Introduce yourself, tell us who you are and why you chose FreeBSD

cracauer@ said:
But even then, dependency hell in pkg/ports still does not break base.
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Very true, and I like FreeBSD for that - I like the predictability that Linux was sorely lacking - breaking with no good way to go back unless you're willing to do a LOT of research and reading random wikis/blogs of people who did somehow manage to power through THAT.
 
astyle said:
It's an idea from the Linux camp
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Thats exactly the worry.
astyle said:
Nope, PkgBase actually builds on the ability to just roll base into a tarball!
[...]
adapted for FreeBSD - to offer the base as a gzipped tarball that FreeBSD's pkg can handle.
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Not convinced. Turning base into lots of little packages that all update separately will open up the potential for breakage to libcrypt and libc mentioned by cracauer@ and Crivens a couple of posts ago.

cracauer@ said:
But even then, dependency hell in pkg/ports still does not break base.
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I'm not so sure. RHEL's cesspit that they call "base" is exactly this setup (base packages, 3rd party packages) and it does tend to break. At the very least pkg-delete -a will need to be made smarter / more complex.

Either way (and so I don't derail this thread further), I am happy to see how it turns out. I actually keep one leg in OpenBSD specifically because I am skeptical of PkgBase. So if the concept of PkgBase does get fixed between now and when it is deployed, then thats great. Otherwise, not too much of a problem either. I just don't really like broken / riced operating systems; they have their place for i.e web appliances; just not for sane workstations.
 
kpedersen said:
Not convinced. Turning base into lots of little packages that all update separately will open up breakage to libcrypt and libc mentioned by cracauer@ and Crivens a couple of posts ago.
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How do you think freebsd-update even works? FreeBSD has all the pieces to make it work, it's just a matter of organizing them in a different way. Even Poudriere is nothing more than scripts that automate stuff like creating a jail and managing the package repos... PkgBase is done in the same manner as Poudriere.
 
astyle said:
How do you think freebsd-update even works?
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It works simply and separated from the pkg system (compare against pkg-update(8)). Something that Linux distros all seem to be weak on and something that PkgBase will also compromise.

astyle said:
FreeBSD has all the pieces to make it work, it's just a matter of organizing them in a different way.
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Different is not a problem. However based on experience of the different approaches taken by Linux and UNIX over the years, I feel what is currently being proposed by PkgBase is an objectively "worse" way to what we have now. The concept of base tends to do better when it is completely separated from the 3rd party packages. In terms of location *and* tooling. One of my favorite things about Solaris (10) was that it had ~3 different package managers. All completely separate systems so you were very unlikely to run into conflicting versions.
 
Hello, my name is Wes, and I'm a FreeBSD Addict.
Oh, wait, this isn't FreeBSD Anonymous?

I started using FreeBSD pretty much as it was created, but officially with 1.0. Remembering keeping your calculator on hand to calculate disk cylinder sizes to do partitioning?

I was able to use FreeBSD professionally from about 1998, when I became a committer, to 2008, and then my career branched in ways that have been challenging but often unrewarding. I even somehow managed to end up on the Core Team from 2002 to 2008, though due to personal reasons (home destroyed by a wildfire) late 2007 on was mostly MIA.

Since then, I've been largely working in the embedded Linux space, with a short bewildering trip though (moderately) big data and web services. I'll elide the rants on the things misguided developers do to Linux to "harden" it for embedding, and just say that as soon as I have breathing room for catching up on stuff I want to do, I'll be back to FreeBSD. I've kept it running on at least one small system all through the years, in various states of upgrade and/or disrepair.
 
Presumably you can still do make buildworld kernel etc. With the right setup it typically takes a few minutes (unless something changed in the llvm world, which then adds at least an hour).

I stopped using freebsd-update a long time ago as I don't like it downloading gazillion files but I never got around to thinking through the best way to do it (including port updates).
 
Though I've been using FreeBSD for almost a quarter of a century I still consider myself a newbie.

On my own initiative I needed a revision control system and management saw no value in such a tool. CVSTrac fit the bill and for a while I was serving my system on my home G4 tower Mac running MacOS 10. (BTW, don't tell me how Great(tm) Git is, this was a few months before its initial release.) After a few months I scraped together some old PC components and set up a server that could handle the system, still running at my home. Since MacOS 10 is derived from FreeBSD and is available at no cost, it was the natural choice.

A year or two later the owners of the company realized there might be some value in a revision control even if they have no idea to this day what it is. So they requested I bring it "in house" so I got budget for a thin rack mount PC (still parallel ATA in those days). Naturally FreeBSD was again the choice since the company's choice (Windows) wasn't an option. The system hummed away for years without much intervention locked away in the server room. The biggest interruption was when somebody going through the server room had no idea what the box was and removed it from the rack.

I don't remember all the details but eventually, the ATA hard drive failed and I couldn't get the old system board setup again. Lacking much in the way of budget, I migrated to a Raspberry Pi which could sit on my desk. (I'm guessing it used as much electricity as the CPU fan on the rack mount PC.)

As for my home server, we find many uses for it and have upgraded it over the years. It seems that FreeBSD just works. Every few years I run into a problem and frantically ask a question on the forum but otherwise it sits headlessly in the corner and serves. (Though every few weeks I might run freebsd-update, etc.) Because it's so trouble-free I just don't seem to give it much thought and as a result my knowledge has remained at the newbie level.

So the answer is "it works and I'm a cheap SOB."
 
I'm Ludo. I'm European, I currently work for an editor in support.
I had run FreeBSD for a long time, because its stable and does what I need. Also I used to run Darwin based systems.

I'm back at using BSD , because I can and diversity is good in the long run. I don't like docker much for production and our world is going full docker.
 
Adopted NetBSD at 0.8 in ~1993 (ah, the days of acoustical modems and 5" floppies as install media!) -- while FreeBSD was at 0.9. After a while, jumped to FreeBSD as the x86 support was better (NetBSD diluted their efforts to address many architectural "ports" -- not to be confused with FreeBSD "ports"!).

At about 2.1R, moved back to NetBSD as I was supporting several different hardware platforms (DEC Alpha, x86, M68K, SPARC) and FreeBSD hadn't even started to "diversify".

Just recently (i.e., today), taking a look at FreeBSD, again, as an alternative to porting some applications over to NetBSD. I am beginning to suspect that too much has changed to make maintaining FreeBSD boxes alongside NetBSD a practical endeavor. :(
 
Another Debian installation that gets itself in trouble in a way that FreeBSD does not and would not.

They unified /bin and /usr/bin. When upgrading to a version with unification they run a transaction-safe special script to do this. Thing is, it doesn't work right on NFS, and is documented not to. And my install is PXE-booted NFS. Thingie is stuck for now. In limbo with half the upgrade performed. No package operations possible.

If FreeBSD does something like this there wouldn't be half-baken crap.
 
cracauer@ said:
Another Debian installation that gets itself in trouble in a way that FreeBSD does not and would not.

They unified /bin and /usr/bin. When upgrading to a version with unification they run a transaction-safe special script to do this. Thing is, it doesn't work right on NFS, and is documented not to. And my install is PXE-booted NFS. Thingie is stuck for now. In limbo with half the upgrade performed. No package operations possible.

If FreeBSD does something like this there wouldn't be half-baken crap.
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so why bother with Debian at all? 😲:rolleyes:
 
Hello. I'm just a regular computer user. I get on a computer to do stuff that I enjoy, I am not into technical things. But I had come to the conclusion that I would never be able to force myself to use Windows 11, try as I would to coax myself into installing it over these last few years. I clung to Windows 10 like a drowning man clings to a sinking ship. At last I faced the grim reality of Windows 10 end date looming, and with MacOS soon discontinuing support for Intel Macs, even my mid-2015 MacBook Pro Retina (patched to run a current macOS) was doomed. Dejected, I prepared to face a life without computers, rather than buy anything new from Apple or install Windows 11.

Then I thought: Why not try Linux?

So I did. That was about 3 months ago and I have not used Windows since - probably because, as it turns out, all the programs I used on Windows are on Linux too. So I did not need Wine or anything tricky to figure out. I installed Zorin on my desktop and later I put antiX on my mid-2013 MacBook Air. I'm 100% happy with them. Life is good!

There is just one problem.

I have another desktop that is a real devil. Trying to get Linux running smoothly on that pc is like trying to drag Damien Thorn into church. It hates Linux. I have tried both antiX and Zorin. They both install and run fine - for 5 minutes, or 1 hour, or 4 hours, etc. But on either an install or a Live USB the computer will unexpectedly freeze or reboot for no reason. With online help, I think I finally have the problem pinpointed to a failing HDD but on the other hand I wanted to know: Why does that only affect a Linux install? Why does Windows 10 never crash or freeze on that pc? From curiousity, I searched the web for free operating systems. Although I will of course be replacing the HDD, I wanted see if an operating system besides Windows could manage to run without crashing.

That was a few days ago. And that is how I found FreeBSD. I chose it from the other free operating systems I found because of the mascot. Very fitting for this computer. I installed FreeBSD on a 100GiB partition of the HDD to test out. (Linux would crash from either a full or partition install. Windows would never crash from either full or partition install.)

I spent the first day testing the uptime to see if it would crash. It didn't crash the whole day and I was amazed. Then I realized it probably wasn't crashing because it was just a black screen with words on it. I needed a real test. I needed graphics and applications.

I carefully followed the instructions to install lightdm and xfce. Then I spent the next 2 evenings working myself into a rage trying to get either lightdm or xfce working before crying myself bitterly to sleep. Finally, on the third day, I got the xfce desktop to open! I have no more plans to get lightdm working at present, I am just enjoying my partial victory.

I have kept the computer running from the time I got the desktop open, and I am at 23+ hours without a crash. Meanwhile, I have been enjoying using this FreeBSD other than just testing if the computer will crash. I have been snooping through the packages and am pretty surprised to see that most of the apps I use are there. So I have been installing and testing them out. Even though for the most part I have been ignoring tricky post install notes (sorry, no idea what a -pthread is or how to add it to my linker options) they are all running well so far (though perhaps their Boost library does not have thread support...). I like that I can ignore them for now and when I feel like searching the web to figure them out I can show them again with a simple command .
 
whodat said:
I carefully followed the instructions to install lightdm and xfce. Then I spent the next 2 evenings working myself into a rage trying to get either lightdm or xfce working before crying myself bitterly to sleep. Finally, on the third day, I got the xfce desktop to open! I have no more plans to get lightdm working at present, I am just enjoying my partial victory.
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When next you try this, you should take careful notes and share them with the maintainer(s) of those packages. This would help them adjust the documentation to eliminate any confusion you may have had. Or, any problems you may have encountered -- so the next guy has a better experience!

FWIW.
 
sakuya06 said:
I am a lecturer in local university. I was a Linux user and a distrohopper. But I am in steady position with FreeBSD since this May. I also install my server with FreeBSD to serve students' lab neccessities.
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As Linux distro Redcore-linux is nice. Just like with FreeBSD you can compile packages from source easily and even faster.
 
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