Omg... Freebsd is still using shell scripts for startup and shutdown...
@miekg Also nobody is still using BSD. Well very few anyways.
@safigo @purpleidea @miekg Still very much the case.
OPNsense is FreeBSD-based. So is Juniper’s JunOS.
AIUI there are some exceptions for unusual/proprietary network silicon, but the BSD network stack is still where you go for high performance and stability.
@purpleidea @safigo @miekg That’s one benefit for proprietary systems vendors, but that doesn’t mean it’s not *also* more performant.
@curtosis @safigo @miekg The performance comes from the ASIC. We'd have better networking in those respects if Broadcom would release docs and let people program chips like the Tridents... Linux is making headway anyways with switchdev. Check it out. Society could be solving more interesting problems than secret silicon hiding.
@purpleidea @miekg I think you’ll find that the BSD are still widely used. It just doesn’t get a lot of attention. I’ve switched all my Linux servers to FreeBSD. It uses less resources, better network throughput, love the pf firewall and zfs built right in make this a no brainer for me. It’s so much simpler than Linux now.
@purpleidea @wouter @miekg given all the answers, the only reason to use FreeBSD is the BSD license
They've given talks on how using FreeBSD gives them technological advantages over and above what Linux could give them.
Could the license be considered an advantage by their business people? Maybe. But I don't believe it's their only reason, or even their main reason.
@safigo @miekg
- replies
- 1
- announces
- 0
- likes
- 0
@wouter @safigo @purpleidea are those talks available somewhere?
I don't see freebsd could be any better than linux or vice versa.
When I used it in the early 2000s I didn't like it too much, spoiler by the gnu userspace if you can believe that.
Is debian still doing a distro with the freebsd kernel?
Don't think they're available, no.
The best I know of is https://freebsdfoundation.org/end-user-stories/netflix-case-study/
No, Debian's kFreeBSD port is dead dead dead.
@safigo @purpleidea
In fact, that article states that 'contributing upstream' is part of what Netflix considers core to its success in using FreeBSD, which basically negates any so called benefit you might have in not being bound by the GPL...
@purpleidea @safigo
@wouter @safigo @purpleidea https://papers.freebsd.org/2019/FOSDEM/looney-Netflix_and_FreeBSD.files/FOSDEM_2019_Netflix_and_FreeBSD.pdf
s/freebsd/linux and the info stays the same
FreeBSD still outperforms anything Linux can throw at it at the high end though.
And https://people.freebsd.org/~gallatin/talks/OpenFest2023.pdf talks about 800Gb/s servers, where performance matters.
@safigo @purpleidea
@wouter @safigo @purpleidea I've heard those claims for years now. I remain highly skeptical
There are benchmarks, e.g., https://openbenchmarking.org/result/2406146-NE-2406131NE13&hni=1&sgm=1&sor#r-542e6001bf05f1eaa298d6ffc8001da894c3a653, in 'geometric mean of all benchmarks' at the bottom shows FreeBSD on top. The difference is small enough to not matter to most people, but large enough that if you run gazillions of machines it might matter.
@safigo @purpleidea
One advantage which FreeBSD has over Linux is that due to its smaller community, they can focus more on certain things. Linux has people pulling it in all kinds of, sometimes conflicting, ways. This is not as much of a problem for FreeBSD.
@safigo @purpleidea
@safigo @purpleidea @wouter @miekg FreeBSD has a much better network stack than Linux. It also has Jails which have a lot less overhead than Docker containers. It really depends on your use case. Use the best tool for the job.
@pertho @purpleidea @wouter @miekg I remember hearing great things about the FreeBSD networking stack ~20 years ago.
But looking at the current situation, I'd expect to see FreeBSD on every edge node of every big provider, especially companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, etc.
Instead, from what I've seen, most companies slowly moved from *BSD systems to Linux-based solutions. Even many routers have been moved to Linux.
So, my question is: why is that? Why don't we see FreeBSD everywhere alongside Linux today?
For me, Linux is just a simpler solution, since I'm an individual.
But for companies like Google, Meta, Cisco, Xfinity, AT&T, MikroTik, etc., it shouldn't be an issue to use FreeBSD on most of their infra and contribute to its growth. Especially given the nature of the BSD license.