Why I love FreeBSD
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Why I love FreeBSD
A personal reflection on my first encounter with FreeBSD in 2002, how it shaped the way I design and run systems, and why its philosophy, stability, and community still matter to me more than twenty years later.
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Why I love FreeBSD
A personal reflection on my first encounter with FreeBSD in 2002, how it shaped the way I design and run systems, and why its philosophy, stability, and community still matter to me more than twenty years later.
For me, FreeBSD is like vinyl.
Under <https://bsd.network/@rubenerd/116226243100921299> @rubenerd I wrote:
"there's no universally-accepted single explanation for the enduring popularity"
It's OK to like it, or love it, and no-one can authoritatively tell you that you're wrong to do so.
I mean, they can tell you that you're wrong, but ultimately: it's about what pleases the listener.
I mean, what pleases the user.
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undefined stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe shared this topic
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Why I love FreeBSD
A personal reflection on my first encounter with FreeBSD in 2002, how it shaped the way I design and run systems, and why its philosophy, stability, and community still matter to me more than twenty years later.
@stefano What a beautiful and well-written love letter. Well said.
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@stefano What a beautiful and well-written love letter. Well said.
@arcadellama thank you!
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Why I love FreeBSD
A personal reflection on my first encounter with FreeBSD in 2002, how it shaped the way I design and run systems, and why its philosophy, stability, and community still matter to me more than twenty years later.
@stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe This is an amazing article and reveals things about the OS that make me excited to finally give it a try. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts on it.
I've been looking for an operating system with some of the exact things you mentioned, especially the filesystem management and hypervisor. Linux also has some performance or fan issues even now, for me. It seems like this is the way to go for something designed for software development. -
@stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe This is an amazing article and reveals things about the OS that make me excited to finally give it a try. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts on it.
I've been looking for an operating system with some of the exact things you mentioned, especially the filesystem management and hypervisor. Linux also has some performance or fan issues even now, for me. It seems like this is the way to go for something designed for software development.@nethack thank you!
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@nethack thank you!
@stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe you are encouraged to continue expanding on your thoughts. it'd be cool if you shared more tips or interesting facts about the OS as well. im ready for anything, but id like to know more from a veteran perspective such as yours.
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@stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe you are encouraged to continue expanding on your thoughts. it'd be cool if you shared more tips or interesting facts about the OS as well. im ready for anything, but id like to know more from a veteran perspective such as yours.
@nethack if you click the "freebsd" tag, you'll find many blog posts about how to do things with FreeBSD (and benchmarks, etc.)
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@stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe you are encouraged to continue expanding on your thoughts. it'd be cool if you shared more tips or interesting facts about the OS as well. im ready for anything, but id like to know more from a veteran perspective such as yours.
This post is deleted! -
@stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe you are encouraged to continue expanding on your thoughts. it'd be cool if you shared more tips or interesting facts about the OS as well. im ready for anything, but id like to know more from a veteran perspective such as yours.
This post is deleted! -
@nethack if you click the "freebsd" tag, you'll find many blog posts about how to do things with FreeBSD (and benchmarks, etc.)
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Why I love FreeBSD
A personal reflection on my first encounter with FreeBSD in 2002, how it shaped the way I design and run systems, and why its philosophy, stability, and community still matter to me more than twenty years later.
@stefano I run Linux but it is because I have since the mid 1990s. I know darn well there is a much quicker way to say what makes FreeBSD attractive compared to a GNU/Linux.
It is nothing to do with GNU, in my opinion, except as a matter of taste. Some prefer more Unix-like tools, I prefer the more full-featured GNU tools.
But kernels...
Linux is an absolutely HORRIBLE kernel. It is simply atrocious. And the closely kernel-related infrastructure is even worse and getting worse.
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@stefano I run Linux but it is because I have since the mid 1990s. I know darn well there is a much quicker way to say what makes FreeBSD attractive compared to a GNU/Linux.
It is nothing to do with GNU, in my opinion, except as a matter of taste. Some prefer more Unix-like tools, I prefer the more full-featured GNU tools.
But kernels...
Linux is an absolutely HORRIBLE kernel. It is simply atrocious. And the closely kernel-related infrastructure is even worse and getting worse.
@stefano I ran Slackware at first. It was in those days basically a BSD design with the primitive Linux kernel, still using handmade /dev directories, etc. So that was okay.
Then I ran Gentoo for 20 years. That still resisted a lot of the Linux impulses such as systemd.
Now I am running NixOS. I am perhaps the only person in the world to successfully get a /usr/local working on NixOS. It is LITERALLY THAT BAD. NixOS actually TRIES to make it impossible to set up a /usr/local.
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@stefano I ran Slackware at first. It was in those days basically a BSD design with the primitive Linux kernel, still using handmade /dev directories, etc. So that was okay.
Then I ran Gentoo for 20 years. That still resisted a lot of the Linux impulses such as systemd.
Now I am running NixOS. I am perhaps the only person in the world to successfully get a /usr/local working on NixOS. It is LITERALLY THAT BAD. NixOS actually TRIES to make it impossible to set up a /usr/local.
@stefano There is actually at least one person on the NixOS steering committee who claims NixOS is not a Unix-like operating system, and that their job is not to provide me with a Unix-like platform but with a user experience.
(But it turns out you can get a /usr/local working on NixOS by having the init scripts recreate the core of the /usr/local for you based on the latest NixOS generation. The latest libc and such.)
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@stefano There is actually at least one person on the NixOS steering committee who claims NixOS is not a Unix-like operating system, and that their job is not to provide me with a Unix-like platform but with a user experience.
(But it turns out you can get a /usr/local working on NixOS by having the init scripts recreate the core of the /usr/local for you based on the latest NixOS generation. The latest libc and such.)
@stefano As an aside: Outside the copyleft world, I do like to avoid LLVM and Clang. They aren’t on my system. The former is shapeshifting bloatware that destroyed the Pure language by changing underneath it. Anything closely associated with Apple and Google is going to be something you cannot rely on, in my opinion. Clang is lacking much of standard C, has no Ada or Fortran, etc.
I don’t trust CUPS to keep working, either. It will more and more be a ‘Mac-compatible-printers spooler’.
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@stefano As an aside: Outside the copyleft world, I do like to avoid LLVM and Clang. They aren’t on my system. The former is shapeshifting bloatware that destroyed the Pure language by changing underneath it. Anything closely associated with Apple and Google is going to be something you cannot rely on, in my opinion. Clang is lacking much of standard C, has no Ada or Fortran, etc.
I don’t trust CUPS to keep working, either. It will more and more be a ‘Mac-compatible-printers spooler’.
@stefano Here is something new for you to be upset about, though, which affects everyone, Linux, BSD, illumos alike. I have been upset about it for over 20 years.
Read ‘man 5 fonts-conf’ or whatever your equivalent is. Read it carefully under ‘FONT MATCHING’. What it says is that a font is not chosen as you wished, but instead RANDOMLY. You are only LUCKY if you get the font you wished.
And if you experiment long enough you will find this is true.
Fontconfig is unfixable and must be scrapped.
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@stefano Here is something new for you to be upset about, though, which affects everyone, Linux, BSD, illumos alike. I have been upset about it for over 20 years.
Read ‘man 5 fonts-conf’ or whatever your equivalent is. Read it carefully under ‘FONT MATCHING’. What it says is that a font is not chosen as you wished, but instead RANDOMLY. You are only LUCKY if you get the font you wished.
And if you experiment long enough you will find this is true.
Fontconfig is unfixable and must be scrapped.
@stefano Don’t bother filing a bug report. They will act stupid. Probably they are stupid about it. They think it is a bug. Actually the author probably wrote a program he knew was not a solution to the problem but which he could do on deadline and which was good enough for his job at HP.
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Why I love FreeBSD
A personal reflection on my first encounter with FreeBSD in 2002, how it shaped the way I design and run systems, and why its philosophy, stability, and community still matter to me more than twenty years later.
I enjoyed and appreciated reading this post.
"I realized almost immediately that GNU/Linux and FreeBSD were so similar they were completely different."
This right here.
My initial impression with #FreeBSD in 2006 was quite similar. Of course, #Linux back then was a much different beast than what it has evolved (mutated?) into today.
Had I not pursued Linux system administration as a career, I *probably* would have stuck with FreeBSD.
We can make all the technical comparisons between the two OSes all day long but what drove my interest and enthusiasm are (1) the documentation and (2) the community.
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I enjoyed and appreciated reading this post.
"I realized almost immediately that GNU/Linux and FreeBSD were so similar they were completely different."
This right here.
My initial impression with #FreeBSD in 2006 was quite similar. Of course, #Linux back then was a much different beast than what it has evolved (mutated?) into today.
Had I not pursued Linux system administration as a career, I *probably* would have stuck with FreeBSD.
We can make all the technical comparisons between the two OSes all day long but what drove my interest and enthusiasm are (1) the documentation and (2) the community.
@peteorrall thanks. I like to thing about FreeBSD and Linux something similar to: "England and America are two countries separated by a common language"
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L'eclissi di lunerd si vede solo con una 5090
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@GustavinoBevilacqua
Na che peccato.
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@futurebird
Elevator pitch: Silent Hill, but it’s Staten Island
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@tess nah, just set the post language correctly 8-)
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@futurebird oh, oops. i must be running 17 instances if atari800 again.
$ killall atari800
$tell me if it's better now
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@tess as long as your posts are tagged with the correct language it's quite easy to translate on mastodon!
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@oblomov
Ma no, io spesso ne vedo molti di più in timeline. A volte più di mille da leggere.
@las_lallero
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Was teaching the kiddos about Mario Party 64 last night, explaining that, back then, we were afforded way fewer polygons at once.
