This ancient text is tiring, it is almost word for word what has been posted over the past 20 years. You did not even bother to update the numbers or change the wording.
I've been interested to try out (Net|Open|Free)BSD for a while. I mostly code and compile C code. What should one expect when going from Linux to either of these BSD systems?
Poor driver support, poor performance, lots of manual editing of config files to accomplish routine tasks, but BSD is "more cohesive" according to most of its proponents.
Matches exactly my annual experience of trying OpenBSD. It is not misinformation.
The FreeBSD handbook, for example, directs the user to manually edit wpa_supplicant.conf. If you want to switch from a static IP to a DHCP lease you need to run some commands as root and restart the daemon manually.
If you want something with GUI out of the box, consider GhostBSD. IMHO OpenBSD also has an advantage when being used as a laptop or desktop because its developers seem more inclined to daily drive it than free/net.
It's true that drivers might require a bit of fiddling, but if your hardware has been around for a while you'll probably manage.
I'm quite fond of OpenBSD. It's such a nice, wholesome Unix experience. The man-files are great, typically you can get by on those if you mess up and lose Internet connection. To me it has a feeling of being rock solid, like it'll never break. Common programs differ a bit, pkg_add rather than apt/RPM/pacman/&c., you'll probably use pf rather than ufw or iptables, vmm/vmd rather than Docker/jails, flags on some everyday terminal tooling work differently.
Some software just isn't available due to it being considered insecure by the OpenBSD community or its 'dictator for life'. As a C developer you might run into such constraints.
Try one in a VM first. Get used to the different pkg management in whichever BSD you use vs. the linux distro you're used to using. NetBSD uses pkgsrc, which is pretty straightforward to use.
No systemD.
If you're using it as a desktop, it will take a little more time to config things to fit what you need. More command line editing of config files, than say Linux Mint or similar linux distros.
FreeBSD has the biggest community so it's easier to get help online.
That being said, NetBSD is worth checking out, especially for your use case.
If you decide to try it out on hardware, check out https://bsd-hardware.info/ and see if your machine is supported.
Also check out UnitedBSD.com It's a forum and there are many NetBSD users there.
I am really quite heavily involved in the tech sector, across a lot of domains. I don’t know a soul who runs a BSD variant. How can I expose myself to this arena beyond making a BSD box… which seems like a waste of time at the moment.
So you would only "expose yourself", specially a quite low friction action of trying a new piece of software, if you know someone who already "wasted their time" on it? Do you use the same criteria with every piece of software? What's your point?
Arguably, macOS is a BSD variant. Much of the userspace UNIX utilities and a lot of the networking stack were forked from FreeBSD. Although it's not the nicest showing, because Apple doesn't pull updates very frequently; a two decade old TCP stack has a lot of issues, Apple added MPTCP and nice PMTUD, but doesn't have SYN cookies, so I wouldn't run a public server with it.
Maybe you can find a BSD shell account somewhere? But otherwise, yeah, you need to run a BSD to experience it. How woulr you experience Linux without a Linux machine? There's live cds and virtual machine images and what nots for BSDs too.
I can't say if its worth your time or not. Not a lot of companies run production on FreeBSD anymore, unfortunately. Yahoo was midway through switching when I left, WhatsApp was almost done when I left. I'm happier running FreeBSD on my personal equipment than I was with Debian, but that makes it worthwhile for me, not you. Switching OSes is a long process and living in multiple OSes at the same time isn't easy. I use Linux for work, so I have to go back and forth between ifconfig on my home boxes and production Linux, but ip addr on my dev box. And sometimes netstat and sometimes ss, etc. It'd be nicer if everything was consistent and didn't change for what seems like the sake of change, but it is what it is.
macOS is a fair candidate. Second hand Mac can be cheap, esp Intel-based. Hackintosh / VM is also a candidate.
OPNsense, PFsense, TrueNAS, Sony Playstation, Nintendo Switch, Juniper, Ruckus/Brocade, ...
Give OPNsense (in a VM) a whirl as replacement for OpenWrt. I like it a lot.
> I use Linux for work, so I have to go back and forth between ifconfig on my home boxes and production Linux, but ip addr on my dev box. And sometimes netstat and sometimes ss, etc. It'd be nicer if everything was consistent and didn't change for what seems like the sake of change, but it is what it is.
macOS/Linux users might like this wrapper [1]. I don't know one for ss/netstat though.
Saying the Nintendo Switch is BSD based is a bit of a stretch, Horizon (the Nintendo Switch operating system) runs a proprietary, fully custom microkernel and has some utilities from both FreeBSD and Android.
> Despite popular misconceptions to the contrary, Horizon is not largely derived from FreeBSD code, nor from Android, although the software licence[14] and reverse engineering efforts[15][16] have revealed that Nintendo does use some code from both in some system services and drivers. For example, the networking stack in the Switch OS is derived at least in part from FreeBSD code.[15] Nintendo's use of FreeBSD networking code is legal as it is made available under the permissive BSD licence, and not even particularly unusual – for instance, the Microsoft Windows XP TCP/IP stack was originally derived from BSD code in a similar fashion.
Try something that’s unique to one BSD or another. For example, NetBSD supports Lua for kernel scripting[1] and Veriexec[2] for checking the integrity of executables.
Slight snag -- I had a few days off and I may have caught COVID again, and am feeling rather unwell. Poorly timed as I am far from home and any of my testing kit.
I hope that my editor will still be happy to take and run such a story in a week or so's time.
Hooray! I've been running successive release candidates in a VM for a couple of weeks now, just upgraded to 10.0-RC6 this week. Guess I'll do another upgrade soon.
The Amiga port got significant improvements, including many not listed in the release notes.
Xorg works much better now, first boot is significantly faster, and tools used for writing the installer image into disk can safely work with partitions extending above 4GB or over 4GB size.
Good to know, will install the latest release.
I mainly use lubuntu because of better browser support and driver support (I'm cheap and buy cheap laptops which have unsupported hardware).
This could be overcome if I got off my ass and started to code in ANSI C89.
Still need to finish my OpenStep ICHX IDE Driver.
Congrats to the team :)
If you ever find yourself interested in living in a NetBSD system, check out the SDF: sdf.org
the SuperDimensionalFortress has been around since the 80s and is now one of the largest installations of NetBSD in the US/world. Membership gets you such perks as: email address, a private (invite-only) Mastodon instance, a hosted Matrix instance, and more.
While you aren't an administrator on the SDF instance, you can definitely get a sense of what it's like. Different membership tiers get you access to different tools: Free users don't get IRC outbound, MetaARPA members are granted access to the big disk store and hosted websites and even development tools.
65 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 118 ms ] threadIt represents cumulative improvements to the operating system since NetBSD 9.x was originally branched in 2019.
AsahiBSD soon?
> As of April 2022 it is best to use the Asahi installer.
https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/evbarm/apple/
Apple didn't even try to follow the arm server/workstation boot specifications.
You have the honor of getting my 2nd down vote.
The FreeBSD handbook, for example, directs the user to manually edit wpa_supplicant.conf. If you want to switch from a static IP to a DHCP lease you need to run some commands as root and restart the daemon manually.
The package management is different from apt/rpm but there are plenty of distros with pkgsrc type systems.
Most FOSS software is available and provided, for some Linux only stuff there is linux emulation.
Less support for drivers and new features.
Really IMO it comes down to kernel features and development, and given Linux kernel security attitudes *BSD can be pretty tempting sometimes.
I'm quite fond of OpenBSD. It's such a nice, wholesome Unix experience. The man-files are great, typically you can get by on those if you mess up and lose Internet connection. To me it has a feeling of being rock solid, like it'll never break. Common programs differ a bit, pkg_add rather than apt/RPM/pacman/&c., you'll probably use pf rather than ufw or iptables, vmm/vmd rather than Docker/jails, flags on some everyday terminal tooling work differently.
Some software just isn't available due to it being considered insecure by the OpenBSD community or its 'dictator for life'. As a C developer you might run into such constraints.
BSD now has less room in the server use cases, where it should shine, without being able to use Docker at all.
No systemD.
If you're using it as a desktop, it will take a little more time to config things to fit what you need. More command line editing of config files, than say Linux Mint or similar linux distros.
FreeBSD has the biggest community so it's easier to get help online.
That being said, NetBSD is worth checking out, especially for your use case.
If you decide to try it out on hardware, check out https://bsd-hardware.info/ and see if your machine is supported.
Also check out UnitedBSD.com It's a forum and there are many NetBSD users there.
For OpenBSD, build a router+firewall for your home.
For FreeBSD jails networking here is a post for a two server infra https://blog.uirig.com/freebsd-jails-network-setup
Maybe you can find a BSD shell account somewhere? But otherwise, yeah, you need to run a BSD to experience it. How woulr you experience Linux without a Linux machine? There's live cds and virtual machine images and what nots for BSDs too.
I can't say if its worth your time or not. Not a lot of companies run production on FreeBSD anymore, unfortunately. Yahoo was midway through switching when I left, WhatsApp was almost done when I left. I'm happier running FreeBSD on my personal equipment than I was with Debian, but that makes it worthwhile for me, not you. Switching OSes is a long process and living in multiple OSes at the same time isn't easy. I use Linux for work, so I have to go back and forth between ifconfig on my home boxes and production Linux, but ip addr on my dev box. And sometimes netstat and sometimes ss, etc. It'd be nicer if everything was consistent and didn't change for what seems like the sake of change, but it is what it is.
OPNsense, PFsense, TrueNAS, Sony Playstation, Nintendo Switch, Juniper, Ruckus/Brocade, ...
Give OPNsense (in a VM) a whirl as replacement for OpenWrt. I like it a lot.
> I use Linux for work, so I have to go back and forth between ifconfig on my home boxes and production Linux, but ip addr on my dev box. And sometimes netstat and sometimes ss, etc. It'd be nicer if everything was consistent and didn't change for what seems like the sake of change, but it is what it is.
macOS/Linux users might like this wrapper [1]. I don't know one for ss/netstat though.
[1] https://github.com/brona/iproute2mac
> Despite popular misconceptions to the contrary, Horizon is not largely derived from FreeBSD code, nor from Android, although the software licence[14] and reverse engineering efforts[15][16] have revealed that Nintendo does use some code from both in some system services and drivers. For example, the networking stack in the Switch OS is derived at least in part from FreeBSD code.[15] Nintendo's use of FreeBSD networking code is legal as it is made available under the permissive BSD licence, and not even particularly unusual – for instance, the Microsoft Windows XP TCP/IP stack was originally derived from BSD code in a similar fashion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Switch_system_softwar...
Unfortunately TrueNAS will move to Linux. At least TrueNAS Scale, based on Linux which going forward will be what they are focusing on.
The land of FreeBSD or BSDs are rapidly shrinking.
[1] https://man.netbsd.org/luactl.8
[2] http://netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-veriexec.html
Really? Wow. I know quite a few. Perhaps your experience isn't as broad as you think.
> How can I expose myself to this arena beyond making a BSD box…
You can't. Make a BSD box.
> which seems like a waste of time at the moment.
That is an exceptionally foolish comment, which others have pointed out, and you deserve it, I'm afraid.
Me too!
Slight snag -- I had a few days off and I may have caught COVID again, and am feeling rather unwell. Poorly timed as I am far from home and any of my testing kit.
I hope that my editor will still be happy to take and run such a story in a week or so's time.
I've been running a few versions of the RCs for NetBSD 10 on a Pine RockPro64. A few reasons NetBSD 10 is a good choice for this Aarch64 device:
- Handles ARM's big.LITTLE well. You can use /usr/sbin/schedctl -A 4,5 to pin a process to the fast cores.
- Generally rock solid -- I've had uptimes in months and generally only rebooted when I upgraded. Like today!
- Can boot from an eMMC instead of an SD card.
- Supports the PCIe card. I have an SSD adapter. You can even use ZFS.
- HDMI support.
Xorg works much better now, first boot is significantly faster, and tools used for writing the installer image into disk can safely work with partitions extending above 4GB or over 4GB size.
Long live NetBSD.
My system uptime is counted in years.
the SuperDimensionalFortress has been around since the 80s and is now one of the largest installations of NetBSD in the US/world. Membership gets you such perks as: email address, a private (invite-only) Mastodon instance, a hosted Matrix instance, and more.
While you aren't an administrator on the SDF instance, you can definitely get a sense of what it's like. Different membership tiers get you access to different tools: Free users don't get IRC outbound, MetaARPA members are granted access to the big disk store and hosted websites and even development tools.
From what I understand even that version if xz will not cause issues on the *BSD because it needs a patched sshd linked to a systemd library.