BSD vs Linux

[machinebacon]

I'm not taking position here, but I would like to read your opinions about the topic and content of following article:
http://aboutthebsds.wordpress.com/2013/ ... -vs-linux/

Of course I don't want this thread to be a BSD/Linux bashing thread - on the other hand, everybody can express his opinion, and if you have evidence, even better :)

[Alad]

Some more links to look at;

(-) BSD: https://www.whonix.org/wiki/FAQ#Why_are ... .21.211.21

(-) Linux: http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/why.linux.is ... rrent.html

(+) FreeBSD/ZFS: https://wiki.freebsd.org/ZFS

(+) NetBSD: https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/unblo ... install_cd

I particularly like the Linux one, as every letter is backed up with a link. The comment section is a joke, though.

As to personal experience, I've tried OpenBSD and found some nice things like process ulimits (process takes too much memory, bam it's killed. In linux you have cgroups where you can limit RAM, but the process keeps swapping). Otherwise I've found it very slow (especially pkg_add) and unstable (filesystem corruption, kernel panics).

Other people I've spoken to didn't have these problems. As to Linux, most of my problems with it are due to a shit userland (most of the freedesktop/GNOME stuff), and long enough, X (driver problems). Maybe you might expand this thread to Windows - using Windows on servers is pretty controversial. :)

[rhowaldt]

what that article Bacon posted leaves me wondering is: why, with all this negativity, would anybody still use BSD, let alone develop it? however, people still do both of those things, so it cannot be all bad. but the stories of the crashes and reboots, if they are indeed true, reminded me a lot of Windows (although i havent experienced frequent Windows crashes since Win2k was released)

[franksinistra]

as far as my experiences in *bsds ( which is not a lot excepting os x) , they aren't that bad
of course some bleeding edge hardware might not work in there like the latest intel haswell hd ( as far as i know only openbsd support this now) , etc
as for the filesystems, you guys must have been aware of dragonflybsd's hammerfs which is quite as fast as any Linux FS (as in here)

true UFS and FFS aren't quite that fast , but with soft-update and 'discard'-like linux feature it ain't so bad running it on my ssd
as for package management , pkgsrc and bsd ports are quite good, even a guy in nixers gang got it ported to os x and it was better than homebrew or fink ( though the number of packages aren't comparable to them)

[bones]

Bacon, I have read that article before. As I recall, this guy has a bone to pick with FreeBSD in particular, was a former developer or contributor or something. Anyway, I will address what I can, being a 'mere user:'

1) Freedom: meh, I don't care, both licenses are fine by me, and have their advantages/disadvantages.

2) Code contribution: don't know, don't care.

3) Reliability: I've only used OpenBSD, which has been reliable for me, no strange behavior or crashes. I do hear that the FreeBSD developers actually use Mac OSX to develop FreeBSD, which strikes me as weird.

4) Robustness: OpenBSD has been plenty robust for me, although I don't "stress" the system, much.

5) Speed: OpenBSD is at least as fast on the same hardware as most Linuxes I've tried.

6) Security: OpenBSD is known for security, but I have read some articles that contend this. Don't really know. I have heard that this is complete bullshit:

On top of that, BSD project managers willingly allow spying agencies to put backdoors in their OSes which make BSD even more insecure. An example is in 2011 where by Theo de Raadt (Head of the OpenBSD project) made an agreement with the FBI to plant a backdoor in OpenBSD, OpenSSH and PF.

7) Portability: I don't care, it runs on my hardware. ;)

8) Installing Software: haven't had any issues, myself. Pkg_add has been fast and reliable for me.

9) Fragmentation: don't know, haven't experienced any issues, myself.

[rhowaldt]

now there's some useful info :)

another thing i was thinking of: when the guy says something is 'hard to use' (for example the package-management), it is good to remember that we don't know what type of user we are dealing with here. for all we know, he might be one of them clickety-clackety-types that just won't make the effort. if it works for Bones, i'm sure something like that must be the case.

[bones]

^ Package management (at least in OpenBSD) seems on par with most Linuxes, to me: the syntax is simple, and dependencies are resolved. It's certainly easier than Slackware, in that respect. I haven't found the need to go into ports, yet.

[ivanovnegro]

I think the article sounds very bullshit to me. Just look at the grammar and all the typos, damn, even I could do better.

I think Gutterslob can tell a lot more, he is actually an OpenBSD user.

[gutterslob]

^ Well, my opinion is probably biased.

Fwiw, that Whonix link is just a rant picking on all the stuff that doesn't work with his software, not realizing that OpenBSD solves most of those issues via various kernel functions (also one reason why LibreSSL will probably never be as secure on Linux as it is on OpenBSD) that are either not enabled or not available in kernels of other operating systems.

Also, that FBI story was proven to be a hoax after the OpenBSD team conducted a public audit. People who continue spouting bullshit about the results of this audit not being made public are basically too lazy to read the mailing lists and do their own cross-referencing. Fwiw, I'm not saying OpenBSD is completely secure, but there's not been any of the those suggested backdoors found so far.

OpenBSD is not a speed or performance champ, however. It's by no means slow - in fact, it's footprint is pretty small - but it'll hardly score big on Phoronix benchmarks. OpenBSD's hardware support isn't exactly all-encompassing either, and in some cases it's downright prehistoric, especially multimedia related stuff - eg:they don't even have UAC2 support yet.

Their main goal is stability and security. Can't speak for everyone, but I run OpenBSD-CURRENT and have not had any issues whatsoever for 2+ years. YMMV.

[pidsley]

^ thank you gutterslob, for posting actual technical content here -- you know much more than you let on... bias is OK ;)

[bones]

^^ Yup, thanks gutterslob, good to hear your input on this.

[GekkoP]

Frankly, this is a debate I'll never get. I like Linux and I like a lot OpenBSD when I configured it months ago. Maybe I haven't used *BSD enough to spot all the problems.

Oh, and thanks everybody for all the links. And thanks bones and gslob for the infos from the "inside".

[machinebacon]

Thank you all for your comments so far. I also think the 'author' of that blog is still quite butt-hurt about something that has more to do with forums administration than the OS per se. Lot of typos there, too. And especially the very first paragraph shows that this article is more about revenge than ... than what again?

I have been using FreeBSD on my main desktop (and still have it installed). To be fair, I usually don't run heavy X software, so I can't really talk about performance, though I noticed that it *is* somewhat slower than what I usually use. Nothing to write home about. The whole 'license' babble is quite uninteresting to me, and security is anyway no biggie. I mean, I am not a government office, nor am I the NASA, so fuck it. The other articles written by this guy (pkgng being a broken fork of apt-get) are troll-feed.

So we have OpenBSD and FreeBSD users on board. Has anybody tried NetBSD, PCBSD, Dragonfly, ... already?

[Alad]

^ Going to try NetBSD on my laptop, and hopefully, on my Claris 660AV. :)

[gutterslob]

So we have OpenBSD and FreeBSD users on board. Has anybody tried NetBSD, PCBSD, Dragonfly, ... already?

I briefly experimented with Dragonfly and it's Hammer file system, but then it did a MC Hammer and bankrupted my hard drive one day. It's a fairly decent OS, though probably not (imho) as cohesive as the OpenBSD experience.

PC-BSD was my first BSD, actually. At the time, it felt like the best KDE implementation (the only version available back then) out of any OS/distro. Performance wise, there were some small but noticeable differences (like longer boot time), but I can't say I did much stress-testing on it. I'm still pretty much a noob when it comes to FreeBSD and it's children.

[bones]

This is from 2005, and of course entirely biased, but anyway...

http://www.forbes.com/2005/06/16/linux- ... 6theo.html

[simgin]

I have only tried PCBSD and GhostBSD, no stress testing or anything in that ballgame. GhostBSD I tried a while ago, when it was brand new and have heard decent reviews of since. Much faster than --> . PCBSD I tried last week, but......seriously heavy and slow, kind of running through quicksand! :(

simon

[hinto]

Not much in the original article. Mainly op-ed. It's fine to be op-ed, but the writer was pretty nebulous (and subjective) in his qualifications.
If there wasn't room for both Linux and BSD in the industry, there wouldn't be both.
-Hinto (IMHO)

[elixir]

I have not touched BSD in any way yet, so I do not have an opinion on the matter. That article was interesting. The only thing I will state, is that I was told that BSD will not run on a logical partition and can normally not run in peace with other partitions. That is a big issue for me if that is true.

[bones]

^ I didn't read the entire thread, but apparently it's possible:

https://forums.freebsd.org/viewtopic.php?&t=3194