitable hardware I have no doubt that you would end up with a fast stable box that would make you happy.
As for it taking time and being fiddly so what? If that^aEURTMs what you want to do, this isn^aEURTMt a Windows replacement and you could say the same for Gentoo, Slackware Arch etc.
Back when I used an Amiga as my main machine, I installed NetBSD as my first Unix OS. I would love to use *BSD nowadays, but for what I do I’d need hardware support for things like CUDA/OpenCL and unfortunately, the big hardware vendors don’t seem to be interested in supporting FreeBSD.
I use FreeBSD all day, on my desktop I am running 9-STABLE amd64. I have been using freebsd as a desktop for work since 4.2-RELEASE . Before that I was using Debian Potato . I have everything working that I want. I have tried Ubuntu and some newer Linux desktops. but all of the extras they have, do not help me do anything. When I read stories like this where people say Ohh linux is so much better b/c it has accelerated Xorg things I wonder what they hell for . I think its time for gnome to go back under the bridge it came from , ubuntu needs to be forgotten about.
Well I’ve used FreeBSD on servers and I think its very good and the documentation is great. The servers have proved to be stable – next time I’ll try zfs but I’ve used UFS with with a RAID and it was easy and solid.
After reading all the comments why I shouldn’t in this thread as soon as I have time I’m setting up a KDE desktop based on FreeBSD.
Should be fun and I’ll see if lemur2 is right and KDE is better than – well anything – I’m sure that FreeBSD will be cool once its setup.
There is a comparison in current issue of http://bsdmag.org/, too.
My pesonal experience for FreeBSD is the following. FreeBSD on firewall, e.g. through the nice gui of pfSense, has same features ahead of linux. But on desktop and on servers , I need a system fast to set up, easy to use, and has predictable and reliable security updates, which is currently ,free as in beer, ubuntu (maybe redhat clones, too)
To use an MS analogy Ubuntu is Windows 7 and FreeBSD is Windows 2000 Service Pack 15.
no
This is a strange opinion but I believe a barrier for FreeBSD as a workstation desktop in an office environment is not having built-in support for securely accessing file shares with KRB5 NFS for server side authentication which requires a Kernel recompile in FreeBSD. Another barrier for most UNIX vendors is not having an easy, built-in and supported method for joining Active Directory and generating keytab information. There are many recipe guides but I have yet to find one that is complete or as easy as joining a Windows workstation. On the server side, some NAS vendors have built-in supported methods for joining AD and exporting with KRB5. I know you can use CIFS with Samba for server side authentication but who would want their UNIX workstation’s primary file access protocol to be CIFS?
None of *BSD-s has as good terminal, as Linux has – allowing to use 512 characters.
Say what?
http://tinyurl.com/d7ps9th
I’ve been away from osnews.com for a few days, and thus didn’t see this story until just now. Seeing as how I’m firmly entrenched in the Cult of BSD, I figured I should chime in with my two cents.
First things first…as someone further up the comment chain correctly pointed out, the article in question never dealt specifically with the issue of FreeBSD’s value as a desktop system, despite the manner in which it was presented on this site. Nevertheless, my home computers — all of them “desktops” rather than servers — have been 100% *BSD since 2006. Up until then I was trying on every GNU/Linux distro I could, and found all of them wanting in one way or another. Five years in, there is no way in hell I’m going back to the hodge-podge that is the Linux universe. (If I absolutely had to, I would go with Debian, Slackware or Gentoo, as they strike me as being somewhat BSD-like. Ubuntu and its ilk are too Fisher-Price for my tastes.)
The real point of the article is that FreeBSD is simply a solid and stable operating system that would have a far wider user base if it got the recognition it deserves, and that GNU/Linux users ought to give it a try. End of story (er, article).
Much of the comment trajectory here has gotten lost in the merits of ZFS, feature xyz, or even the mental/emotional stability of Theo de Raadt, as if the latter was proof the GPL’s superiority over the BSD/MIT licenses. (Permissive licensing causes mental illness. Who knew?)
At the end of the day, people are drawn to BSD-based operating systems for various reasons, and the ones who stick with it aren’t likely the ones who spend a lot of time thirsting for the big “I can’t believe it’s not Windows!” moment.