[lmm]

Too many random changes, too fiddly to maintain, too much general flakiness. Especially for simple single-purpose devices that you want to set up once and leave alone for years, BSD is generally much nicer than Linux. I'd actually flip your question: why would you ever use Linux rather than FreeBSD?

[treesknees]

Do you have any specific examples where a Linux-based firewall was too "random" or "fiddly" or "flaky"? Or provide examples of ways that BSD "much nicer"?

It sounds to me like you picked a bad Linux distro for your use case.

I've seen plenty of single-purpose Linux-based network appliances, and none of them have come across as flaky or unreliable because of the OS. In fact they can be easier to use for people who have more operational experience using Linux already.

[lmm]

> Do you have any specific examples where a Linux-based firewall was too "random" or "fiddly" or "flaky"?

They switched out ifconfig for some other thing. There's been about 3 different firewall systems that you've have to migrate between. Some of the newer systems (docker and I think maybe flatpak/the other one) bypass your firewall rules by default, which is a nasty surprise. A couple of times I did a system upgrade and my system wouldn't boot because drivers or boot systems or what have you had changed. That stuff doesn't happen on FreeBSD.

I'm sure to someone who lives and breathes Linux, or who works on this stuff, it's all trivial. But if it's not something you work on day-to-day, it's something you want to set and forget as an appliance, Linux adds pain.

> It sounds to me like you picked a bad Linux distro for your use case.

Were there any grounds at all in what I said for thinking that, or did you just make it up out of blind tribalism?

> In fact they can be easier to use for people who have more operational experience using Linux already.

Of course, but that's purely circular logic. Whatever OS you use for most of your systems, systems using that OS will be easier for you to use.

[littlecranky67]

Not the OP, but I've been with Linux since 2.2 times. You had ipchains, iptables, nftables and now god knows what. *BSD had pf ever since.