What are some real world uses of FreeBSD

[millerj123]

Usually yes when there is a business behind it profiting, but in this case the two are too similar to be spending hours of one's time into a volunteer based product. One or the other will do, its just a personal taste from what I can tell. Thanks for the link.

By now, one things I would like to see is Linux enthusiasts pushing Linux to its furthest showing its powers against FreeBSD and the opposite by FreeBSD enthusiasts. Something tells me FreeBSD will be more solid and powerful, but this is just gut feeling.

You are attempting to put your values on what someone else does. It’s not just the licenses, but it starts there and continues throughout both projects. You just don’t get it. Both exist because someone who is not you works on it.

which do you think should exist, and how will you get the “wrong” team to switch their efforts?

 

[MacUser2525]

Usually yes when there is a business behind it profiting, but in this case the two are too similar to be spending hours of one's time into a volunteer based product. One or the other will do, its just a personal taste from what I can tell. Thanks for the link.

By now, one things I would like to see is Linux enthusiasts pushing Linux to its furthest showing its powers against FreeBSD and the opposite by FreeBSD enthusiasts. Something tells me FreeBSD will be more solid and powerful, but this is just gut feeling.

Who knows which one is more solid and powerful, only way to tell is to do some testing. Since they both have software in common like the Apache web server you could take identical hardware machines with a default base install of both. With it or some other software in common running the same versions then hammer the hell out of them to see which fails first...

 

[MacBH928]

You are attempting to put your values on what someone else does. It’s not just the licenses, but it starts there and continues throughout both projects. You just don’t get it. Both exist because someone who is not you works on it.

which do you think should exist, and how will you get the “wrong” team to switch their efforts?

People can do whatever they want with their free time on earth, I was just wondering why do they feel the need to keep two similar items instead of combining efforts. I was trying to learn the differences.

I can not answer that question as both are too similar to choose from. Its as if you are asking me if I should buy movies off iTunes Store or Google Play. I don't know, both seem to do very much the same thing.

Who knows which one is more solid and powerful, only way to tell is to do some testing. Since they both have software in common like the Apache web server you could take identical hardware machines with a default base install of both. With it or some other software in common running the same versions then hammer the hell out of them to see which fails first...

that will be interesting to see...

 

[millerj123]

People can do whatever they want with their free time on earth, I was just wondering why do they feel the need to keep two similar items instead of combining efforts. I was trying to learn the

Maybe harsh.

Let me try this:

If you are a programmer, you might have been taught to indent 5 spaces for each differing line of code. At some point, you have to work on an application where they use tab. You don't like tab. You go to a different project where they also use 5 spaces.

In this case, the licensing might cause full-stop. Apple chose FreeBSD because they don't have to give their changes back, but if it's significant, they might want to, or else they have to maintain a separate group of code that they have to add back in with each iteration, and do their own regression tests to ensure the changes didn't break anything.

If you work on one system during the day, you are familiar with it, and continue using it at night.

Your neighbor uses <system blah> which means you can get help from them.

With the Linux distributions I pointed you to, one might come with KDE pre-loaded, and another has Gnome, but what about the folks who still cling to icwm? That's just for windows managers. Each application might have multiple versions, and folks like one for particular features or whatever, and not another.

The problem is that the license really might mean that you can't do your daytime work on a given system, so you pick one over another, and put your efforts into that.

Now, if you consider the sheer number of people working on the total different distributions, it really does seem a _might_ bit much, and figure that more could be accomplished if there were fewer choices. The problem is who gets to decide which ones? You might like something, and I can't have it for whatever reason. I'll work on mine while you work on yours.

For fun, I logged into www.github.com. I did a search for "meal nutrition planning". I got 53 results. 53 different versions of programs that all help you plan meals and nutrition. They are in multiple different languages, some haven't seen an update in years, and some have active development.

Does that make sense?

 

[MacBH928]

Maybe harsh.

Let me try this:

If you are a programmer, you might have been taught to indent 5 spaces for each differing line of code. At some point, you have to work on an application where they use tab. You don't like tab. You go to a different project where they also use 5 spaces.

In this case, the licensing might cause full-stop. Apple chose FreeBSD because they don't have to give their changes back, but if it's significant, they might want to, or else they have to maintain a separate group of code that they have to add back in with each iteration, and do their own regression tests to ensure the changes didn't break anything.

If you work on one system during the day, you are familiar with it, and continue using it at night.

Your neighbor uses <system blah> which means you can get help from them.

With the Linux distributions I pointed you to, one might come with KDE pre-loaded, and another has Gnome, but what about the folks who still cling to icwm? That's just for windows managers. Each application might have multiple versions, and folks like one for particular features or whatever, and not another.

The problem is that the license really might mean that you can't do your daytime work on a given system, so you pick one over another, and put your efforts into that.

Now, if you consider the sheer number of people working on the total different distributions, it really does seem a _might_ bit much, and figure that more could be accomplished if there were fewer choices. The problem is who gets to decide which ones? You might like something, and I can't have it for whatever reason. I'll work on mine while you work on yours.

For fun, I logged into www.github.com. I did a search for "meal nutrition planning". I got 53 results. 53 different versions of programs that all help you plan meals and nutrition. They are in multiple different languages, some haven't seen an update in years, and some have active development.

Does that make sense?

Yes, it does, but this is about the first time I had to see something similar but maintained differently due to philosophical reasons and design choices built for free. When you think of something like Kode or Plex, maybe you can do that because its a simpler software, but on an Operating System, that is such a huge undertaking. I believe the whole globe is running on 4 main OS and that is Mac, Windows, FreeBSD, and Linux. Just gives you an idea how big of a task it is. When you think 2 of the 4 major OS are maintained for free and based on community contribution it makes you scratch your head when you learn they are very similar under the "Unix-like" umbrella.

Linux too suffers from fragmentation and they paid for it, because each one wants to maintain his own version. There is probably a graveyard of Linux distros. To each his own.

I started this thread to learn the differences between Linux and FreeBSD, and now I did. I won't say I have 100% understanding, but I got to the point where I know what is the difference between both and why both exists. One thing I still don't get is why do we not see as many "distros" of FreeBSD as we see on Linux, given that FreeBSD licensing is even more relaxed.

 

[Mikael H]

One thing I still don't get is why do we not see as many "distros" of FreeBSD as we see on Linux, given that FreeBSD licensing is even more relaxed.

The BSDs are separate operating systems to a larger degree than, I'd argue, most Linux distributions are. What we usually refer to as "Linux" is basically an ever-increasing collection of software on top of a core of GNU utils and the Linux kernel, plus some management tools that differ from family to family of Linux distributions.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg)

As per the link I shared earlier, the BSDs consist of a base system (comparable to Linux + GNU) which in the different BSD families has evolved in different directions depending on the focus of the operating system.

One reason for why we don't see a lot of BSD distributions (though there are some), is exactly this: In Linux, you grab the puzzle pieces you want - a kernel here, a utility there - while in the BSD mindset, forking and managing an operating system means a responsibility to port all relevant software to a similar-but-not-entirely-alike system. That's a task which is anything from trivial to almost impossible depending on how well singular pieces of software are written.
Another reason is one of market share: There were a few critical years in the early nineties where the legal status in the USA of the free BSD systems was contested, during which Linux simply was considered a safer choice for a company that wanted to run a cheap Unix on x86 hardware. This created a situation where, simply put, more people were comfortable working in a GNU+Linux environment than in a BSD one. This can easily be compared to Windows, where it's easy to find employees who know it simply because so many have been confronted with it as part of their schooling or in other companies. Such employees will often recommend purchasing more Windows rather than trying something else to solve a task.

 

[MacUser2525]

I started this thread to learn the differences between Linux and FreeBSD, and now I did. I won't say I have 100% understanding, but I got to the point where I know what is the difference between both and why both exists. One thing I still don't get is why do we not see as many "distros" of FreeBSD as we see on Linux, given that FreeBSD licensing is even more relaxed.

That is easy the BSD variants are the old stodgy with disipline in the development. The Linux is the new shinny lets break it, it don't matter crowd. All the time they get close to gettting it done but then the next new shinny comes long to break it again... That is extremely popluar with the yonng who could care less most times about what their predecessors did, they are old fools anyway who know nothing...

 

[millerj123]

That is easy the BSD variants are the old stodgy with disipline in the development. The Linux is the new shinny lets break it, it don't matter crowd. All the time they get close to gettting it done but then the next new shinny comes long to break it again... That is extremely popluar with the yonng who could care less most times about what their predecessors did, they are old fools anyway who know nothing...

Oh dear, this can't end well. I can't say that you're wrong, though.

 

[MacBH928]

The BSDs are separate operating systems to a larger degree than, I'd argue, most Linux distributions are. What we usually refer to as "Linux" is basically an ever-increasing collection of software on top of a core of GNU utils and the Linux kernel, plus some management tools that differ from family to family of Linux distributions.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg)

As per the link I shared earlier, the BSDs consist of a base system (comparable to Linux + GNU) which in the different BSD families has evolved in different directions depending on the focus of the operating system.

One reason for why we don't see a lot of BSD distributions (though there are some), is exactly this: In Linux, you grab the puzzle pieces you want - a kernel here, a utility there - while in the BSD mindset, forking and managing an operating system means a responsibility to port all relevant software to a similar-but-not-entirely-alike system. That's a task which is anything from trivial to almost impossible depending on how well singular pieces of software are written.
Another reason is one of market share: There were a few critical years in the early nineties where the legal status in the USA of the free BSD systems was contested, during which Linux simply was considered a safer choice for a company that wanted to run a cheap Unix on x86 hardware. This created a situation where, simply put, more people were comfortable working in a GNU+Linux environment than in a BSD one. This can easily be compared to Windows, where it's easy to find employees who know it simply because so many have been confronted with it as part of their schooling or in other companies. Such employees will often recommend purchasing more Windows rather than trying something else to solve a task.

That explains some of it, but given your explanation Linux Distros are really a curated bundle of software. This makes me wonder if it would be considered stable, as we all know software that is built together integrates better. Its scary to know that Linux comes without gurantees, meaning if something goes wrong, you are on your own. Given that people make a living based on computers, this is a scary thought. Although from what I hear, Linux is pretty solid stable specially with stuff like Debian stable releases.

 

[Mikael H]

That explains some of it, but given your explanation Linux Distros are really a curated bundle of software.

To be crass, this is true, to some degree, of all ongoing development projects: Any release is the result of somebody saying "this is good enough for general use" of a bundle of code.

This makes me wonder if it would be considered stable, as we all know software that is built together integrates better. Its scary to know that Linux comes without gurantees, meaning if something goes wrong, you are on your own. Given that people make a living based on computers, this is a scary thought.

As I said, I don't think I've had a production FreeBSD, Ubuntu LTS, or Oracle Linux server fall over in the over five years we've been running Unix-like servers. Periodically I've had a few of the Windows servers in our park poop themselves on a monthly basis after updates. Windows too is a large bundle of software developed by disparate teams, remember? The quality of the finished software is only as good as the quality control of the team assembling it, and you can be damned sure that any guarantees from Microsoft explicitly exclude them from liability due to faults in software.

What the LTS Linux releases do - to oversimplify things a bit - is they decide for each software package included on a specific version they consider stable enough to be supported for several years. Then they backport security fixes and sometimes functionality from later versions of this software into the version they support with the distribution for as long as the LTS release itself is supported. This of course takes resources, and that's why you have a limited number of original distributions that are considered "serious" choices for server use. All of these distributions also have more experimental lines for desktop and developer use, since there has to be some basis for selecting which software will be included in the next LTS release, and - as the time approaches - which versions to select for it.

 

[MacUser2525]

That explains some of it, but given your explanation Linux Distros are really a curated bundle of software. This makes me wonder if it would be considered stable, as we all know software that is built together integrates better. Its scary to know that Linux comes without gurantees, meaning if something goes wrong, you are on your own. Given that people make a living based on computers, this is a scary thought. Although from what I hear, Linux is pretty solid stable specially with stuff like Debian stable releases.

Not if running a business and are willing to pay for it support is there. Redhat has being doing it forever even before they launched as a public company in the first .com bubble (good luck when this second one bursts). That is correct a distro is simply a collection of existing software assembled into a usable system so you do not have to do it all on your own. Though there are some that try with the Linux from Scratch process when they build it all themselves. The difference between the distros is mainly in the packaging used and their selection of which software to provide though most as very similar in the packages installed. Even more so now the systemd infection has spread, the choice of how the system starts is now gone. They are becoming a single monolithic target for any hacker out there wanting to exploit it. The old Unix philosophy of doing one thing and doing it right has been lost in the quest for domination of the market and the new shinny they alway go for. It has been a thoroughly disgusting to watch I have used it since 1999 as my desktop until I got fed up in 2008 and ended up running a hackintosh after the couple of G4s I had bought were not up to the tasks needed. It has been all down hill since the corporate interest have managed to leverage the control. And though I do not like the way Apple has gone now, it is still the Best OS on the market, that same install done in March of 2008, a retail install as it was called then, is still running on my computer. All these years later without problem one update after another on many different computers. *nix on the desktop done extremely well. Too bad they would not licence ti to allow non-apple machines Windows would be dead in the water...

Something made me check it was early Feb of 2008 I did it.

MacUser2525:~$[B] ll Sites/[/B]


total 16


-rw-r--r--  1 MacUser2525  admin   1.1K 22 Jan  2011 favicon.ico


drwxr-xr-x  6 MacUser2525  admin   192B  7 Feb  2008 images/


-rw-r--r--  1 MacUser2525  admin   2.9K 22 Jan  2011 index.html


drwxr-xr-x  2 MacUser2525  admin    64B 18 Jan  2011 test/

[code]

You even get to see when I play a little with Apache in 2011...