Why FreeBSD? →

Quare FreeBSD?

I really wanted to make this article short … but I failed miserably. At least I tried to organize it well so one may get back to it after ‘some’ reading because its not a short le…

𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚗vermaden

Vermaden writes:

When you install a Linux system its just a bunch of RPM or DEB packages. For example of you install CentOS 7.8 Minimal variant you end up with several hundred RPM packages installed. After a week or month many of these packages will get updates sometimes making this CentOS system unusable or even unbootable (recent GRUB Boothole problem for example).

"Sometimes making this CentOS system unusable or even unbootable[...]" and sometimes it simply works, updates & upgrades just fine and serves for years to come. Look, I know it's easy to bash on Linux these days and showcase FreeBSD as a remedy to all worlds problems. You can have an awesome experience using Linux and shitty using FreeBSD or the other way around -- it's not the OSes fault how they are being used or misused. I get it, I very often wholeheartedly agree and nod my head when reading articles praising UNIX over Linux, but I do have a problem with setting these two in opposition.

The moment where you focus on comparing every single good part of FreeBSD to every single shitty part (which is very often subjective) of Linux, you are not making any favors to the former. To me it's admitting that Linux has won (because it did) and the only way to showcase how good BSD is is to bash^[1] on Linux. I don't think it's right. I think focusing solely on the virtues FreeBSD has is good enough. Otherwise it tends to get tedious to read how something is so much better than in Linux. So what if it is? There are plenty of things done better in Linux, does it prove anything?

There are good reasons and good places to use Linux and there are good reasons and places to use FreeBSD -- or any other UNIX really. SmartOS always comes to my mind whenever I think about virtualization -- I don't think there ever was an OS that solved this problem cleaner than them, PowerVM coming second place.^[2] Does this make bhyve worse? No, it has no impact on the quality of it. I also find Solaris Zones to be the best container solution ever made. Does it make Docker worse? Or jails for that matter? Not really.

Overall it's a great article and source of good parts of FreeBSD (and also good reasons to use it), well worth reading 👍🏻