this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
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Linux

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Hey! This is a Linux community

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

That's why I shared here. Because BSD community already running BSD :)

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The audacity. Do YOU see US going into windows communities to shill linux?

Oh. Yeah. Carry on then.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Look if you go to Windows community which is not similar to Linux/Unix like system it's bad on you. But BSDs and Linux are very similar in design philosophy and are dependent on each other. While windows is different thing of its own.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

But BSDs and Linux are very similar in design philosophy and are dependent on each other.

Interesting. Would you mind elaborating on the bold parts? Thank you in advance :D !

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Sorry for my wording. What I meant was While BSD and Linux are not dependent on each other, they do share a common Unix heritage and have influenced each other over the years.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Frequently software developed for one is commonly used on the other, such as openssh, iirc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

That makes a lot more sense. Thank you for clarifying!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

I think when it comes to tooling, some Linux tools are actually BSD software that works because of POSIX compliance. An example is OpenSSH.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago

Thank you, i've never used a BSD variant myself but am a long time Linux user. Very curious to the next posts!

[–] NegativeLookBehind 2 points 2 weeks ago

Excuse me while I light my pitchfork

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

Now, where did I put that Katana?🤔

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago

Sometimes we need to talk about grandpappy.

[–] just_another_person 17 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

BSD will always be faster. That's a given. It is not flexible, however. It has a very specific purpose. This is why Apple chose this as the origin for OS X, which has now been bastardized to an unrecognizable variation, but if you check the main kernel, will still read as DragonFlyBSD.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

BSD might be faster but companies choose BSD because the BSD License is much more flexible than the Linux General Public License. Apple was even able to create their own license, the APSL. They would not be able to do that using Linux.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

While that is true, the question is whether that's a good thing, or not, and for whom.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

It’s a good thing for the owners of the codebase, but often, a bad thing for the community (even if the community contributes to said codebase).

For example, FOSS maintainers sometimes will (want to) relicense to protect their income stream:

https://github.com/CaffeineMC/sodium-fabric/issues/2400

https://github.com/LizardByte/Sunshine/pull/150

While corporations might literally have maintainers sign away their rights so they can take the work from their own community:

https://lwn.net/Articles/937369/ (canonical requires a CLA, though this + the subsequent re-license might have happened anyway)

https://lwn.net/Articles/935592/ (RPM spec files are MIT licensed at the Fedora level. There are likely chnages to RPM files contributed by the community that are now source-restricted in RHEL)

https://networkbuilders.intel.com/docs/networkbuilders/accelerate-snort-performance-with-hyperscan-and-intel-xeon-processors-on-public-clouds-1680176363.pdf (See section 2.2. Previously, this work was BSD)

Mixed bag, really.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Faster in what sense? Would you kindly point me to the benchmarks used? It’s easy to find the opposite results so I’m curious.

[–] just_another_person 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Smaller footprint in general, compiled as one (not multimodal kernel+extensions), simpler security models, and simpler init system. All of these will make it snappier out of the box than Linux, just not in the ways you'd want, say, a desktop to be faster.

This just dropped as well. You can see where the differences are: https://www.phoronix.com/review/bsd-linux-threadripper-7980x

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

That makes some sense I suppose. What was it about DragonFlyBSD and macOS kernel?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I’m not sure how much I’d buy into phoronix benchmarks in this case. CentOS Strea, 9 was performing as good, if not better than, the recently released Ubuntu 24.04 and 2 week old FreeBSD 14.1 despite having a 3 year old kernel and being compiled with an equally old version of GCC. Linux is currently suffering from a pstate bug with AMD, too.

There’s a reason the BSDs are hardly used in HPC.

[–] just_another_person 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

JFC. The end all be all of Linux benchmarks, and you're standing up to discredit their results? Phoronix practically wrote the modern book on Linux benchmarks, but please tell us how they are wrong or mistaken.

3 other commentors have deleted theirs already for their inane fanboyisms. You want want to make 4, or do you have some new energy to bring to the conversation?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Why are you being inflammatory for no reason? I’m just saying I don’t think it’d be correct for an OS 3 years in the past to be neck and neck with modern stuff. Log off the computer and go outside lmao

[–] just_another_person 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Why are you? Touch grass.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

FreeBSD doesn't have desktop environment built in. So maybe running from command line or installation is a lot faster.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago

I have 3 *BSD vms on proxmox, OpnSense and TrueNAS as well as a GhostBSD desktop for 'play'. The TrueNAS started as a bare metal install and is now in it'd ~~3rd~~ 4th server

I also have 2 Macs in the house...

So I guess *BSD is well represented here, looking forward to the read

[–] Pacmanlives 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Very excited to see the rest of this series. I still run some BSD box’s. I really really enjoy it. I really wish they would support Docker at this point but it’s complex and I get it with the developers they have. Jails still work so so well. I am on a box I think I installed end of FreeBSD 9 or 10 on and just keep upgrading. That’s probably get to the 10 year mark at this point. I will have to go and check. It’s such a smooth system to run really a dream. Wish more people tried it especially

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

Agreed and FreeBSD keeps getting better at each upgrade.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Also there is podmon (testing version), https://wiki.freebsd.org/bhyve & https://bastillebsd.org/

NetBSD prefers qemu as far as I know.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

But bhyve is a hypervisor ( VMs ) and Bastille is jails. Neither of those is a solution for running OCI containers.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

I feel like the FreeBSD Community ist really underestimating how important OCI containers are in the Linux world. And how much easier they are to setup than vms and jails.

[–] MigratingtoLemmy 6 points 2 weeks ago

Lowendbox doing it is what really interests me

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Love the analogy of visiting Canada as an American to explain how BSD is different from Linux.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

i've had to use netapp ontap's freebsd and solaris 9 & 10 professionally and going to canada is exactly how it felt; one is vancouver (compared to california) and the other was new foundland.

[–] NegativeLookBehind 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Have you guys tried secCBSD?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] NegativeLookBehind 3 points 2 weeks ago

No. Not sexy enough.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

I tried FreeBSD for several months about 15-20 years ago. I really liked how clean the filesystem and environment felt, and have suggested it for many people over the years. In the end I couldn't get around their license vs GPL.

[–] TCB13 -1 points 2 weeks ago

Next step: macOS.