Whilst BSD isn’t linux per se, it still has a lasting legacy in the unix like space and notably has been used in game consoles like the PS4.
For you in your personal use case, have you tried a bsd distro? What was better compared to the average linux distro?
Apparently BSD is more modular with its jailing system and seems to have a lower resource usage.
I look at ones like NETBSD and FreeBSD and think, "what exactly do I get out of them that I wouldn’t with Linux say, Ubuntu or Void as an example?
What are your thoughts on BSD, you use FreeBSD before?
The majority of the Internet’s routing and switching architecture is BSD based. Historically it had the most stable and performant network stack of all the OSs.
I used it extensively at one job in a previous life when I was a network appliance developer. It was rock solid and lightning fast. Tried it as a desktop at home and had a terrible experience.
The little differences in the Unix commands used to drive me nuts as well…
BSD is well designed and cohesive but has many more missing bits and contraints than Linux. So, if you are in its sweet spot, it is awesome and maybe better than Linux. However, outside that it can be totally unusable.
For me, the biggest issue is the lack of software. There is both a mountain of it as it is of course an POSIX compatible OS and at the same time it is trivial to need important software that is missing.
As a desktop, it therefore feels very nice and also very limiting.
I love that it is actually real UNIX with an unbroken history back to the beginning. I find that really compelling. At the same time, I always get “bored” using it because it inevitably does not support what I want to do.
I am still hoping Chimera Linux finds a sweet spot that melds the two worlds in a nice way.
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I use OpenBSD as my daily driver on the desktop.
In my opinion Linux over the years got too caught up in politics and involved with big corporations having influence on certain non-trivial decisions.
But I also think the BSDs are better actual Operating Systems in contrast to Linux being only the kernel of which different projects make use of to provide their final products to the end user, its way more fractured.
I use it every day. On my MacBook running MacOS 😬
Seriously though, I tried putting FreeBSD on my Linux laptop a few years ago and it was not a fun time. Reminded me a lot of running Linux on desktop in the 2000s when I first discovered Linux.
I’m rooting for them though. I like the idea of keeping development and documentation so tightly integrated and maintained by a single dedicated company.
MacOS is actually not a BSD as some people like to think. It is Unix, it used to be posix tested but it has never, ever been a BSD. MacOS is based on the mach kernel, a kernel that was intended to replace the BSD kernel for a GPL licensed Unix. Most of the people who wanted a GPL Unix just went with Linux in the end. We are still waiting to see what Hurd has to off though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel)
Your point is well taken and I appreciate expanding my knowledge on this a bit, but I don’t think that it is that cut and dry. Mach, the kernel from which both is not Unix. Mach is basis for XNU (X is not Unix, sound familiar). From the screenshots from Wikipedia, pretending that BSD is not embedded within MacOS is just trying to obfuscate things. The Mach virtual memory manager for instance is in FreeBSD, so it goes the other way around as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel)?wprov=sfla1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)?wprov=sfla1
For a server - it’s fantastic if you’re a reasonable adult and if you don’t have a compulsive need to install every shiny new “app” you find on the internet. Terrible if you hate reading any kind of documentation. Terrible if you already decided that some of its core concepts are stupid and try to force stuff in order to mimic your favorite Linux dist.
Takes some knowledge and planning to set everything up properly but when it works, it works forever.
ZFS works as intended. I hear that it’s miles better these days though in Linux.
Jails will make your life so much easier.
If the software isn’t available in the ports tree you don’t need it. You may want it but you really don’t need it (bro just download my Docker image, I wrote a webserver in rust bro I promise it’s super stable and it’s never been done before bro). Enable Linux binary compatibility or fire up a virtual machine with a tiny dist if you’re a masochist.
I personally like the default firewall, pf. It’s got a bad reputation in some circles though.
No systemd.
No systemd.
No systemd.
