[user3939382]

I switched my startup’s whole infra to FreeBSD a couple months ago. Found a use after free bug that Linux’s memory management was just fine with in Gnome XSLT lib that FreeBSD properly refused. Other than that smooth sailing, jails work great.

After IBM destroyed CentOS, all the Xorg politics nonsense, the list goes on with Linux, not interested. I just want something quiet and boring and stable and correctly designed. NetBSD would be my first choice but they don’t get the $ they need for drivers.

[manuelabeledo]

You don’t need to follow the news cycle to use an operating system.

[user3939382]

I do follow the news cycle and if I’m hearing about a software package in it, something is wrong with the people making the software and I don’t trust them. Software is an engineering discussion or at least it’s supposed to be. Here’s my community guidelines: everyone be nice and respectful engage in good faith and focus on the math. Being social is fine so long that it doesn’t become a diversion from the engineering discussion. We’re talking about code not a philosophical treatise. There are civil ways to settle disagreements. I’m so sick to death of the politics.

[manuelabeledo]

It sounds like software projects are built by humans. Nothing wrong with that.

Unless we’re assuming here that the BSD community is free from that.

[user3939382]

The engineers I’ve worked with my whole career had no problem getting the work done without getting into giant political debates. If your politics comes before the engineering I don’t want anything to do with it.

[manuelabeledo]

Can you give any examples of the type of politics that ruined XOrg or Linux?

[user3939382]

Guy tells you he dislikes political discussions around engineering so you ask to engage in exactly that discussion?

[rednb]

Done the same since 2018 circa, never looked back.

For a while even used it on the desktop, but was too much trouble due to specific tools we need that weren't supported properly. so we're using Linux on the desktop.

FreeBSD is stable, lightweight, gets out of the way, and without drama.

[ajross]

> all the Xorg politics nonsense

Uh... Xorg is packaged by FreeBSD too...

Really the whole theme that (from the article) "FreeBSD ships as a complete, coherent OS" is belied by this kind of nonsense. No, it's not. Or, sure, it is, but in exactly the same way that Debian or whatever is. It's a big soup of some local software and a huge ton of upstream dependencies curated for shipment together. Just like a Linux distro.

And, obviously, almost all those upstream dependences are exactly the same. Yet somehow the BSD folks think there's some magic to the ports stuff that the Linux folks don't understand. Well, there isn't. And honestly to the extent there's a delta in packaging sophistication, the Linux folks tend to be ahead (c.f. Nix, for example).

[rednb]

The key thing is that on freebsd you do not risk bricking your system by installing a port. Even though this guarantee has become less true with PkgBase

[ajross]

> The key thing is that on freebsd you do not risk bricking your system by installing a port

What specifically are you trying to cite here? Which package can I install on Debian or Fedora or whatever that "bricks the system"? Genuinely curious to know.

[rednb]

I was referring to the need to be careful to not modify/update packages also used by the base system. Since all packages are treated the same on Linux, you often can't tell which package can put you in trouble if you update it along with the dependencies it drags with it.

This kind of problem happens frequently when users add repositories such as Packman on Linux providing dependencies versions different from the ones used by the base system of the distro.

Experienced people know how to avoid these mistakes, but this whole class of problem does not exist on FreeBSD.

[chuckadams]

> Since all packages are treated the same on Linux

This is no longer the case in "immutable" distros such as Bluefin/Aurora, which uses ostree for the "base" distro, while most other user packages are installed with homebrew. Nix and Guix solve it in a very different way. Then there's flatpak and snap.

A lot of poor *BSD advocacy likes to deride Linux for its diversity one moment, then switch to treating it as a monolith when it's convenient. It's a minority of the users for sure, but they naturally make an outsized share of the noise.

[f30e3dfed1c9]

> "FreeBSD ships as a complete, coherent OS" is belied by this kind of nonsense. No, it's not. Or, sure, it is, but in exactly the same way that Debian or whatever is.

Ehhh... not exactly. With nothing but the smallest FreeBSD installer image, you can, if you include just one optional package, have a system that is capable of entirely recompiling itself.

You might say "who cares?" and that's fine. But it is "complete" in a sense that no linux system I know of is. I admit that I don't know what it would take to install from, say, almalinux-10.0-x86_64-minimal.iso, and end up with a system capable of recompiling itself, but I expect it would be a whole lot more work than that. Could be wrong.

[user3939382]

> a huge ton of upstream dependencies

I think you missed the point in my original comment. I explained I moved my platform with all dependencies and had 1 bug which was actually a silent bug in Linux.

In other words, it works. Your particular stack might have a different snag profile but if I can move my giant complex app there, yours is worth a shot.

FreeBSD is more complete than you make out. They also have hard working ports maintainers.

[ajross]

> In other words, it works.

Well, sure, but that's a ridiculous double standard. You're making the claim (or implying it, at least) that FreeBSD is fundamentally superior because it's a unified piece of software shipped as a holistic piece of artifice or whatever. And that by inferrence it's unlike all that kludgey linux stuff that you can't trust because of politics or whatever.

But your evidence that it's actually superior? "it works". Well, gosh.

You'll tar the competition with all sorts of ambiguous smears, but all you ask from your favorite is... that you got your app to work?

[user3939382]

> You’re making the claim that (or implying it) … unified piece of software shipped as a holistic piece

I never said anything about that. Again in my opening comment I listed the reasons I like it. It’s boring and stable which is what I like to center my work on. I even provided a specific technical example of superior memory management.