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Shining Arcanine
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Joined: 24 Sep 2009
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 Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 3:21 pm Post subject: FreeBSD versus Gentoo |
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I tried out FreeBSD yesterday. Here are some complaints I have:
- Installation is over automated. A tarball with instructing on where everything goes would be nicer.
- The installer installs documentation in roughly a dozen languages, which is bad when it is downloading from a mirror at speeds marginally better than dialup.
- The ports system does not have an equivalent for "--ask"
- The ports system does not appear to install default system wide configuration files, such as /usr/local/share/vim/vimrc. This also means that you get no colors by default on FreeBSD.
- csh and tcsh both have the delete key bound to tilda and sh have delete bound to ^[[3~. Perhaps bash has spoiled me, but I like it when delete is bound to itself.
- Searching for things in man does not highlight the searched text.
Here are some things FreeBSD does better than Gentoo that need to be fixed:
- System reboots cleanly terminate active ssh sessions such that they do not have broken pipes
- The /etc/rc.d/ scripts report the process id if you ask for status and the process is running.
- Some man pages in FreeBSD seem to be more detailed. For example, man ls has a description of how color configuration is done.
On a side note, I like how FreeBSD's licensing more than Gentoo's. BSD licensing is better in my opinion; BSD licensing appears to cater to developers first and users second.
Edit: I stand corrected. pkg_cutter does what emerge --depclean does if you maintain a whitelist of things that you want installed and provide that to it.
Last edited by Shining Arcanine on Wed Dec 22, 2010 6:14 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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phajdan.jr
Retired Dev
Joined: 23 Mar 2006
Posts: 1777
Location: Poland
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 4:02 pm Post subject: Re: FreeBSD versus Gentoo |
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| Shining Arcanine wrote: | | System reboots cleanly terminate active ssh sessions such that they do not have broken pipes |
Interesting. Is it some patch / configuration difference of OpenSSH, or different handling of TCP connections in the kernel? Did you test on other Linux distributions?
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Shining Arcanine
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Joined: 24 Sep 2009
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 4:53 pm Post subject: Re: FreeBSD versus Gentoo |
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| phajdan.jr wrote: | | Shining Arcanine wrote: | | System reboots cleanly terminate active ssh sessions such that they do not have broken pipes |
Interesting. Is it some patch / configuration difference of OpenSSH, or different handling of TCP connections in the kernel? Did you test on other Linux distributions? |
I would not know. You probably should ask the FreeBSD people.
Also, to avoid any confusion, I rebooted FreeBSD using the reboot command, rather than some other method (e.g. pressing the hardware reset button) |
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aCOSwt
Bodhisattva
Joined: 19 Oct 2007
Posts: 2537
Location: Hilbert space
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 8:17 pm Post subject: Re: FreeBSD versus Gentoo |
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My servers are running FreeBSD since V.6.0, I share different views than yours.
| Shining Arcanine wrote: | | Installation is over automated |
.
How strange it is to consider people always complaining about installation methods. Consider the number of threads here about Gentoo's install. Some want gui, some want as is, some others... Just because the method is new for them.
FreeBSD install method is... as it is ! Period ! Like Gentoo's one ! As is it !
Moreover, you cannot say that it is over-automated. You are free to install a very strict minimum bootable system via the semi-graphical installer and then do the remaining part by hands ! (This is actually what many of us do)
At the end of the day, the only difference FreeBSD install / Gentoo install is... that you do not need any foreign system running to start installing.
I personally find this convenient.
| Shining Arcanine wrote: | | The installer installs documentation in roughly a dozen languages, which is bad when it is downloading from a mirror at speeds marginally better than dialup. |
Pardon me but this is what I would call bad faith ! Either it is your connection's fault (and you are supposed to get a nice one... are'nt you supposed to install a server ?) Or you did not select the appropriate mirror.
I do not see *any* difference in transmission time between from my FreeBSD mirror and from my Gentoo mirror.
| Shining Arcanine wrote: | | The ports system does not have an equivalent for "--ask" |
Please #man portupgrade and read about the --interactive option
| Shining Arcanine wrote: | | The ports system does not appear to install default system wide configuration files, such as /usr/local/share/vim/vimrc. This also means that you get no colors by default on FreeBSD. |
Hrm... system wide configuration files do not stay in /usr/local/share. Do they ?
| Shining Arcanine wrote: | | Searching for things in man does not highlight the searched text. |
It does indeed but maybe you are using "more" as pager. Do try with "less" as pager.
In my opinion : The major differences I see :
+F : No need for some active system to install FreeBSD
+F : FreeBSD has got rid of the GIANT_LOCK since V7... Linux is still waiting for 2.6.37 to start avoiding when possible its equivalent.
-F : FreeBSD's scheduler does not allow near-realtime capabilities as Linux does.
-F : FreeBSD ignores ALSA. The only way to sound is via OSS and this leads to things totally unachieveable !
-F : Need to rely on obsolete Linux-Core emulation to get many soft running
-F : No or near to no support for Flash
-F : No or near to no support for Midi
Additionally, I would say that this is an important difference but would not say what is the best : FreeBSD Kernel follow traditionals beta, rc, r, legacy engineering process when linux-sources releases appear more... fire&forget...
Last edited by aCOSwt on Thu Dec 23, 2010 9:05 am; edited 4 times in total |
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Shining Arcanine
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Joined: 24 Sep 2009
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 8:29 pm Post subject: Re: FreeBSD versus Gentoo |
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| aCOSwt wrote: | | Shining Arcanine wrote: | | The installer installs documentation in roughly a dozen languages, which is bad when it is downloading from a mirror at speeds marginally better than dialup. |
Pardon me but this is what I would call bad faith ! Either it is your connection's fault (and you are supposed to get a nice one... are'nt you supposed to install a server ?) Or you did not select the appropriate mirror.
I do not see *any* difference in transmission time from my FreeBSD mirror than from my Gentoo mirror. |
I am in New York, I have Verizon Fios and I tried multiple mirrors, including MIT's mirror, which had the lowest ping time. There is nothing wrong with my connection. |
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CeleryStrings
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Joined: 24 Feb 2009
Posts: 15
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| Posted: Sat Dec 25, 2010 4:53 am Post subject: Re: FreeBSD versus Gentoo |
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Last edited by CeleryStrings on Sat Feb 15, 2014 6:34 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Shining Arcanine
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Joined: 24 Sep 2009
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| Posted: Sat Dec 25, 2010 5:18 am Post subject: Re: FreeBSD versus Gentoo |
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| CasimirCelerity wrote: | For a FreeBSD positive, I would say ZFS in kernel is a pretty big deal. Has handled lots of bad power offs on my end, and the snapshotting has saved my butt.
In terms of laptop, I would say proper suspend and resume is a pretty big advantage for linux. It has progressed in freebsd the past year, but my laptop still is a no go. |
I was under the impression that FreeBSD's file systems are designed for data integrity such that they were all equal in terms of data integrity. Do you consider ZFS to be more reliable than UFS? |
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CeleryStrings
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Joined: 24 Feb 2009
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| Posted: Sat Dec 25, 2010 4:04 pm Post subject: Re: FreeBSD versus Gentoo |
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Last edited by CeleryStrings on Sat Feb 15, 2014 6:34 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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aCOSwt
Bodhisattva
Joined: 19 Oct 2007
Posts: 2537
Location: Hilbert space
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| Posted: Sat Dec 25, 2010 6:40 pm Post subject: Re: FreeBSD versus Gentoo |
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| CasimirCelerity wrote: | | FreeBSD just removed the giant lock for the network stack for the 8.0 release. |
From 7.0 ! I m stuck with 6.4 on one server under which I need ATM. As ATM_CORE could not be made MPSAFE, they just removed ATM from 7.0 in order to get the entire network stack MPSAFE.
| CasimirCelerity wrote: | | There are still some things under the giant lock |
Yes ! You are right indeed. I admit having been a bit quick writing "got rid". A few system calls remain to be fixed. The fact that they are not, mainly impact VMs only.
| CasimirCelerity wrote: | | I would've listed OSS as a positive. |
Well, to be honest, I must say that I thanked OSS for offering me better solutions than in-kernel drivers.
But... do you remember in the <=6.0 times... the boot process being halted for the time needed to read 5 lines of OSS restrictions of use... 
Hopefully, they stopped going this way...
The big handicap I find to OSS is not being MIDI capable.
The big advantage I see to alsa is it's collection of plugins.
| CasimirCelerity wrote: | | I guess you don't like linux emulation, but flash has been working just as well as it does on linux for me under emulation. |
You guess right. Under one of the very first open-source OS to offer a full 64 bits system :
1 - Linux emulation was only x86 compatible
2 - Linux emulation was thanks to a port offering fedora core 4 (When fedora was V8 )
Yes, I thought that 32 bits + fc-4 + nspluginwrapper... the cost was a bit to high for the sole sake of flash.
| CasimirCelerity wrote: | | For a FreeBSD positive, I would say ZFS in kernel is a pretty big deal. |
Yesss ! You are indeed right ! This one sounding like an evidence to me now, I had forgotten mentioning the native in-kernel support for ZFS. Globally speaking, FreeBSD offers rock solid file systems. UFS2+S is a good choice too. The choice mainly depends on the processing power you can afford. ZFS is significantly more demanding than UFS2+S.
I cannot remember the number of times my amd laptop crashed because of overheating, strait in the middle of some compilation or rsync. Never ever lost any data, never ever needed the rescue cd, never-ever broke a super block ! Truly great ! |
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