[laxd]

- firewall?

PF seems to me like pretty much the most well regarded firewall there is - with a nice, sensible DSL for config. If you don't like like it, you can use use IPFW or IPFILTER, which are alternative, built-in, firewall front-ends.

- In the end, it was just too much having to re-invent the wheel for common server tasks

Maybe you have built your routine around a system that have reinvented the wheel? I think FreeBSD knowledge degrades more slowly than that of Linux distros.

- I'm just not an OS dev.

That's how I feel when I enter the chaotic Linux world. Do you think my life revolve around keeping up with this shit? :)

[hecifato]

> That's how I feel when I enter the chaotic Linux world.

I feel that as a Linux user. I really like Linux, I use it on my desktop and it runs all my servers. Delving into forum posts to find some solution to a specific problem can be exhausting. Sometimes you get a top result from like 2011 and it is out of date so you then need to spend X minutes trying to look up something more recent.

[ssl-3]

You haven't really gone 'round the block in the world of quasi-modern Linux until you're Googling for answers and guidance to what seems like some obscure issue, wherein: The noise is intense and replete with bad answers, unanswered questions, lack of report (positive? negative? how 'bout "none"?), and dumb SEO spam.

Time passes (how much time? are the birds singing yet?) as you keep slogging through that endless sea of muck.

Finally, you run across an old post on some forum where the person not only wrote about the problem, but also the cause of the problem -- and the answer.

So you're reading along, working to once again evaluate whether your problem matches their problem. And the more you read, the more familiar it all seems... like you've been there before.

"It can't be," you say to yourself.

But you scroll back up to the top of the comment and look at the author's name anyway.

And yep, sure as anything: It was you. Six years ago, you wrote about that exact problem yourself and posted a perfectly-cromulent solution to it.

So you fix it (again), note that the birds are in fact singing, and to try to sleep for a bit while pondering your life's choices: You could have found a hobby in origami or perhaps woodworking. Maybe worked as a Mennonite tradesman producing leather goods, or as a carpenter (even an Amish one if any of that seemed too high-tech).

But you didn't. You chose this path instead. It could have all been so simple, but it isn't.

[laxd]

Addendum: I've used FreeBSD as my daily driver (I hate that term) since around 2004. Including through cs/math university. With Windows in a VM for "I need it". The longer I've used it the more I'm annoyed by the trivialities of Linux distro management. And the bugs that happens between ill fitting parts composed by underfunded distro developers.

And I didn't mean to imply that FreeBSD is stale. There is big stuff happening continuously. Right now it's compatibility with Linux Wifi drivers, which will make FreeBSD more laptop-able. And pkgbase, which brings some of the compile-your-self flexibility of FreeBSD to binary management, and merges the two tools that decides what makes up your system into one. And kinda makes FreeBSD into the slim system that people already claims it to be.

My pet conspiracy is that pkgbase happened because the powers that be didn't want the 1000 battles to remove junk. Any time anyone wants to remove something there's always one or two guys on the mailing list claiming their livelihood depends on not having to do "pkg install Ø". With pkgbase its all gone.

[antod]

They might've been trying freebsd back when pf wasn't well supported. Back when I last used openbsd (which might be nearly 20yrs ago now - eek), pf support on freebsd was lagging quite a bit.

Not sure what things are like now though - I'm guessing it's much better as pf was obviously the best option :)

[laxd]

My impression:

* PF was imported into FreeBSD from OpenBSD, maybe it had problems at first.

* Both implementations have been actively maintained, further developed, and diverged.

* There is now collaboration in the development of the FreeBSD and OpenBSD implementations.

* PF is the shit. Even though IPFW is the "invented here" firewall.

[sixdonuts]

Yep, started on PF and the Palo and NSX FWs I use at the day job are a piece of cake.