Bye bye BSD, Hello Linux: A Sys Admin's Story

[litfan]

Oh man. Thanks so much for setting the record straight on BSD. I mean, here I was happily using it every day for the last 17 years both at home and in the enterprise. Just think, if I hadn't seen this post I might have been stuck in BSD land for the rest of my life.

I'm going to go right now and format all my hard drives and install some linux distro. I don't know which one, there's like 400 of them, but I'll flip a coin or throw darts at a board filled with random names like "Fedora" and "Ubuntu" and "Gentoo" and fucking "Manjaro" none of which mean jack shit too me but I read a post once on the internet telling me how crappy BSD was so I had to switch to Linux.

While I'm at it I'm going to head over to Netflix, that company that uses up like 70% of the bandwidth on the internet and tell them they need to format all their FreeBSD servers and go with Linux. We can't have internet content served up by FreeBSD, that would be WRONG. I mean who wants their video streams contaminated by BSD right? That's like herpes or something coming through your TV screen.

[MartinN]

Oh man. Thanks so much for setting the record straight on BSD.

BSD doesn't suck whatsoever. I feel both OS' are mature, reliable & usable. They've borrowed off each other's successes heavily. Netflix could do equally well with Linux (there is less than a handful of solid, well supported distros), just as Amazon probably could by using BSD on their Prime streaming servers. That isn't the point. What is, is that Linux has seen wider adoption everywhere as well as contributions far beyond BSD ever dreamed to achieve (IMHO). We have AT&T in large part to thank for curtailing BSD's development as well as giving rise to Linux and more importantly, the GPL without which Linux wouldn't havr been able to grow as much as it did ovet the last 2 decades.

I like both OS's. Linux has the greater momentum though, for now.

[profoundWHALE]

BSD doesn't suck whatsoever. I feel both OS' are mature, reliable & usable. They've borrowed off each other's successes heavily. Netflix could do equally well with Linux (there is less than a handful of solid, well supported distros), just as Amazon probably could by using BSD on their Prime streaming servers. That isn't the point. What is, is that Linux has seen wider adoption everywhere as well as contributions far beyond BSD ever dreamed to achieve (IMHO). We have AT&T in large part to thank for curtailing BSD's development as well as giving rise to Linux and more importantly, the GPL without which Linux wouldn't havr been able to grow as much as it did ovet the last 2 decades.

I like both OS's. Linux has the greater momentum though, for now.

I agree. Linux has had a ridiculous amount of contributions vs any other OS right now. Microsoft does most of their stuff, and as does Apple with their own OS, but they both contribute to Linux which is a powerful statement by itself.

[xeekei]

Oh man. Thanks so much for setting the record straight on BSD. I mean, here I was happily using it every day for the last 17 years both at home and in the enterprise. Just think, if I hadn't seen this post I might have been stuck in BSD land for the rest of my life.

I'm going to go right now and format all my hard drives and install some linux distro. I don't know which one, there's like 400 of them, but I'll flip a coin or throw darts at a board filled with random names like "Fedora" and "Ubuntu" and "Gentoo" and fucking "Manjaro" none of which mean jack shit too me but I read a post once on the internet telling me how crappy BSD was so I had to switch to Linux.

While I'm at it I'm going to head over to Netflix, that company that uses up like 70% of the bandwidth on the internet and tell them they need to format all their FreeBSD servers and go with Linux. We can't have internet content served up by FreeBSD, that would be WRONG. I mean who wants their video streams contaminated by BSD right? That's like herpes or something coming through your TV screen.

Just FYI, that Netflix taking up 60-70% of the bandwidth was actually peak hours, and only North America. Your point is still valid though.

[blackiwid]

90% of the users especialy companies that use BSD use it because its not gpl based.

All the other discussion is just blabla, both is good enough for most tasks, but mostly linux is better.

The pseudo-arguments about its one "big thing" bsd seems to have going for it, is ZFS the holy cow of bsd ^^. Again basicly a Lisence-only thing again.

All I see as example in the TechSNAP (same primary Host is the Guy from Linux Action Show) I hear him talking about here and there some maybe small advantages of bsd but nothing big, and he never talks about one thing that could be better in Linux ^^, because of course Linux is in every aspect worse than bsd ^^.

U cant argue about bsd basicly exclusivly in that term that u say your fs is better, because that feature is or will be come to linux with btrfs (even oracle works on it) too.

But again forget all about that technical stuff, nobody who likes and prevers the gpl will use bsd, k but maybe some people who hate gpl use linux anyway. At least the bsd people are more same-minded. Not so much trolls excpet they troll linux people/Sites ^^.

Yes it was a funny dream to think that "linux" is about a technical thing. U see in Android that linux can technicaly totaly suck, if its a unfree version (with google-apps and driver-blobs).

Linux has no real gain if you take away its idea of freedom.

Windows 8 is clearly better on a tablet (with tastatur dock or even without) than android is. Technicaly Linux cant always be better in every point in time etc. Even Widnows for <10" tablets is cost-free, so it cant be cheaper. The only reason for "Linux" (GNU) is its freedom. And of course its no freedom in vacuum, of course it has to be good enough technicaly.

Its even funny bsd people most likely only argue in comparsion to linux, what they think is better. they dont even compare to windows most of the time, because linux is the reference

So come down a bit... if you really think at the moment a nas or server with ZFS is absolutly not exchangable to a btrfs fs system because of some technical aspects just use it. But in the long run btrfs will be the standard.

[TheBlackCat]

90% of the users especialy companies that use BSD use it because its not gpl based.

Citation needed.

[profoundWHALE]

Citation needed.

The BSD license is very attractive for companies that want to have their own proprietary OS running on something like say, a router or server. Otherwise they just run Linux with their proprietary software running on top. The other thing it's great for is educational purposes. Some students actually develop something that people would buy, and they can sell it to a company.

[TheBlackCat]

The BSD license is very attractive for companies that want to have their own proprietary OS running on something like say, a router or server. Otherwise they just run Linux with their proprietary software running on top. The other thing it's great for is educational purposes. Some students actually develop something that people would buy, and they can sell it to a company.

blackiwid provided a particular statistic, but no evidence to support that statistic.

[blackiwid]

Citation needed.

I don?t think any orginisation asked that. But as example Apple which is a big example use bsd because of that reason, and the consoles ps3 I think? Even the bsd-network stack of course could only go into every windows because its not gpl. But "opensource" what bsd lisense is about.

If it would not be "opensource" microsoft could not "stolen" it, if it would be gpl they would have needed to opensource the hole windows at least the hole kernel.

So of course there is no poll that proofs or disprove it. Even if there would be one, I think the lie-quote would be high so it woudl be worthless. Most would be to proud to say they only choose bsd because of the lisense, because if you use something you have to say yourself that its the best in any way (would be interesting how this phenomen is called but I see it nearly every day). Any psychologists here? ^^ Whats the technical term, fanboyism? ^^

[russofris]

I don?t think any orginisation asked that. But as example Apple which is a big example use bsd because of that reason, and the consoles ps3 I think?

I believe Apple/PS3 use Darwin, which appears to be a derivative of FreeBSD.