Returning to BSD - what’s new, and where should I go? reddit / BSD ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2018-08-19 22:06 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FUZxxl · 2018-08-19 22:39 FreeBSD is just right for this purpose. How long did you not use a BSD system? I don't think much changed, the biggest piece of news is probably ZFS which is just amazing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tele-caster-blast3r · 2018-08-19 22:54 The last time I used FBSD it was the stable release of 11. Yes, ZFS is awesome. Ok, so far I’m contemplating going back - I did the whole i3WM thing, and xfce4 in the past, how well does KDE plasma work? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2018-08-19 23:01 OpenBSD works good for me. Its not for everybody though, but it's really lightweight and clean esp for laptop use. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FUZxxl · 2018-08-19 23:04 The current stable release is 11.2. You haven't missed anything of relevance. I have not tried KDE yet. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dlangille · 2018-08-19 23:11 ZFS? FreeBSD. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tele-caster-blast3r · 2018-08-19 23:33 Cool, thanks! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Oxidopamine · 2018-08-20 00:01 Don't listen to these casuals OP, Install [DragonflyBSD] (https://www.dragonflybsd.org/) like a true patrician ---------------------------------------------------------------------- kyle_is_working · 2018-08-20 00:11 I’m running free on a x220 and had a few minor inconveniences with kde regarding locking screen on lid close. Not a major problem, though, and other than that I thought plasma was stable, snappy, and really pretty. I ended up reinstalling with full disk encryption on zfs and xfce. The encryption overhead and zfs makes for a less snappy experience than with the standard, unencrypted FS. YMMV, however. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- EnigmaticHam · 2018-08-20 00:49 If you don't care about ZFS, I'd go with OpenBSD. It's the most straightforward OS I've come across and it's easy to get set up and a dually useful. Use it if you want to actually just use a computer without worrying about what goes where and how to set up things. That's done for you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tele-caster-blast3r · 2018-08-20 01:53 Well said, thanks for the insight! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zinsuddu · 2018-08-20 03:23 I have FreeBSD 11.2 and OpenBSD Current on my workstation, with 2 disk drives for each. On each I build the system and packages from source, on each I run an i3 desktop and a gnome desktop (I switch back and forth -- both are good productive environments). Both OS support software raid / disk encryption and all of the general office apps like Firefox, Chromium, Libreoffice, Gimp, and such... They both work great. To get an up to date gnome desktop on FreeBSD I have to pull from the development ports on [github](https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd- ports-gnome/tree/gnome-3.26). The main FreeBSD ports/packages is **far** behind on Gnome; even a basic gnome library like glib is almost two years out of date. The development branch gives me a very pleasant Gnome 3.28 on FreeBSD 11.2-release (I had to make minor corrections to a couple of port Makefiles to get them to build in a jail under poudriere). FreeBSD recently released KDE Plasma 5 desktop packages; it didn't run well for me (kwallet was unusable) and I had to build my own plasma packages from the [FreeBSD / KDE development ports](https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-ports- kde/tree/plasma5-5.13). It will be a nice desktop on FreeBSD and I think that current binary packages should be ok -- work is active and fixes are being accepted into the FreeBSD master ports. The gnome desktop on OpenBSD is up to date (Gnome 3.28.3 on glib2 2.56.1) and works well. It has been up to date and running well for several years. FreeBSD's Gnome is 3.18 on glib2 2.50 and while an almost-functional up-to-date Gnome is in a development branch, those ports have not been making it into the FreeBSD master ports system. KDE Plasma 5 packages have been under development on OpenBSD for over a year and all of the KDE apps that I want are currently available such as Kate, Cantor, Kalgebra, Kig, Krita, Ktorrent, Krusader, and KDevelop. I suppose the full plasma desktop will come along "soon". I hope I give you the sense that I love some things about FreeBSD and use it, but the most useful environment for getting work done on one's personal computer is OpenBSD. OpenBSD doesn't require any tricks or tinkering to get a notebook or workstation running a complete Gnome (or Mate, or Xfce, or ...) desktop with Libreoffice [6.1.0.3](https://6.1.0.3) etc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- poshpotdllr · 2018-08-20 05:35 personal opinion: freebsd is shit, netbsd is a toy, dragonfly is a research project, and openbsd is for the gods. openbsd or go back to linux. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tele-caster-blast3r · 2018-08-20 05:53 Expound, please. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- poshpotdllr · 2018-08-20 06:07 >freebsd is shit, code of conduct, shitty developers, and ZFS is a fucking abomination. if you think running an entire virtualized solaris kernel for a filesystem is good architecture you should just run windows. >netbsd is a toy, kind of like linux in the 1990s. its great for learning computer science but there are better alternatives for most use cases. >dragonfly is a research project, keep an eye on this one its good but i dont think its ready for prime time and production > and openbsd is for the gods. openbsd or go back to linux. best OS for most things involving computers and electronics. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- illumosguy · 2018-08-20 08:34 This subreddit is very OpenBSD-centric, sometimes FreeBSD-hating, and mostly populated by OpenBSD enthusiasts. Not saying OpenBSD isn't awesome, because it is, but keep in mind that, at least IMHO, you're not going to hear any unbiased, or impartial opinion here. Other BSDs have their own unique, non-negligible pros and features too and each one has its best use case. There are reasons which many well- known companies chose and choose FreeBSD over OpenBSD for (oddly enough when this has to be mentioned here people just use the generic "BSD" term), go find out yourself; I suggest you to try all BSDs at least once, read a lot of documentation, and eventually make up your mind ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tele-caster-blast3r · 2018-08-20 12:16 That’s only fair - I have used FreeBSD, and am somewhat comfortable with it, so I was looking to find a reason to try one of the others...so far I have heard precisely what you said in regard to OpenBSD. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jokaer0 · 2018-08-20 12:45 my man, you might get downvoted for this but you have nailed it ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DamienCouderc · 2018-08-20 13:21 Well if someone wants unbiaised then this sub is the wrong place. An OpenBSD user isn't less partial than another *BSD user. If you want a truly impartial advice go ask a pure Linux user that will tell you that there is not one BSD better than the other, they are all bullshit ;-) That said, the best way to determine which BSD fit the most someone is to try all. I myself tried Yggdrasil, Slackware, FreeBSD and finally settled on OpenSD because it was fitting *my* needs. I don't expect everybody to have the same expectations so I respect other's choice. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- illumosguy · 2018-08-20 13:41 True, perhaps I expressed my self wrong, but that's exactly what I meant; this sub (like DaemonForums, Mastodon, #bsd IRC, Twitter....OpenBSD users are really social and proactive) isn't impartial as its userbase is not representative of a ideal BSD users sample made up by all 4 major BSDs users in equal parts. In addition those reddit fora are strangely full of people extremely concerned,or even obsessed, with SWJ and FreeBSD CoC, and this adds a further bias ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DamienCouderc · 2018-08-20 14:34 My opinion is that the FreeBSD userbase has grown and has been split between the spinoffs (DFBDS, hardened & all). At the same time OpenBSD gained new users first from old adminstrators that migrated from Linux or commercial unices and secondly from fresh unix users that succumbed for the security appeal and settled when it fit their needs. Edit: so the old grumpy bsd users like me must be less present on reddit than the fresh blood, which could explain the over representation of OpenBSD in this sub. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ander_bsd · 2018-08-20 14:36 > and openbsd is for the gods. OpenBSD is really easy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ander_bsd · 2018-08-20 14:37 > kind of like linux in the 1990s. its great for learning computer science but there are better alternatives for most use cases. It's the fastest alternative for legacy media such a Pentium 3, it runs all the native legacy Linux titles and most of retro games under Wine and emulators but a bit buggy and unstable on modern machines. APM under NetBSD panicked my GF's laptop. No issues with OpenBSD at all. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- poshpotdllr · 2018-08-20 17:31 i spread truth and i have no fucks to give. send me your hatemail for my holy review. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- poshpotdllr · 2018-08-20 17:33 gods like it easy ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3G6A5W338E · 2018-08-20 21:26 Dragonfly's got the only workable alternative to ZFS, HAMMER2. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zinsuddu · 2018-08-20 22:06 >freebsd is shit, > >code of conduct, shitty developers, and ZFS is a fucking abomination. if you think running an entire virtualized solaris kernel for a filesystem is good architecture you should just run windows. You certainly are forthright. Since I've said good things about FreeBSD elsewhere in this discussion you've forced me to reply on one issue (zfs): I've tried zfs on Linux and FreeBSD. I did lose files because zfs does not behave as all other filesystems (it conflates volume management with filesystem and it takes control away from the user, it has its own idea of ownership). I also did find that zfs is not efficient for my workstation use. It may not be a fucking abomination but it may be an abomination. It may be too big to be maintained in the long run and in any case only big iron installations need it. But folks should not lose sight of the very versatile GEOM facility in FreeBSD and solid UFS filesystem with softupdates. With these I was able to take two large WD Red hard drives and mirror some gpt partitions while striping other partitions. For example, my root and home partitions are mirrored across the two drives while my build partition is striped for fast poudriere builds. You can have redundancy where it is needed and speed where it is most useful. And I have never lost a file on a UFS filesystem, on FreeBSD or OpenBSD, even though I live in farm country with frequent power dropouts. My file server runs UFS disks on OpenBSD. I did benchmark zfs raid1 vs ufs on gmirrors. zfs gave reads at the speed of a single disk and writes at about half speed. ufs gave reads that were twice as fast as a single disk and writes were about 50% faster than zfs. zfs would give me freezes at the user interface while doing file transfers during a poudriere build. ufs/gmirror handles the load smoothly, everything balances nicely. As for the "shitty"? FreeBSD developers -- I have heard of frustration amongst ports developers not being able to get updated packages accepted. For some reason Gnome 3.28 is sitting in a developers' branch while the master ports tree is years out of date. However I've read enough reports and heard enough conference presentations to know that FreeBSD also has some of the best software developers in the world. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- poshpotdllr · 2018-08-21 12:06 >Gnome 3.28 is sitting in a developers' branch while the master ports tree is years out of date. shitty developers >However I've read enough reports and heard enough conference presentations to know that FreeBSD also has some of the best software developers in the world. a diamond covered in shit is by definition a shitty diamond.