It seems FreeBSD is becoming more talked about in enthusiast communities simply because Linux is a lot more mainstream now and there’s a joy in contrarianism rather than any real changes with either of the two operating systems.
My interest has been piqued of late. I've been a Linux enthusiast since the late 90's. I don't think it's a sense of contrarianism that motivates my interest anew.
As I've aged, what I've come to value most in software stacks is composability. I do not know if [Free]BSD restores that, but Linux feels like it has grown more complicated and less composable. I'm using this term loosely, but I'm mostly thinking of how one reasons and cognates about the way the system work in this instance. I want to work in a world where each tool on the OS's bench has a single straightforward man page, not swiss army knives where the authors/maintainers just kept throwing more "it can do this too" in to attract community.
I can’t speak for whole communities but my interest in FreeBSD has been renewed over the past couple of years. It has been a very solid OS for a long time and the tight integration between the kernel and core userland has meant that it is sometimes more performant than some popular Linux distros. But its UX has not always been amazing. Seems like lately they have really improved that. Plus ZFS and root on ZFS in particular is very nice.
I would actually be interested in running it in some production environments but it seems like that is pitted against the common deploy scenarios that involve Docker and while there is work on bringing runc to FreeBSD it is alpha stage at best currently.
Still, if you just want an ssh server, a file server, a mail server, it is a great OS with sane defaults and a predictable upgrade schedule.
Dismissing the FreeBSD community as contrarians feels uncharitable. I can think of at least a few other contributing factors for the increase in popularity of late:
1) Linux's popularity has enlarged the pool of users interested in Unix-like operating systems. Some proportion of users familiar with Unix genuinely like FreeBSD and the unique features it offers.
2) The rise of docker and the implosion of VMWare has driven an increase of interest in FreeBSD Jails and the Bhyve hypervisor.
3) Running a homelab is a popular hobby. ZFS is popular for RAID, and pf is popular for networking.
For me it's all the changes in Linux. Every time I upgrade they change stuff that worked fine for me. Another issue is many distros pushing their "invented here" stuff like canonical and redhat. And the huge amount of corporate influence over Linux.
FreeBSD is largely free of those. And it leaves all the agency to the operator, rather than the distro forcing stuff down (except arch, but I don't like the community there)
Disagree. Linux has been gradually changing with the push towards systemd, snap, flatpak etc.. Today's FreeBSD resembles the Linux of 10 or 20 years ago a lot more than today's Linux does.
> Today's FreeBSD resembles the Linux of 10 or 20 years ago a lot more than today's Linux does.
I'm not sure that that's the win that you think it is. Linux 10 to 20 years ago was pretty terrible, at least on desktops.
Everyone hates on systemd, but honestly I really think that the complaints are extremely overblown. I've been using systemd based distros since around ~2012, and while I've had many issues with Linux in that time, I can't really say that any of them were caused by systemd. systemd is easy to use, journalctl is nice for looking at logs, and honestly most of the complaints I see about it boil down to "well what if...", what-if's that simply hasn't happened yet.
FreeBSD is cool, but when I run it I do sometimes kind of miss systemd, simply because systemd is easy. I know there was some interest in launchd in the FreeBSD world but I don't know how far that actually got or if it got any traction, but I really wish it would.
FreeBSD users definitely seem to have taken over the mantle of OS evangelicals from Linux users.
I tried using FreeBSD for two different projects (NAS and router) and it turned out to be unsuitable for both, for each one switching to Linux solved the problem. Despite having solved my problems, the FreeBSD faithful seemed to think that using FreeBSD in itself was supposed to be the goal, not to solve the task at hand.
FreeBSD is also extremely conservative by comparison to Linux. It's not just systemd; things change less in general, and it's closer to old school Unix. Some people like it for nostalgia reasons, some just got tired of having rug constantly being pulled from under them (seems to be a common thing when people get older).
There was always some truth to that, and there are worse reasons to find joy in actual competition. How do you discover the truth about differences in quality without fuel for curiosity?
Well said! I used to administer both FreeBSD and Linux (Debian) servers at the same time. I found them different, but couldn't say either was better or worse.
That's fine. The thing is: I am different with Linux too. So I don't quite understand that FreeBSD focus.
From the BSDs, I think only OpenBSD has a really unique selling point with its focus on security. People ask "why pick FreeBSD rather than Linux" and most will not find compelling arguments in favour of FreeBSD there.
travisgriggs|3 months ago
As I've aged, what I've come to value most in software stacks is composability. I do not know if [Free]BSD restores that, but Linux feels like it has grown more complicated and less composable. I'm using this term loosely, but I'm mostly thinking of how one reasons and cognates about the way the system work in this instance. I want to work in a world where each tool on the OS's bench has a single straightforward man page, not swiss army knives where the authors/maintainers just kept throwing more "it can do this too" in to attract community.
IgorPartola|3 months ago
I would actually be interested in running it in some production environments but it seems like that is pitted against the common deploy scenarios that involve Docker and while there is work on bringing runc to FreeBSD it is alpha stage at best currently.
Still, if you just want an ssh server, a file server, a mail server, it is a great OS with sane defaults and a predictable upgrade schedule.
arthurfirst|3 months ago
Jails and BHYVE vms are excellent -- but I use Docker every day and if I could use BSD as my docker host I would.
Good thing my docker servers are all built with terraform so I do not have to touch.
ginkoleaf|3 months ago
1) Linux's popularity has enlarged the pool of users interested in Unix-like operating systems. Some proportion of users familiar with Unix genuinely like FreeBSD and the unique features it offers.
2) The rise of docker and the implosion of VMWare has driven an increase of interest in FreeBSD Jails and the Bhyve hypervisor.
3) Running a homelab is a popular hobby. ZFS is popular for RAID, and pf is popular for networking.
4) Podman being brought to FreeBSD: (https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/oci-containers-on-freebsd...).
5) Dell, AMD, Framework, and the FreeBSD foundation committing $750,000 to making FreeBSD easier to use last year: (https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/why-laptop-support-why-no...).
6) Apple announcing that they're bringing the Swift language to FreeBSD this year.
wkat4242|3 months ago
FreeBSD is largely free of those. And it leaves all the agency to the operator, rather than the distro forcing stuff down (except arch, but I don't like the community there)
lmm|3 months ago
tombert|3 months ago
I'm not sure that that's the win that you think it is. Linux 10 to 20 years ago was pretty terrible, at least on desktops.
Everyone hates on systemd, but honestly I really think that the complaints are extremely overblown. I've been using systemd based distros since around ~2012, and while I've had many issues with Linux in that time, I can't really say that any of them were caused by systemd. systemd is easy to use, journalctl is nice for looking at logs, and honestly most of the complaints I see about it boil down to "well what if...", what-if's that simply hasn't happened yet.
FreeBSD is cool, but when I run it I do sometimes kind of miss systemd, simply because systemd is easy. I know there was some interest in launchd in the FreeBSD world but I don't know how far that actually got or if it got any traction, but I really wish it would.
groundzeros2015|3 months ago
irusensei|3 months ago
kalleboo|3 months ago
I tried using FreeBSD for two different projects (NAS and router) and it turned out to be unsuitable for both, for each one switching to Linux solved the problem. Despite having solved my problems, the FreeBSD faithful seemed to think that using FreeBSD in itself was supposed to be the goal, not to solve the task at hand.
int_19h|3 months ago
unknown|3 months ago
[deleted]
movedx|3 months ago
jajuuka|3 months ago
MangoToupe|3 months ago
anticristi|3 months ago
BrouteMinou|3 months ago
rixed|3 months ago
shevy-java|3 months ago
From the BSDs, I think only OpenBSD has a really unique selling point with its focus on security. People ask "why pick FreeBSD rather than Linux" and most will not find compelling arguments in favour of FreeBSD there.
xmcp123|3 months ago
If anything is mainstream, it’s BSD, because OS X is BSD.
bigyabai|3 months ago
lern_too_spel|3 months ago