I like the idea of FreeBSD, but I can’t see the point of giving up on my Linux conveniences to switch over to it. What advantages does it provide, and are they worth the switch, considering I’m losing a lot of software, as well as any semblance of gaming?
What advantages does it provide
ZFS, mostly. There are some smaller peripheral things (like much better manpages), but these days the big one is probably ZFS. Zero licensing conflicts allows it to be an integral part of the kernel.
FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE switched to the OpenZFS implementation[1]:
The ZFS implementation is now provided by OpenZFS. 9e5787d2284e (Sponsored by iXsystems)
So no big differences now, except for the licensing.
Can you explain the differences between the license like I’m five?
Linux is licensed under the GPL, which is described as “copyleft.” The GPL requires that if you want to use GPL code you need to license your modified code under the GPL.
FreeBSD is licensed under the BSD license, which is a permissive license. Basically as long as you stick the license statement in your documentation you can do whatever you want with BSD-licensed code. This is why commercial uses (like the Wii’s OS) tend to be BSD-based rather than Linux-based.
The advantage is that you can rebrand it, close the source and sell it as your invention.
Btw, did you know that Apple invented Unix?
Apple invented Unix?? What the hell are you talking about?
Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna at Bell Labs developed and invented Unix.
This was a joke about how Apple just takes open source stuff (in this case, they used FreeBSD as a basis for MacOS/iOS/iPadOS/tvOS/watchOS), rebrands it and then claims it was theirs.
💀
Dont think BSD is ever going to be a Linux competitor, it’s not meant to be honestly. But there’s always space for a lightweight and fast general purpose OS that can (among other things) boot up really quickly.
Still dont get the point of freebsd.
Unbreakably stable, cohesive (no need to fit and manage tens of different pieces to get a get a functionning OS), performant, bhyve, BSD licensed (can be a pro or con tho). It has quite a lot of stuff that makes it worthy of Linux or other BSDs.
EDIT: Almost forgot ZFS.
There’s an old saying: “Linux users use Linux because they hate Windows. BSD users use BSD because they love Unix.” Obviously this is not true for every individual user, but I think it describes a trend or pattern.
I’ve heard “Linux is a PC operating system that’s like Unix; BSD is a Unix operating system that runs on PCs.”
FreeBSD is the tool you don’t know you need, and then suddenly there’s the perfect use case, because those BSD alchemists never get tired of tinkering on it and suddenly BSD overtake Linux or Windows in some areas. You think Linux is everywhere, same with BSD its just better at hiding.
and then suddenly there’s the perfect use case
Yeah but like WHAT?
Still , as with Linux, you spend hours in configuring something that in windows just installs and runs … not saying windows is the best OS , but as all companies … it is less time consuming and everything just runs on it.
