I heard, that BSD is dying...

I love the BSDs; I have the most experience with FreeBSD, I regularly use macOS, and lately I’ve been learning NetBSD due to its rumpkernel.

With that said, with the decline of commercial Unix and the dominance of Linux, POSIX, in my opinion, has become less important, and in its place Linux seems to be the standard. I prefer the BSDs to Linux due to its design and documentation, but Linux has better hardware support, and the FOSS ecosystem, especially the desktop, is increasingly embracing Linuxisms such as Wayland and systemd. The FOSS BSD ecosystems are too small to counter the Linuxization of the Unix ecosystem, and I feel that Apple does not pay much attention to the BSD side of macOS these days.

I don’t expect the BSDs to die, but I do believe they’ll need to find ways to adapt to an increasingly Linux-dominated FOSS ecosystem.

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sidkshatriya 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

NetBSD - situation does not seem that good. Project feels less active now.

OpenBSD - has a fanatical band of security obsessed users. Not going away anytime soon.

FreeBSD - It chugs along. Why is FreeBSD worth trying out ? See my reply above.

	▲	SoftTalker 6 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Love OpenBSD, it is my main work and personal OS. Doesn't rank the best in performance, but certainly good enough for my uses (and many others, I'd guess). The thing I like is that almost everything I've invested in learning about it over the past 15 years still applies. Stuff that does change, or is added, tends to be done in a way that is sensible and consistent with established patterns and practices. Linux, not so much.
	▲	user3939382 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		NetBSD has their new npf firewall which is quite nice. Of all the options their internal architecture is the cleanest. It gets less fanfare than the others because it has less drivers, although even that is partially due to a commitment against binary blobs. FreeBSD is more practical but for example you find the config files scattered about the file system whereas in NetBSD they’re always exactly where I expect. SDF.org has a great NetBSD system if anyone wants to try it out.

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bigstrat2003 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Has Netcraft confirmed it?

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

Whenever people use unnecessary commas like this, I hear nothing but William Shatner in my mind.

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bell-cot an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"BSD is dying" has been a popular (at least with kids and trolls and Linux fans) jeer for the past three-ish decades.

The reality of it is kinda like "Buffalo Bills will win the Superbowl this year".

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krylon 17 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

...just as soon as Linux takes over the desktop! ;-)