[HN Gopher] FreeBSD at 30: Its secrets to success
___________________________________________________________________
FreeBSD at 30: Its secrets to success
Author : open-source-ux
Score : 90 points
Date : 2023-07-05 16:25 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (issue.freebsdfoundation.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (issue.freebsdfoundation.org)
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Love FreeBSD but ...
|
| Really wish there wasn't a split between FreeBSD & Matt Dillon
| 20-years ago, since DragonflyBSD is so strong and yet FreeBSD
| hasn't benefited from it's innovations.
|
| They'd truly would be better together than apart.
|
| Can only imagine how much stronger the BSD ecosystem would be
| overall today, if the past 20-years these teams had been
| together.
|
| https://www.dragonflybsd.org
|
| Announcement:
|
| https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2003-Jul...
|
| EDIT: "stronger together" meaning, FreeBSD would benefit from the
| technology innovations, architecture simplicity and performance
| that DragonflyBSD brings ... and DragonflyBSD benefiting from the
| larger install base that FreeBSD has (and it's brand
| recognition).
| infofarmer wrote:
| Complexity management is key in any project. Lots of successful
| forks reduce total complexity. NetBSD and OpenBSD are excellent
| examples -- one could argue that their goals and innovations
| (in portability and security) would also be useful in the
| <<mainline>> FreeBSD, but that would explode complexity.
|
| The FreeBSD community is carefully watching progress across
| many forks and cherry-picking / importing a lot of the cream.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| As an outsider, I've actually seen the most engagement
| between OpenBSD & DragonflyBSD.
|
| E.g., there's active exploration of bringing the Hammer2
| filesystem from DragonflyBSD to OpenBSD.
|
| https://github.com/kusumi/openbsd_hammer2
| philjohn wrote:
| That makes me feel old. I was running FreeBSD back when that
| split happened, I can't believe it's been 20 years.
|
| I think the BSD ecosystem was harmed more by the SCO lawsuit,
| and the rise of Linux than by the Dragonfly/FreeBSD split.
| vermaden wrote:
| I also would prefer that this split would not had place and
| that DragonflyBSD would never start ... but yet it happened ...
| so what?
|
| Recently (as a seasoned FreeBSD user/sysadmin) I tried
| DragonflyBSD to check how it went ... and it lacks a LOT of
| things that FreeBSD has - like for example the GEOM framework.
|
| On FreeBSD its quite easy to list block devices like:
| FreeBSD # geom disk list
|
| ... but on DragonflyBSD its not possible as there is no GEOM
| ... so the only thing you can do is to: DFBSD
| # camcontrol devlist
|
| ... but its far from usable and its very limited.
|
| On FreeBSD I was able to write lsblk(8) Linux replacement ... I
| would not be able to do that on DragonflyBSD.
|
| Yes - its a pity that such a talented person such as Matt
| Dillon left FreeBSD project - but DragonflyBSD is not a better
| replacement also ...
|
| Regards, vermaden
| wkat4242 wrote:
| I have to say FreeBSD itself is also totally fine on the
| desktop. You don't need DragonFly for that. FreeBSD is my daily
| driver.
| wk_end wrote:
| Not necessarily in disagreement, but some points to consider:
|
| * The nice thing about free software is that FreeBSD _can_
| benefit from Dragonfly 's innovations!
|
| * Dragonfly certainly would benefit from FreeBSD's (relatively)
| large userbase; but it could also be hurt, because FreeBSD's
| larger userbase would be more demanding of the kind of
| stability that could slow down innovation.
|
| * ...and, likewise, FreeBSD might suffer if all those
| innovations harm the OS' reputation for robustness and
| stability.
| tw04 wrote:
| It's been a long time, but IIRC the split was due to direction
| on SMP. From what I recall, the FreeBSD team made the right
| call at the time.
|
| https://people.freebsd.org/~kris/scaling/dfly.html
| loeg wrote:
| It was also a clash of personalities.
| darkhelmet wrote:
| It was all truly unfortunate. But sometimes there are no
| clear right answers - but you have to make a choice between
| multiple bad options. When doing nothing isn't an option
| either then you have to make a call as to what you think
| the least terrible outcome will be and history will be the
| judge as to whether you were right.
|
| Similar issues contributed to there being multiple *BSDs.
| It's never that simple of course, but it was certainly a
| part of it. Technical/ideology and Personality all play a
| part.
| blodorn wrote:
| 20 years later, who made the right call?
| [deleted]
| User23 wrote:
| And the number one secret: making it easy to use Linux drivers.
| icedchai wrote:
| I've been running FreeBSD since the 2.x days. I worked at an
| early ISP where we used it for DNS, mail, and NNTP. Eventually I
| started running it at home.
| CodeCompost wrote:
| > success
|
| Can somebody elaborate on FreeBSD's "success"?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Frankly, the fact that it _survived_ 30 years (and is still
| very actively used and developed and deployed) counts as
| success in my mind.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| macOS is based on FreeBSD.
| qbrass wrote:
| While it has a bunch of FreeBSD code stuffed into it, it's
| not actually based on it.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah I hear this statement a lot too but macos is based on
| nextstep much more than it was on FreeBSD.
|
| Of course nextstep borrowed some userland from FreeBSD and
| I think this is where the confusion originates. The actual
| kernel is totally different though.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Being used as foundation for PlayStation OS, Netflix and
| others.
|
| Being available alongside Linux distributions as official
| supported OS on major cloud vendors.
|
| Maybe the contributions to upstream could be better, but that
| is the choice they decided to make.
| throw0101c wrote:
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_based_on_Fre
| e...
| pseudonym0us wrote:
| >Being used as foundation for PlayStation OS, Netflix and
| others.
|
| Isn't that thanks to its license? They literally can be used
| in closed source software without a word of credit.
| throw0101c wrote:
| Netflix gives back quite a lot. You'll see "Sponsored by:
| Netfix" quite often in commit messages:
|
| * https://www.freshsource.org/commits.php
|
| There isn't much special secret sauce that Netflix has at
| the OS layer of things, so there's not much reason for them
| to keep the patches in-house (and then have to maintain as
| the public source rolls forward). Other vendors that give
| back are Dell EMC Isilon (keeping their OneFS code
| private), Juniper, Netgate, etc.
|
| Sony is unique in that it was a one-time fork, and now that
| the product is out there's not much churn in things.
|
| Most vendors have learned that keeping things in-house just
| causes pain down the road when you have to re-base with the
| latest FreeBSD release.
| Zambyte wrote:
| > They literally can be used in closed source software
| without a word of credit.
|
| This is not true of any of the "acceptable licenses" listed
| by FreeBSD.
|
| https://www.freebsd.org/internal/software-license/
|
| See: the clauses saying "must reproduce/retain the above
| copyright".
| pseudonym0us wrote:
| >See: the clauses saying "must reproduce/retain the above
| copyright".
|
| Yeah, you will see the copyright if you are working at
| the company. Outsiders would never know it's a fork.
| Zambyte wrote:
| Read the licenses more closely.
| codetrotter wrote:
| Sony based the OSes for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and
| PlayStation 5 on FreeBSD.
|
| Netflix uses FreeBSD in production on parts of its
| infrastructure.
|
| Those two alone are pretty nice success stories.
|
| And in addition to those are countless other companies quietly
| running FreeBSD on their servers.
| lockhouse wrote:
| The Nintendo Switch is based on FreeBSD as well. Also Juniper
| Networks and several other enterprise networking equipment
| manufacturers make extensive use of FreeBSD in their
| products.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_based_on_Free.
| ..
| Lutzb wrote:
| The switch kernel / Horizon/NX is not based on FreeBSD.
| This has been debunked over and over. The wikipedia list is
| not correct in that regard.
|
| see e.g. https://youtu.be/Ec4NgWRE8ik?t=700
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27109219
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17534593
| [deleted]
| tristor wrote:
| I love FreeBSD and have been running it as a primary OS in my
| home and in my work since the late 90s. Unfortunately, there's
| some long-standing bugs that seem to have no traction to be
| resolved around booting from USB storage that impacted me in my
| home and some systems had to be rebuilt on Linux, making me not
| Linux-free at home for the first time in over a decade. I love
| FreeBSD and I hope it has another 30 years of success.
| ta47856857 wrote:
| Personally I've had to ditch my opnsense APU2 recently, as its
| failing on USB3 boot media. Even tried USB2 CD-ROM and no dice.
| voytec wrote:
| On page 27, Michael W. Lucas starts his entry in a rather weird
| way.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Congratulations.
|
| I would really like to buy a new edition of "The Design and
| Evolution of FreeBSD", if it ever happens.
| pengaru wrote:
| In case you haven't already, you might want to check out the
| McKusick courses (available as videos). They're not cheap
| though, maybe you can find pirated copies.
|
| I was fortunate enough to see some back in the VHS days when
| someone in a local LUG convinced their employer to buy them as
| a way to support FreeBSD and give the team something to watch
| together (and recruit from the LUGs via hosted viewings no
| doubt).
|
| https://www.mckusick.com/courses/
| ysleepy wrote:
| I assume s/Evolution/Implementation/, it is a good book.
| codetrotter wrote:
| I have the 2nd edition of the book from 2014 both in paper
| back and in digital format.
|
| It's a nice book. I bought it years ago.
|
| I haven't finished reading it yet, as it is a lot of pages
| and quite heaving reading.
|
| But I like it a lot. And I will continue to read it.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Yeah, typing from memory, so got it wrong.
| [deleted]
| wejick wrote:
| https://issue.freebsdfoundation.org/publication/?m=33057&i=7...
|
| This part of FreeBSD history in Japan is also very interesting to
| read.
| glassfish wrote:
| I have been using FreeBSD for the last 2 years on a 2015 Intel
| MacBook Pro, and I have been a long-time Linux user.
|
| Things I appreciate about FreeBSD:
|
| - init system (with real PIDs).
|
| - FreeBSD documentation.
|
| - installation experience (fast and hassle-free).
|
| - stability, consistency and low memory usage.
|
| - DWM / XFCE works great.
|
| - ease of configuring PF
|
| However, there are some main impediments that prevents me from
| using it as my daily driver:
|
| - WiFi drivers don't work unless it's a ThinkPad I think
| (specifically Broadcom 4360 on old Macbooks), I bought a Realtek
| USB WiFi adapter, which works but with reduced performance.
|
| - There are sketchy sound driver issues with the laptop speakers,
| resulting in tinny sound.
|
| - Bluetooth doesn't work at all, although my BOSS system shows up
| on hcinquiry.
| chinabot wrote:
| Agree with the documentation, its rock solid and NOOB friendly.
| 7 years ago I had to rebuild and restore an embedded server for
| a client and with no BSD experience at all it took me a few
| hours and has been working flawlessly since.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > init system (with real PIDs).
|
| I like FreeBSD's init system too, but what do you mean about
| PIDs?
|
| > WiFi drivers don't work unless it's a ThinkPad I think
|
| That's not it; FreeBSD works fine with the wifi in my Dell. I
| grant that the driver coverage is probably more spotty than
| Linux, but it's just on a per-device (card/chipset) basis.
| open-source-ux wrote:
| FreeBSD Journal: FreeBSD 30th Anniversary Special Edition:
| https://freebsdfoundation.org/past-issues/freebsd-30th-anniv...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| was it really constructive for this pioneering tech to choose the
| actual "devil" as a logo? then the move to shiny plastic look for
| the logo? long-standing public divisions with no end.. niche
| opinionated choices sure, but dont be surprised at the results.
| kjs3 wrote:
| It's a daemon [1]. Like the process.
|
| 30 years ago it wasn't divisive nor a niche opinionated choice.
| Kinda the obvious choice. But I guess some people really want
| it to be [2].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_Daemon [2]
| https://www.ign.com/articles/someone-complained-to-ad-standa...
| codehalo wrote:
| Well, blame the daemon being a background process... but yes,
| marketing wasn't a consideration back then.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| It's not a devil but a daemon and I don't think this has ever
| caused people to not use it.
|
| I mean beastie is super cute and wears green sneakers. You'd
| have to be really hardcore religious like Amish to take that
| seriously and they abhor computers anyway :)
|
| I like the new logo too. It's just a ball with two cones
| really.
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| Created by John Lasseter who also directed Toy Story. Do you
| want to question the beginnings of Toy Story, too? Do you also
| hate Jesus?!!!
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Is anyone actually offended by a mascot based on a joke about
| "Unix daemon"? Do they just not get the joke or are they really
| that sensitive? I imagine it's the same sort of person that
| opposes table top games like Dungeons & Dragons and shares out
| Chick tracts (often highly offensive and rude, ostensibly
| Christian, cartoon tracts denouncing Catholics, Jews, and
| Muslims, in particular, as well as other groups; we had someone
| leaving them in our office for a while).
| fluoridation wrote:
| Apparently a tiny minority of people are bothered by it. I
| was looking for information about the logo a few weeks ago
| and stumbled upon this anecdote:
| https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
| chat/2011-Novemb...
|
| >I just got a call from the owner of a hotel for which we
| provide hotspot service. She says that a guest spotted the
| "Powered by FreeBSD" logo at the bottom of the login page,
| and was offended; the guest was convinced that either we or
| the hotel management "worshipped the Devil" and refused to
| stay at the hotel unless the logo was removed.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| If you really search for it, you will always find someone
| offended by anything.
|
| Only a few years ago there was this German guy that bullied
| VS Code into removing their cutesy Santa hat which doesn't
| even have any religious context, it's originally a coca
| cola thing :')
|
| Anyway, having ubiquitous usage is not a goal of FreeBSD.
| People are free not to use it if they don't feel like it. I
| guess there's not much overlap in people being offended by
| penguins and those offended by daemons so I might have
| another suggestion :P
| psychphysic wrote:
| Has it been successful? NetBSD seems to be more popular. Last
| time I used freeBSD was as a child circa 18 years ago.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| If that's how you judge popularity?
|
| FreeBSD is far more of a general OS, NetBSD is more known for
| its minimalism and extreme breadth of hardware support. It can
| run on almost anything.
|
| But in terms of usage numbers I'm pretty sure FreeBSD trumps
| it.
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| Can't provide a source but the last one I saw showed NetBSD
| usage as miniscule by comparison.
| whalesalad wrote:
| direct pdf link to avoid this obscure reader tool
| https://cdn.coverstand.com/33057/794483/9a09afdf5fb325213a55...
| chungy wrote:
| Thanks. I don't know why these custom viewers are attempted.
| They're invariable terrible.
| SpaceInvader wrote:
| I'm using FreeBSD on my servers non stop for 20 years. It has
| some quirks, but it's rock solid.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| > "but [FreeBSD's] rock solid"
|
| Curious to hear your feedback of FreeBSD v5-8. Since many
| consider those releases (years) very bumpy.
| njt wrote:
| I've been an erstwhile FreeBSD user since v2.x (ca. December
| 1996), running FreeBSD on my own machines since v4.x (ca
| 2001), and started using it as my primary laptop/desktop
| daily driver since v5.3 (ca. November 2004). Prior to that,
| SunOS/Solaris was my drug of choice.
|
| In the past, I would update the OS and ports religiously,
| sometimes rebuilding world and packages on a weekly basis.
| I've never once experienced any bumpiness between v5.x and
| v8.x (or any other version, but see my comments on v13
| below). The OS has always been rock solid.
|
| I have occasionally experienced some package issues, usually
| when upgrading a port that had lagging dependencies -- some
| packages written in PHP come readily to mind. The number of
| times this has happened is more than 2 and less than 6, and
| in each of those cases, using portdowngrade and waiting it
| out a few weeks did the trick.
|
| Apart from OS-independent hardware issues, the only real
| FreeBSD issue that I've ever encountered was in the v12->v13
| upgrade. If you were running ZFS, there was a gpart bootcode
| command you needed to run as part of the upgrade process,
| which I sometimes forgot to do, which caused the post-upgrade
| reboot to hang. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, you
| just insert the rescue CD and run the command and be on your
| way 2 minutes later; but at that time I had a number of my
| servers running on a VPS provider that didn't allow you to
| mount your own ISO, so I had to wipe the machine and
| reinstall the OS from scratch and restore stuff from backups.
| I don't really count this as a FreeBSD issue per se, just an
| obtuse service provider. (I've since moved most of my digital
| properties oceans away from that company.)
|
| Nowadays I upgrade the OS and packages far less frequently. I
| upgrade the OS with every minor release and also if there are
| any security issues that affect me. I upgrade the packages
| every couple of months, or if there is a bugfix that affects
| me, or if I need a new feature only available in a newer
| release.
|
| Since I started using it, there have been a number of
| developments that have made my FreeBSD life so much better:
| cperciva's portsnap and freebsd-update, pkg-ng, and of course
| the biggest one: ZFS. All of these allow me to maintain and
| upgrade the systems very easily.
|
| I stick with FreeBSD because of its consistency and ease of
| use, so I'd be curious to know what you mean by "bumpy"?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| If they started using FreeBSD 20 years ago, 5.x would
| probably be what they began with.
| readingnews wrote:
| Not to be mean, but I started using Linux in 1992 (yes that early
| on, from the usenet posting), and I seem to recall hearing a lot
| more about FreeBSD or the *BSDs about 30 years ago than I do now.
|
| In my UNIX circles that I run around in, no one talks about
| FreeBSD. Honestly asking (yes, I guess I did not read the
| article) is most of its success on the commercial side? I think
| it is used in NAS boxes and routers/switches a lot, right?
| postmodest wrote:
| That's because 30 years ago, BSD was getting sued by Ma Bell (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc....
| . ), which is probably the only reason Linux exists.
|
| ...though I guess you could also argue that people felt like
| they had more stake in GPL than BSD-licensed code.
| unmole wrote:
| > and routers/switches a lot, right?
|
| Juniper's boxes all used to run a FreeBSD derivative. But even
| they have introduced Linux based products.
| forinti wrote:
| I did some experiments to find out what is the bare minimum I
| would need for remote work (VPN+RDP). It turns out it would be
| possible, albeit a bit slow, on a Pi B (512MB of RAM) using
| OpenBSD or FreeBSD. The latter was a bit faster.
|
| With Raspbian, I would need more memory (1GB did the job).
|
| On the negative side, there aren't as many packages for the
| BSDs on ARM.
|
| Anyway, it got me interested enough to buy an x86 laptop just
| to run FreeBSD.
| textread wrote:
| Its secret to 'survival' is more appropriate. This article has
| a lot of fluff.
|
| eg: Specifically, companies needing redundancy
| require more than one operating system, since any single
| operating system may fall victim to a failure that could
| take out the entire company's infrastructure
|
| What sort of argument is this. We need multiple political
| parties. Therefore, our existence is important even if we
| secure insignificant votes?
|
| Or does he mean BSD license vs GPL? In which case, I agree with
| his idea of diversified choices.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| I think the statement is poorly worded. Perhaps a better
| formulation is that a monoculture carries a special kind of
| risk (it also holds benefits to a business of course). Same
| is true in politics where having a strong ruling party and an
| enfeebled opposition is not healthy. You need some external
| energy into the system to keep it on its toes.
| garenp wrote:
| Imagine an OS specific bug that could lead to failure. Now
| imagine you're using that single OS everywhere.
| whartung wrote:
| Wasn't there some kind of issue with a leap second sending
| machines (Linux machines?) off the deep end years ago (and
| all about the same time)? Conceptually, if you're running a
| mix of OSs, then there's much less chance of something
| undiscovered wiping out your entire infrastructure.
|
| There was a story I heard that when working on the avionics
| for one of their planes, Boeing mandated three separate CPU
| architectures, with the code developed by three different,
| isolated, teams, using three different toolsets (languages
| and runtimes) to minimize the risk of some Unknown Unknown
| commonality taking them all out. Dunno what actually
| happened. Could be completely folklore.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _What sort of argument is this. We need multiple political
| parties. Therefore, our existence is important even if we
| secure insignificant votes?_
|
| Yes, it keeps userland code honest if you follow the
| published API and not a specific behaviour. See for example
| the _fsync()_ saga on Linux:
|
| * https://lwn.net/Articles/752063/
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19238121
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19119991
|
| It's the same reason why porting to obscure CPUs can be
| useful: DEC Alpha was never popular, but supporting it kind
| of forced Linux to be 64-bit clean in some ways, so when
| amd64 came along there was already a bunch of infrastructure
| in place.
|
| And having 'external parties' that are not part of the same
| 'tribal structures' and same zeitgeist / group think can
| allow for experimenting of ideas.
| textread wrote:
| Thanks a lot for the lwn article suggestion.
|
| Dave Cutler(Windows NT) too found the DEC support to be a
| safety test for cleanliness.
| tw04 wrote:
| Netflix runs a massive fleet of FreeBSD servers. NetApp and
| Dell/EMC isilon are built on it. The previous Compellent
| product was based on NetBSD.
|
| You can infer others if you look at the historical sponsor
| pages: https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-donors/donors/
|
| There are plenty of companies that may not use the full BSD
| stack but pull bits and pieces of code as needed. Microsoft is
| known to have built off BSD networking code for Windows.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Anyone playing PlayStation uses a FreeBSD based OS.
|
| PlayStation OS is basically the FreeBSD kernel and a custom
| userspace tailored to the console.
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(page generated 2023-07-05 23:01 UTC)