26 years of FreeBSD and counting...

IIRC in about 99 I got sick of Mandrake and RH RPM deps hell and found FreeBSD 3 CD in a Walnut creek book. Ports and BSD packages were a revelation, to say nothing of the documentation which still sets it apart from the haphazard Linux.

The comment about using a good SERVER mobo like supermicro is on point --- I managed many supermicro fbsd colo ack servers for almost 15 years and those boards worked well with it.

Currently I run FreeBSD on several home machines including old mac minis repurposed as media machines throughout the house.

They run kodi + linux brave and with that I can stream anything like live sports.

Also OpenBSD for one firewall and PFSense (FreeBSD) for another.

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AdieuToLogic 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The comment about using a good SERVER mobo like supermicro is on point --- I managed many supermicro fbsd colo ack servers for almost 15 years and those boards worked well with it.

I completely agree.

Supermicro mobo's with server-grade components combined with aggressive cooling fans/heat sinks running FreeBSD in a AAA data center resulted in two prod servers having uptimes of over 3000+ days. This included dozens of app/jails/ports updates (pretty much everything other than the kernel).

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movedx 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Lovely stuff. The industry would be so much better off if the family of BSDs had more attention and use.

I run some EVE Online services for friends. They have manual install steps for those of use not using containers. Took me half a day to get the stack going on FBSD and that was mostly me making typos and mistakes. So pleased I was able to dodge the “docker compose up” trap.

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BrouteMinou 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Can you explain why "Docker compose" is a trap?

	▲	hakfoo an hour ago \| parent [-]
		For my two cents, it discourages standardization. If you run bare-metal, and instructions to build a project say "you need to install libfoo-dev, libbar-dev, libbaz-dev", you're still sourcing it from your known supply chain, with its known lifecycles and processes. If there's a CVE in libbaz, you'll likely get the patch and news from the same mailing lists you got your kernel and Apache updates from. Conversely, if you pull in a ready-made Docker container, it might be running an entire Alpine or Ubuntu distribution atop your preferred Debian or FreeBSD. Any process you had to keep those packages up to date and monitor vulnerabilities now has to be extended to cover additional distributions.

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2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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naikrovek 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It really is amazing how much success Linux has achieved given its relatively haphazard nature.

FreeBSD always has been, and always will be, my favorite OS.

It is so much more coherent and considered, as the post author points out. It is cohesive; whole.

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cesarb 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> It really is amazing how much success Linux has achieved given its relatively haphazard nature.

That haphazard nature is probably part of the reason for its success, since it allowed for many alternative ways of doing things being experimented in parallel.

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jrmcvngtn 18 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That was my impression from diving into The Design & Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System. I really need to devote time to running it long term.

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quesera 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Linux has turned haphazardry into a strength. This is impressive.

I prefer FreeBSD.

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actionfromafar 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I like the haphazardry but I think systemd veered too far into dadaism.

	▲	arthurfirst 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		THIS. As bad as launchctl on Macs. Solution looking for a problem so it causes more problems -- like IPv6