Why Should You Use FreeBSD? Here's Some Reasons

[Ravna]

I'm impressed. How did you get MacOS to run on an Apple II?

It was pre-installed - MacOS made it's debut in 1984.

[Libreman]

You may not be good nor like compiling software, nor even have a use for it ~ But lots of us do. Ports provides an easy way to have that automated for you. When i decided to try out BSD, part of the attraction was Ports. it is a good build system and there are reason why it has been copied time and time again...

I thought one of the main reason to use BSD was a lack of these "automated brainfucks", now it is a nice feature that provides an easy way to do something? Hmm .. let's see, so when something is automated in Linux it's evil and wrong but when things get automated in BSD it provides an easy way to do said things, what an interesting concept! ( Almost a brainfuck in itself a would say )

Anyway, the showstopper for me is the point:

- The FreeBSD community focuses more on tech than on licensing and political activism like a certain freeware Unix "alike"

So they openly dislike people who care about software freedom and work hard to protect users from the abuses so common for proprietary software? They do not mind their code being taken, have nasty features added and then used to oppress users with no recourse available to them but they do have a problem when it gets released under the GPL for free and for anyone to modify as they wish with guarantees it won't get used against others in proprietary sw?

Not taking into account that they seem to whine about licenses much more than the GPL proponents (not that there would be something wrong with advocating for certain license based on ones values) the above revelation of the mindset of the users/dev of BSD is enough for me to never use it.

I do care about a philosophical background of a project/license and I do find people that not only do not care but actively badmouth people who do distasteful.

[smitty3268]

Anyway, the showstopper for me is the point:

- The FreeBSD community focuses more on tech than on licensing and political activism like a certain freeware Unix "alike"

So they openly dislike people who care about software freedom and work hard to protect users from the abuses so common for proprietary software? They do not mind their code being taken, have nasty features added and then used to oppress users with no recourse available to them but they do have a problem when it gets released under the GPL for free and for anyone to modify as they wish with guarantees it won't get used against others in proprietary sw?

See the way i read that statement was pretty much the exact opposite of what they were saying. If they actually spent the time to write out that one of the reasons they were using BSD was because of licensing and political issues on another system, doesn't that actually mean their community cares a great deal about exactly those issues? It's just that they disagree with the answers the other community has come up with.

So I think the FreeBSD community is excessively obsessed with licensing and political activism. Their continuing use of GCC 4.2 is all the proof you need that they care about that more than "technical" issues.

They certainly have every right to feel that way, but it sort of pisses me off when they try to claim they are the ones who don't care about things and it's everyone else that has the problem.

[ninez]

I'm impressed. How did you get MacOS to run on an Apple II?

LOL. yup, i kind of combined 2 separate thoughts there, it probably should have read something like " i've been using MacOS for years, *and Apple computers* dating all the way back to the Apple II." funny shit.

cheerz

[blacknova]

now, if you care to give some reasons why MacOSX is so messy, i am all ears.

The only mess in OSX I know is memory management subsystem. And this bite hard. Under memory pressure conditions I had to reboot system a couple times a day, or use some obscure tools like 'purge'.

[yogi_berra]

I thought one of the main reason to use BSD was a lack of these "automated brainfucks", now it is a nice feature that provides an easy way to do something? Hmm .. let's see, so when something is automated in Linux it's evil and wrong but when things get automated in BSD it provides an easy way to do said things, what an interesting concept! ( Almost a brainfuck in itself a would say )

Ports provides up-to-date packages that can be finely tuned without waiting for the next November or April to go from Samba 3.5 to 3.6. That is something that is not provided in any automated way by Linux. Or did you want a strawman argument to match your own?

So they openly dislike people who care about software freedom and work hard to protect users from the abuses so common for proprietary software? They do not mind their code being taken, have nasty features added and then used to oppress users with no recourse available to them but they do have a problem when it gets released under the GPL for free and for anyone to modify as they wish with guarantees it won't get used against others in proprietary sw?

Out of curiosity, how often do you find yourself recompiling packages or examining sourcecode? If this number is 0, as I suspect it is, your argument is just bullshit posturing for cool points. Knock it off.

[kraftman]

If it would be design, everyone would have problems.

Not true. It can happen on specific configurations. The same on Linux. When comes to Linux the 3.3 kernel promised to fix this. There's no ETA for Windows or FreeBSD.

Yes, but datatbases are small.
http://www.tuxradar.com/content/benc...its-not-pretty

It's not a mystery Firefox wasn't too optimized for Linux in the past. Furthermore this is about java script and not SQL which is much smoother with Firefox under Linux.

Still no proof.

Their mailing list quoted in this article is a great proof. Another one is foolBSD forums.

[kraftman]

now, if you care to give some reasons why MacOSX is so messy, i am all ears.

As the final product it isn't that bad. It's a mess from a technical point of view (maybe except sound stack). It still doesn't support OpenGL4.2 and it had serious issues with graphic performance, because of their home made changes. You probably remember that OS X file system had to emulate POSIX and it's an utter crap? Furthermore, while it's a cluster of different operating system parts it gives an impression it's a mess. But like I said as the final product from end user perspective it's ok.

[kraftman]

Ports provides up-to-date packages that can be finely tuned without waiting for the next November or April to go from Samba 3.5 to 3.6. That is something that is not provided in any automated way by Linux. Or did you want a strawman argument to match your own?

I think he was saying about things like dbus, udisk, udev etc. Arch Linux also provides things you have mentioned and if BSD ports provides the same they're much less stable than Debian or RHEL. So BSD with up to date ports sucks for servers.

[ninez]

As the final product it isn't that bad. It's a mess from a technical point of view (maybe except sound stack). It still doesn't support OpenGL4.2 and it had serious issues with graphic performance, because of their home made changes. You probably remember that OS X file system had to emulate POSIX and it's an utter crap? Furthermore, while it's a cluster of different operating system parts it gives an impression it's a mess. But like I said as the final product from end user perspective it's ok.

About HFS+ - you mean this thread;

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...chmarks/page10

Where you go on about how ext3 is better than HFS+ but didn't even know what you are talking about (claiming HFS+ can't be case-sensitive, etc), and then when you are given links to technical links, you then go on to say 'you don't trust apple, and claim they delete BSOD posts from their forum' ...lol ...interesting. As For HFS+ being 'utter crap' i disagree. It has been very usable, very stable and i have NEVER EVER had issues on a Mac i've ever owned, nor anyone else i've known - including about 3-4 years ago, when i was servicing Apple computers in my spare time for cash (for an Apple-licensed computer store/distributor). To say HFS+ is utter crap would entail nearly every single apple computer having issues and every single client i had at the time, would have had major problems... So i'm not going to take your word on this, being as in previous posts you claimed things that ANYONE who has ever formatted an HFS+ partition (using disk utility) would have known was completely false.

The OpenGL 4.2 is valid though. They do need to address this, but it has never been an issue for me personally, but i'm not a gamer or doing 3d modelling on my Mac. It's mainly used For Adobe CS5, VMware Fusion and proaudio. ~ All of which work great, and the lack of OpenGL 4.2 doesn't seem to slow down my H/W accelerated VMs (at all). As for Sound - MacOSX does this better than any of OS, period. CoreAudio is how sound should be done, straight up.

You also really haven't said much to support this idea that because they recycled code, it is a mess. Everything is well-defined and well-documented and works well. All of my friends who develop on a Mac love it. They hate using Windows or Linux for the same shit, after getting a Mac. So if it was really such a 'cluster fuck' i imagine no one would want to be developing on that platform, and we wouldn't see such rapid development of apps for the platform (including iOS).