Been Doing Linux Wrong for Way Too Long and Have Been of No Benefit to Anyone for Awhile There. Changing to Grow as a Tech Hobbyist. reddit / freebsd ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ParkourierATX · 2022-01-15 18:18 Hey all. Nice to meet you. I’ve been bouncing around between Linux distros for about 15 years now and eventually settled on alternating between Gentoo and Arch due to loving the customization aspects of both. The reality is that the tech world’s moved on and I haven’t made any real contributions in a long time. When you’ve done something long enough you can end up thinking your way is the only way and get stuck in a rut. My current niche is self hosting and server tech/sys administration and the community around it have been trying to help me grow for awhile out of my rut and I am wanting out of the Linux bubble so I can experience something else. I’m currently reading the Freebsd manual and converting my server over. Any tips are welcome and I hope for some self discovery. 🤟 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Xerxero · 2022-01-15 20:12 Welcome ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vermaden · 2022-01-15 21:12 Welcome mate. Besides reading **FreeBSD Handbook** and **FreeBSD FAQ** I may only share what are my reasons to use FreeBSD instead of Linux: - https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2020/09/07/quare-freebsd/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- GreenMan802 · 2022-01-15 21:22 Welcome to the club. :) I'd like to also recommend the book Absolute FreeBSD by Michael Lucas. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- grahamperrin · 2022-01-15 21:29 > … out of the Linux bubble … tips are welcome … Via : * [FreeBSD Quickstart Guide for Linux® Users](https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/linux-users) ---- PS *hey* to you, too. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ok-Philosopher-8033 · 2022-01-15 22:25 Thanks for posting the link... Intrigued to find out more... Thanks again👍 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MechMaster48 · 2022-01-15 23:58 I have actually taken my first step into the FreeBSD world as of this week. Got a copy of Absolute FreeBSD as well. Converting my laptop over as well so I can get more acclimated to it. Also long time Linux user just looking to try something else. So far so good. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ParkourierATX · 2022-01-16 00:32 Welcome fellow new person. I’m coming from Gentoo/Arch and so far, the basics are pretty similar. Not quite the same but the transition is smooth. Where do you hail from? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MechMaster48 · 2022-01-16 01:03 I distro hop quite a bit, but have mainly been an Arch user as well as Ubuntu for my servers in the past as it’s what we use at my work. Taking a Unix course just to expand on some of the other systems I use at work (QNX). I have bounced around a lot, but never into FreeBSD so this seemed like a good opportunity to get more acclimated with it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PkHolm · 2022-01-16 03:17 Use FreeBSD for servers and Linux for desktop. FreeBSD can fork with ext2 filesystem and it is ZFS native. So your server storage build wisely you can run both in parallel. With ZFS even from same zpool. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MNfrstrtD · 2022-01-16 06:10 Welcome! I am opposite of you in that I just started a Gentoo build after already using FreeBSD for a year. The most helpful thing for me to learn FreeBSD was to use it daily. First set up a simple file server but didn't really learn much until putting it on a desktop and using it for everyday computing. I didn't jump in head first, rather use FreeBSD to accomplish what I already know how to do on Linux.Have fun discovering, hope you've found a new home! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- paprok · 2022-01-16 06:37 > bouncing around between Linux distros for about 15 years now it's not gonna be *that* difficult to make the transition. both systems share the same heritage, to a certain point. my bet is BSD will surprise you how easily some things can be done, in contrary to how Linux got more and more convoluted over the last couple of years. the best way to summarize what i'm talking about is: *"evolution not revolution"* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DarthRevanG4 · 2022-01-16 07:43 I just stumbled upon this post and saw the recommendation for this book. I am currently reading through the first few free pages on Apple Books. I really want to buy it and read the whole thing. I just wish it wasn’t $35 on there. Seems a lot for an eBook. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ParkourierATX · 2022-01-16 08:13 That’s pretty useful. Thanks. My desktops will probably forever be Windows/Mac with a virtualized Linux for I have tech needs that Linux just doesn’t cut it for. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ParkourierATX · 2022-01-16 08:19 On that note, a piece of advice with Gentoo: use the docs as a base guideline and then go off the grid as quickly as you can. Just like everything else, it’s ran heavily by volunteers, has a committee, and often the docs can be flat out wrong in places or not cover every need. I love that approach in design but it can definitely break your productivity when a USE flag changes causing a pretty hefty state rebuild ---------------------------------------------------------------------- grahamperrin · 2022-01-16 09:23 > the docs can be flat out wrong in places or not cover every need. As can the official documentation for FreeBSD, of course. Simply: * [good documentation is time-consuming, and hard to do well](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/202171/211055). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ParkourierATX · 2022-01-16 10:25 I should really work on my own personal documentation better for that reason 😅 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MNfrstrtD · 2022-01-16 14:34 Thank you for that suggestion. I've already noticed this in the installation guide. Part of the responsibility of using FOSS is giving back so discrepancies are being noted and will likely address them after getting a system up and running. One of the appeals of projects that require a learning curve is the user base is usually more technically competent. FreeBSD's handbook is a good starting place, however there too are portions that could benefit from expansion. For example utilizing ZFS encryption is covered in the handbook but [this](https://www.google.co m/amp/s/arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/a-quick-start-guide-to- openzfs-native-encryption/%3famp=1) article in Ars Technica goes into greater detail and context. As far as I am concerned, the evolution of Unix was done to bring us OpenZFS and the software to interact with it. That is not entirely true obviously, but compared to RAID and traditional volume management, adaptation of ZFS is a good thing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ParkourierATX · 2022-01-16 15:13 I agree with the sentiment. Most of my contributions as of late have been in the JS realm and have been primarily updating libraries, porting code to work with better supported alternatives, or just making small plugins for frameworks I use. Once I get a bit knowledgeable, it'd be nice to contribute to FreeBSD and other things, but baby steps right now. To add to your link, there's some minor discrepancies with this one too, but [this](https://www.benhup.com/freebsd/install-freebsd-on-zfs- and-add-encryption/) was helpful getting encryption set up, making a jails slice/partition/whatever it's called here, and getting around some quirks of my server host (like normally not being to ssh into a live session or having to use their really bad web terminal for everything until a full install had been done). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ParkourierATX · 2022-01-22 18:10 Honestly, it’s been almost a week now, and I’ve got my first few Bastille containers set up and my server mostly back to how it was before I switched. The transition was overall very smooth and I improved my security quite a bit while doing so. There were a few changes I had to make: 1) Gitea is currently broken if you’re using postgres and any containers (see [here](https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/18180) ). It gave me an excuse to finally try out [Gitolite](https://gitolite.com/gitolite/index.html). It took several tries to get up and running but once I did, I don’t think I could go back to Gitea or any other git server. Command line only but works amazingly well and secure too. 2) Radicale no longer runs through Gunicorn since Bastille doesn’t currently support unix sockets. 3) I had to make some minor tweaks to my blog deployment setup for the better. I used daemons, touches and cron to pull in git updates, rebuild and deploy while the site was live using its built in server implementation for testing