What do you love about the BSDs?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware / Software Crap > What do you love about the BSDs?

dlr: Jul 9, 2015; I'm fluid.

Specifically, the orthodox NetBSD.

# ? Jul 9, 2015 22:20

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# ? Jan 17, 2026 13:46

Zeta Niloticus: Nov 6, 2007

That they're free as in beer, not freedom.

# ? Jul 10, 2015 00:29

dlr: Jul 9, 2015; I'm fluid.

RZApublican posted:

That they're free as in beer, not freedom.

What do you mean?

EDIT: If I recall correctly, the BSDs are both! NetBSD and OpenBSD especially, given that the only things not 'libre' are necessary firmware blobs.

dlr fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Jul 10, 2015

# ? Jul 10, 2015 00:30

Zeta Niloticus: Nov 6, 2007

dlr posted:

What do you mean?

GPL license vs BSD license.

# ? Jul 10, 2015 00:39

dlr: Jul 9, 2015; I'm fluid.

And how is the BSD license not free as in freedom? Just because it is more permissive than GPL doesn't make it not free.

EDIT: This is a good read about the the BSD and GPL licenses, and their different focuses on freedom.

dlr fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Jul 10, 2015

# ? Jul 10, 2015 00:45

prak: Jan 3, 2006; ---------; Nap Ghost

dlr posted:

And how is the BSD license not free as in freedom? Just because it is more permissive than GPL doesn't make it not free.

I believe the implication is that GPL is not free (as in beer) because it has a (non-monetary) cost that the BSD license does not. Or something along those lines. It is a little surprising you would start a BSD thread and not expect something along those lines.

# ? Jul 10, 2015 00:55

Nam Taf: Jun 25, 2005; I am Fat Man, hear me roar!

ZFS and jails are life and using FreeBSD gives me a stratospheric sort of elitism that alludes those Linux simpletons for the most part.

# ? Jul 10, 2015 01:14

dlr: Jul 9, 2015; I'm fluid.

Nam Taf posted:

ZFS and jails are life and using FreeBSD gives me a stratospheric sort of elitism that alludes those Linux simpletons for the most part.

Yep. Pretty much, man. I can't help but feel just a tad bit superior.

# ? Jul 10, 2015 01:39

lampey: Mar 27, 2012

How is ZFS on bsd vs linux?

# ? Jul 10, 2015 03:26

dlr: Jul 9, 2015; I'm fluid.

lampey posted:

How is ZFS on bsd vs linux?

FreeBSD's ZFS support is second only to Solaris, IIRC. Linux lags behind a bit, it seems.

# ? Jul 10, 2015 05:21

RISCy Business: Jun 17, 2015; bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork; Fun Shoe

Nam Taf posted:

ZFS and jails are life and using FreeBSD gives me a stratospheric sort of elitism that alludes those Linux simpletons for the most part.

i run a hardenedbsd server and two debian servers, how superior am i?

# ? Aug 31, 2015 01:52

PleasantDilemma: Dec 5, 2006; The Last Hope for Peace

I could never figure out the ports system on *BSD. Apt-get keeps me on Linux.

# ? Aug 31, 2015 03:57

Nam Taf: Jun 25, 2005; I am Fat Man, hear me roar!

PlesantDilemma posted:

I could never figure out the ports system on *BSD. Apt-get keeps me on Linux.

Pkg is going to blow your mind

# ? Aug 31, 2015 04:01

RISCy Business: Jun 17, 2015; bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork; Fun Shoe

PlesantDilemma posted:

I could never figure out the ports system on *BSD. Apt-get keeps me on Linux.

it's so easy though

code:

portsnap fetch extract
cd /usr/ports/$group/$port
make install clean

it's even easier if you install ports-mgmt/portmaster; with portmaster you can install multiple ports at once and do all the configuration before you even start building them as opposed to configuring a dependency -> building the dependency -> configuring the next dependency -> building that dependency etc

Nam Taf posted:

Pkg is going to blow your mind

pkg is great but building from ports instead of using precompiled binaries can be advantageous in some scenarios

i don't need every single module that nginx ships with for example (support for webdav, mp4/flv etc) so it's nice to be able to just build in what i need as opposed to literally everything

RISCy Business fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Aug 31, 2015

# ? Aug 31, 2015 04:45

Antillie: Mar 14, 2015

I love the fact that when a fellow computer/networking geek/engineer asks what my home router box is running I get something of a deer in head lights look when I reply, "BSD".

"Oh its not a Linux box?"

"Nope."

"Oh..."

<smug sense of superiority>

# ? Aug 31, 2015 15:15

thebigcow: Jan 3, 2001; Bully!

I love things like pf that aren't on other platforms. I hated reading a changelog to find out why a bunch of ports were broken again.

# ? Aug 31, 2015 16:00

MrMoo: Sep 14, 2000

Theo de Raadt.

Not so much other things.

# ? Aug 31, 2015 23:17

Novo: May 13, 2003; ^{Stercorem pro cerebro habes}; Soiled Meat

I set up a kFreeBSD box at home just so I can use pf.

# ? Aug 31, 2015 23:33

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Novo posted:

I set up a kFreeBSD box at home just so I can use pf.

Just use OpenBSD as our lord Theo intended for best pf experience.

That's what I use on my internet gateway at home for more than 10 years. Hasn't let me down yet (though im scared of upgrading to 5.7 now because of the named thingy as I don't know how to use yet nsd and unbound).

# ? Sep 1, 2015 00:49

Riso: Oct 11, 2008; by merry exmarx

A decent set of documentation that covers everything.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 10:25

akadajet: Sep 14, 2003

I use OS X, op. It's good because it's the world's most advanced desktop operating system and also a BSD I'm told.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 15:55

RISCy Business: Jun 17, 2015; bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork; Fun Shoe

akadajet posted:

I use OS X, op. It's good because it's the world's most advanced desktop operating system and also a BSD I'm told.

xnu is a child of the mach and 4.3bsd kernels, yes

# ? Sep 1, 2015 17:14

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

I love that it has every relevant feature from Illumos because those fuckin nerds weird me out

# ? Sep 1, 2015 23:01

Bob Morales: Aug 18, 2006; ~~Just wear the fucking mask, Bob~~

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

This cute little guy

# ? Sep 3, 2015 19:56

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

I like that BSD saves me 2 of my 140 valuable characters in a tweet compared to Linux, but dislike that specifically qualifying FreeBSD, OpenBSD or NetBSD takes even more

# ? Sep 3, 2015 20:10

sarehu: Apr 20, 2007; (call/cc call/cc)

The moral of the story is, don't use Hungarian notation in the name of your operating system.

# ? Sep 3, 2015 20:16

theperminator: Sep 16, 2009; by Smythe; Fun Shoe

Vulture Culture posted:

I love that it has every relevant feature from Illumos because those fuckin nerds weird me out

Except for FMD, if you're using ZFS with hotspares they won't be automatically used in the event of a fault. Which is kinda poo poo.

# ? Sep 3, 2015 22:13

Kazinsal: Dec 13, 2011; disrespecting dead goons IRL

MrMoo posted:

Theo de Raadt.

Not so much other things.

Theo is my loving idol.

Also I like pf. And using an actual unix platform and not some kinda weird GNU unix-like flipperbaby. I still use the flipperbaby for some of my development projects though, because GCC just seems to run better on a GNU/Linux platform and I can't loving figure out how to build a proper working clang cross-compiler.

# ? Sep 4, 2015 02:40

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

why is he your idol tell me more

# ? Sep 4, 2015 06:30

MrMoo: Sep 14, 2000

Most of his epithets are amusing to some degree, here's one about FreeBSD.

# ? Sep 4, 2015 21:51

Marinmo: Jan 23, 2005; Prisoner #95H522 Augustus Hill

MrMoo posted:

Most of his epithets are amusing to some degree, here's one about FreeBSD.

I mean, he's not wrong, just an rear end in a top hat about it. Also insinuating that because some FreeBSD devs work "close" to NSA somehow makes them associated is of course spreading FUD at best, defaming at worst.

# ? Sep 5, 2015 15:29

Duo: Aug 4, 2002

I've only recently started playing around with a FreeBSD VM, but last night I found this crazy guys blog when I was looking at some Playstation 4 reverse engineering stuff: https://aboutthebsds.wordpress.com/2013/07/11/bsd-encourages-slavery-sonys-orbis-os/

That and the rest of the site is pretty :stare:

he seems quite angry at BSD

# ? Sep 13, 2015 18:41

Xarn: Jun 26, 2015

Duo posted:

I've only recently started playing around with a FreeBSD VM, but last night I found this crazy guys blog when I was looking at some Playstation 4 reverse engineering stuff: https://aboutthebsds.wordpress.com/2013/07/11/bsd-encourages-slavery-sonys-orbis-os/

That and the rest of the site is pretty he seems quite angry at BSD

Oh, THAT guy. Pretty sure those three ~respectable~ people and him are one person, but hey, if you want to be insane, confining yourself to fringe forums and stupid blogposts is much better than flipping out and shooting people.

# ? Sep 13, 2015 19:23

wooger: Apr 16, 2005; YOU RESENT?

piss angel posted:

it's so easy though

code:

portsnap fetch extract
cd /usr/ports/$group/$port
make install clean

You conveniently leave out the interstitial steps:

code:

wait multiple hours if you're compiling something big, or something with big dependencies
get a confusing error message 2 hours in, that breaks the install

It's also an absolute nightmare if you're a new user and haven't learned that using a port for anything means that you can't use binary pkgs, and vice versa - unless you want to risk version dependency errors.

Pkg on FreeBSD suffers from the binary packages only being re-compiled once every 2 weeks or so, which means it's always out of date with the ports tree. It's not clear why they can't just re-compile every time a port is updated.

Debian has it's flaws, but being able to install a whole list of software in a few seconds with one command was a revelation 10 years ago, and pkg on FreeBSD still isn't close.
apt-get has only broken a couple of times in a decade for me.

# ? Dec 8, 2015 17:06

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

piss angel posted:

pkg is great but building from ports instead of using precompiled binaries can be advantageous in some scenarios

i don't need every single module that nginx ships with for example (support for webdav, mp4/flv etc) so it's nice to be able to just build in what i need as opposed to literally everything

A good binary distro offers multiple versions of packages people might commonly want to choose different options. To stick with your example of nginx, Ubuntu (and presumably Debian) offers five different versions of the package with varying sets of features compiled in and/or bundled as loadable modules. I usually use "nginx-light" which pretty much just gives me basic web server functionality plus FastCGI and Rewrite.

To me a good operating system should support building everything from source for the rare situations that you actually have a good reason to, but should not be designed to expect or even encourage that you actually do it for more than a few packages. Most users should never have to think about compiling anything.

wooger posted:

Debian has it's flaws, but being able to install a whole list of software in a few seconds with one command was a revelation 10 years ago, and pkg on FreeBSD still isn't close.
apt-get has only broken a couple of times in a decade for me.

Also "aptitude" is wonderful and I get angry at even other binary-based distros (like CentOS/RHEL) that don't have anything similar. For a dev box or personal bullshit machine where you might need to install a package without necessarily knowing exactly what you want it's a godsend.

# ? Dec 11, 2015 03:56

RISCy Business: Jun 17, 2015; bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork; Fun Shoe

wooger posted:

You conveniently leave out the interstitial steps:
code:
wait multiple hours if you're compiling something big, or something with big dependencies
get a confusing error message 2 hours in, that breaks the install
It's also an absolute nightmare if you're a new user and haven't learned that using a port for anything means that you can't use binary pkgs, and vice versa - unless you want to risk version dependency errors.

Pkg on FreeBSD suffers from the binary packages only being re-compiled once every 2 weeks or so, which means it's always out of date with the ports tree. It's not clear why they can't just re-compile every time a port is updated.

Debian has it's flaws, but being able to install a whole list of software in a few seconds with one command was a revelation 10 years ago, and pkg on FreeBSD still isn't close.
apt-get has only broken a couple of times in a decade for me.

since i don't use freebsd on desktops or anything, i've never had to compile anything overly large like Xorg or firefox/chrome which suits me just fine

as a server OS for basically anything, freebsd is absolutely rock solid; yes, it has a learning curve, but once you master it, it's an extremely powerful OS

# ? Dec 14, 2015 14:08

Cyberpunkey Monkey: Jun 23, 2003; by Nyc_Tattoo

Nam Taf posted:

alludes

Yo u got ludes?

# ? Feb 6, 2016 17:18

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# ? Jan 17, 2026 13:46

feld: Feb 11, 2008; Out of nowhere its.....

Feldman

dlr posted:

FreeBSD's ZFS support is second only to Solaris, IIRC. Linux lags behind a bit, it seems.

Matthew Ahrens has stated that ZFS on FreeBSD is on par with Illumos/Solaris. OSX and Linux are far behind in stability and performance (not to mention loving weird bugs)

Bob Morales posted:

This cute little guy

This is my little guy :3:

wooger posted:

It's also an absolute nightmare if you're a new user and haven't learned that using a port for anything means that you can't use binary pkgs, and vice versa - unless you want to risk version dependency errors.

This problem should hopefully be gone sometime this year. You should be able to install ports and packages and pkg will know when you've done this. When you "pkg upgrade" it will update all binary packages and automatically build any ports for you.

wooger posted:

Pkg on FreeBSD suffers from the binary packages only being re-compiled once every 2 weeks or so, which means it's always out of date with the ports tree. It's not clear why they can't just re-compile every time a port is updated.

This is not true for quite a while. It's roughly every 48 hours, and should be faster if use the Quarterly branch (default on 10.0+). You can see the builds here:

http://beefy1.nyi.freebsd.org
http://beefy2.nyi.freebsd.org
http://beefy3.nyi.freebsd.org
http://beefy4.nyi.freebsd.org
http://beefy5.nyi.freebsd.org
http://beefy6.nyi.freebsd.org
http://beefy7.nyi.freebsd.org
http://beefy8.nyi.freebsd.org

feld fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Feb 20, 2016

# ? Feb 20, 2016 22:22

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