Anyone here use BSD?

There isn't really anything for BSD so...

But anyways, I'm going to have a few straight BSD systems soon and I don't know what to expect. I understand its ports system is basically macports, but what am I to expect that is super different from a linux environment?

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I'm starting to use BSD as well (TrueOS to be exact) and I've had some issues so far with the amdgpu driver. I have used FreeBSD before and it really doesnt seem too different from Linux whatsoever. I really like the combination of pkg and ports

Regarding BSD:

Linux already does just about everything that BSD does...
So why run BSD?

Security.

So why run anything other than the most secure BSD: OpenBSD?

I'll give a pass for FreeNAS or pfSense users who are running FreeBSD without knowing it. They have a specific use case and until something OpenBSD based that is better comes along, and FreeBSD isn't grossly insecure, they can have it.

What cpu are you going to be running BSD on. ( PowerPC x86-64 etc ). I have run it on some x86-64 make CPUs and it worked flawlessly. I only have AMD cards, so GPU wise I was screwed over a bit as I was running FreeBSD. Nvidia is the way to go with FreeBSD. If you are looking to run something else then AMD is the preferred routed. Also BSD does not do well with newer cpu designs. You can see what I mean by that on the forums and Reddit. Hardware support for new products do not work initially in BSD world as it may probably would in Linux. Overall there is a lack of hardware support but do not think that you are getting ripped off as it still supports a great deal of hardware.

Also one thing that I noticed was that there is a big tuning community in the BSD world, which is something that I only found in the Gentoo community.

In the last couple of months it seems as if the Linux community has really ballooned ( on L1t ), hopefully the same can be said with BSD.

I have a PFsense box, and two Raspberry Pi's with FreeBSD 12 one is for software defined radio and the other is a general purpose ssh box.

BSD is really awesome in many ways from a security perspective. It has a jailing system that is a more secured and workable tool than docker, but not as dynamic nor as entry level friendly.

I've had a few BSD machines over the years, and it is a solid OS.

Doesn't Posix compliance basically make sure all unix's have the same horrendous commands?

BSD has a rich history going back to the late 70's

bash,zsh,and others all impliment their own built ins, not specified by posix

Further there are minor implimenation details which break some scripts.

finally, the executables that are called are managed in different ways based on versions of OS, and those versions can have very different functionalities based on what you're running.

BSD is most unix like, but fedora/centos/etc are linux based, and follow different frameworks on how the system should function and what userland/et all land is.

TL;DR linux != unix and the commands aren't horrendous.

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well mac is basically rip off/fork of a bsd lol

but imagine using linux like 10 years ago, thats about like using bsd, cept with in some ways better security/different design philosophies differences you can see in bsd versus gnu/gpl licensing, with more limited community/developer support so drivers etc much more just on your own/fucked.

but from use standpoint is pretty similar to a more manual distribution in that.. less ui stuff during install etc but does have install scripts(least from my experience of using open and freebsd) uses different filesystems usually alot of the base command line utilities are ripped off/carried over from bsd/unix like ls cd cat passwd etc..

Historically DTrace/ZFS/Jails were all great reasons to choose FreeBSD over Linux. These capabilities are now all availble to Linux users in one form or another, but my thoughts are generally that Linux can be a great Server or Desktop OS. Where as FreeBSD is more at home on servers like other Unixes, e.g. Solaris.

I ran PC-BSD last year for 3-4 months as my main desktop OS. There were some annoying quirks that irritated me;

1) There was a bug that completely uninstalled KDE after an upgrade. Not the end of the world but a WTF moment!
2) Software versions often lag what is available on Linux/Windows and some features are missing, e.g. no extension pack for Virtual Box was availble. Frustrating when I'd been expecting to use my Windows 8 VM in exactly the same way.
3) Not many alternative Hyper-Visors to run VM's on, but then you use BSD for Jails not VM's...
4) A lot more hassle and choice limititation for gaming than Linux, it does support WINE, but...
5) Hardware compatibility not as good as Linux and fewer chioces of drivers available than on Linux
6) Support to run Linux commands was limited to 32 bit only (TrueOS now has 64bit support as well)

I like the FreeBSD and the way it is licenced can make more sense at times than GPL licenced code, but yes, I'll stick to my opinion than for an Open Source home desktop OS, GNU/Linux is the better chioce.

It depends highly on what your use case is. This is one of the two main issues I have with BSD:

The second is lack of hardware support, compared to Linux.

And that's only because Linux is more popular than BSD, for better or worse.

@NetBandit is very right about OpenBSD. That is the only BSD I use, and I use it often. Not only because it is secure, but also because the setup/configuration (once I got comfortable with installation and the package manager) with the default binary repository makes it very easy for me to quickly deploy a secure and working system, and because most of my deployments do not require a GUI. But, again:

And there is lack of hardware support. Either purchase hardware you know your BSD distribution will support, or run it in a VM, or accept you may not have 100% hardware function unless you are a skilled driver coder.

There is another one issue, I found to be more specific to OpenBSD - most of my OpenBSD installations are single purpose non-GUI only: git server, firewall, trac, NAS, C/C++ unit-test platform, etc. Simple, secure, and stable stuff. But why single purpose? Over time (since around 2008) I have found some conflicts with some packages and configurations, which prompted me to only use OpenBSD for single purpose installations. That is what developers test most, and it is common problem with software also with browser plugins, IDE-plugins, etc. OpenBSD can be a general purpose desktop system, but I'd take Linux over it any time for a general purpose system.

I have also used PC-BSD desktop, and FreeBSD desktop, and I can chime in with the mentioned issues. I have not attempted to use either of them for the past 4 years. They are potentially better general purpose OS:es.

If you are looking for desktop, consider TrueOS (which is the PC-BSD, it has been rebranded), and also check out TrueOS Pico if you are looking into having ARM-based thin clients (with a central desktop server). I have not tried this out, but TrueOS seems to show some serious promise in having one or two actual powerful PC:s and then interfacing to them from other parts of the house/large apartment/workplace.

bsdnow.tv/tutorials


https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13223351
https://www.openbsd.org/faq/

This ought to get you going. TrueOS is in a bit of flux right now. They've ported OpenRC to spackle on top of FreeBSD's init. Mileage varies.
This gentleman is very well respected in the BSD community and his books are easy to read and affordable.
https://www.tiltedwindmillpress.com/

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Sigh.. This again.

Mac is a BSD ripoff if you consider WINE a windows ripoff.

MAC took core BSD code and forked the userland code to become what is known as Mac OSX, but there is not much of a resemblance between functionality, or system design anymore. It's just become a bastardization of BSD really.

to quote the myths section of freebsd:

This is as much a myth about OS X as about FreeBSD: that OS X is just FreeBSD with a pretty GUI. The two operating systems do share a lot of code, for example most userland utilities and the C library on OS X are derived from FreeBSD versions. Some of this code flow works in the other direction, for example FreeBSD 9.1 and later include a C++ stack and compiler that were originally developed for OS X, with major parts of the work done by Apple employees. Other parts are very different.

The XNU kernel used on OS X includes a few subsystems from (older versions of) FreeBSD, but is mostly an independent implementation. The similarities in the userland, however, make it much easier to port OS X code to FreeBSD than any other system. For example, both libdispatch (Grand Central Dispatch in Apple's marketing) and libc++ were written for OS X and worked on FreeBSD before any other OS.

yeah but it still started out as basically a rip off of it, like say android or chrome os or whatever it was called like 4 years ago or whatever

they took linux, and added super bloated ui/bunch of walled garden bs trying to limit you from ever using native software or having access to the system or having anything resembling reasonable perfromance

and over time kept developing and distance themselves from the initial

i'd feel the same if someone took say some windows 7 pirate edition and ripped out explorer and baked in cygwin and custom ui stuff etc.

is more a jab then actually saying they literally ripped it off, but at some point when people consider debian to be linux eventhough, its a gnu operating system that has multiple other versions running with other kernels like freebsd, i mean could devolve into most distros/programs that are made that arent affiliated with torvalds in any way