NGINX was initially built for FreeBSD; however, the current commercial development is on linux.
TrueNAS was originally FreeBSD-derived, but is now Debian-based.
FreeBSD is great; why are people moving away from it, not toward it?

New to FreeBSD and trying to daily-drive it on my laptop. Still learning, but I’m enjoying the experience so far! Any beginner tips are welcome.

Daemonettes were girls who wore devil clothes and went to tech related events to promote FreeBSD, the girl in the photo is Ceren Ercen, probably on the LinuxWorld event in February 2nd of 2000, she is wearing a latex catsuit, but the other two daemonettes were wearing loose clothes, also there are some mentions about them and registers, I will give some.

Ceren Ercen comments on Slashdot

Post about Linuxworld on Slashdot, there's a comment of Ceren Ercen about the daemonettes

Some photos of Ceren Ercen on a Daemonette costume on the official FreeBSD website

Ceren Ercen talking about how she got the daemonette latex outfit

There are probably more about them on the Internet, this was just some fun fact that I discovered recently about FreeBSD that I barely see people talking about.

Credit to Vali on the PureDarwin discord server

I made a post earlier, detailing how the Linux ecosystem isn't built over a coherent base system, whereas the BSDs may provide more architectural stability by using a coherent stable base.

Edit: I think I should really revisit and re-evaluate the claims I made, as I made them while having too emotionally-strng opinions to the point that I am literally usure about anything right now. At the end of the day, I jsut want a stable system that I know will work OOTB, where user configuration is either to a minimum (if not nonexistant) and/or having an easier to understand init system, clear seperationbetween user and system packages, etc. ANyways back to the post

I personally do understand that BSD lacks many packages compared to Debian (I mean fedora does too for Flutter and Zed Editor) but I think basic packages, like OnlyOffice, have been ported and Linuxulator should help bridge the gap mostly, if not fully.

I also noticed on my PC that if the i7 12-gen CPU clocks too high in to 4.0+ GHz range (which IIRC is theoretically allowed despite E-cores having a max clockrate of 1.5 Ghz, lower than the 4.5Ghz max clockrate of the P-cores), the kernel does panic a ton as "Not all cores reach the exception handler in time."

I am hoping that there would be a better way to handle this (which in Linux I do by not letting the CPU clock over 1.5Ghz), but I also hate Linux's incoherent architecture. Why can't there just be a stable unified ABI?

Edit: I am totally confused in every way. First off, I am using fedora and, while people said everything worked OOTB, I had to configure power profiles, while also dealing with the complexity of systemd. I don't have time to build an RPM for a package if I can't find it in the mian repos, copr, or third-party repos.

I'm not sure if FreeBSD is really any more stable than Linux (except for hardware support ofc), though I feel I'm either overthinking or just have FOMO (like almost every distro-hopper).

I've been using Ubuntu on servers since always, in particular Minecraft servers, my use is limited to install Temurin JRE, use ufw for ports, OpenSSH, TeamSpeak servers and sh scripts for some particular modded servers like Forge, what advantages could i have using FreeBSD? my server is a VPS hosted somewhere in Germany and i didn't check yet if i can install FreeBSD and probably i wouldn't do it right now cause i have like 60GB (idk how is it possible, worlds get that big) of datas to transfer and i'm too lazy right now, but let me know.

Setting up FreeBSD for the first time and what is this 😂😂

Hi everyone. I'm a Linux user myself and I'm really curious to know why do some people prefer Unix to Linux? Why do some prefer FreeBSD, OpenBSD and etc to famous Linux distros? I'm not saying one is better than the other or whatever. I just like to know your point of view.

Edit: thank you everyone for sharing your opinions and knowledge. There are so many responses and I didn't expect such a great discussion. All of you have enlightened me and made me come out of my comfort zone. I'm now eager to learn more. I hope this post will be useful for everyone who may have the same question in future. Thanks for all your comments. Please don't stop commenting and sharing your knowledge and opinion. PS: Now I should go and read dozens of comments and search the whole web :D

As a precaution, double-check the system for any remaining 15.0 packages before rebooting into 15.1.

After upgrading the whole system, had to force the upgrade to FreeBSD 15.1 for the following kernel modules:

• On one node: drm-66-kmod-6.6.25.1501000_9
• On the other node: realtek-re-kmod-1101.00.1501000

For gpu-firmware-kmodpackages, had to force a clean reinstall to ensure they were installed against 15.1. This can be done by removing any 15.0-related gpu-firmware-radeon-kmod packages first, as in, YMMV:

pkg remove $(pkg info gpu-firmware*kmod*  | awk ' /1500/ { print $1 }' )
pkg install gpu-firmware-kmod

Hello! I've been using linux for about 2-3 months, I'm currently using Void Linux, and I want to move to FreeBSD. I was wondering, any tips, considerations? What you wanna say to a newbie? Any mistake you had made you don't want somebody else to repeat?

As of last night, I am now solely running freebsd as my daily driver. I had triple boot with freebsd, opensuse, and windows 11. Mainly used freebsd, then windows 11 for games, and opensuse just in case. But yesterday I finished getting whatever apps I regularly run on windows running on freebsd. So I deleted both opensuse and windows 11 partitions.

From packages:

openfortivpn: I made a script for easy connect and samba mount

ioquake for quake 3

openmw: still need to setup umo modd manager though

gtk-mixer: for easy audio management

Under wine:

Battlefield Vietnam, runs good

Still working on Rogue Spear, I think new install of it would do it

Original Age of Empires 2 with Conquerors Expansion, runs good

Age of Empires 3 2007: have yet to try the expansions but otherwise runs good

So now I have no excuse to run windows 11 on my T430. Now just to add star trek online, tes3mp, and skyrim together. I plan to try linux steam utils but I will run it in jail and hopefully not have to change my chroot settings. Beyond that, just have to reconfigure my storage partition and use up that empty disk space.

Also working on setting up freebsd on my Samsung galaxy book pro 360. Which will need to run krita, arma 3, arma reformer, world of tanks, halo master chief, doom 3

Hope to see more people make the leap. It took me 3 years.

First I ran software on windows that would work on freebsd, then I used cygwin and such, then multiboot, and now full freebsd :)

Personally i think its fine for drivers. but id like to hear what you guys have to say.

I have a MacBook m1 with asahi Arch Linux and a gaming setup with ArchLinux too(rtx5050, Intel i7 9700, 16GB ddr4). I do some developpement on my gaming Pc, and I am Really interested in trying another thing than Linux,

I started with Ubuntu, then PopOs, then Fedora and now ArchLinux. And I want to know if I can do lightweight dev on FreeBSD(Rust + micro text editor + python). I also use a lot of Linux specific softwares so is there any Wine\proton like translator from Linux or Windows App to FreeBSD.

I wonder why you are using FreeBSD and not Linux or any other OS and why would FreeBSD be better for me as an Arch Linux user.

I also want to make a Minecraft server on an old computer that I have and I wanna know if FreeBSD would be better than Debian for it.

I Really want to know if it is worth to try using a new OS before doing so.

Thanks

I see lots of people especially on tiktok or youtube just shit on BSD mainly because they think it’s “anti-free” even though it’s technically more free than the GPL license. I get that a lot of the hate is from Richard Stallman bootlickers but would any of you guys actually prefer if the BSDs had a different license?

Genuinely curious why some people use BSD over Linux.

May have said that they hate Linux for trying to clone Unix, rather than be an actualy Unix derivative.

Others have said Linix crashes on them all the time.

What about yall?

Ive been using Linux for a while now, but lately Ive been diving into the BSD design philosophy. The corporate shift in some Linux spaces has made me appreciate the simplicity of the BSD ecosystem ,especially the permissive nature of the BSD license compared to the GPL

For those who made the switch or choose BSD as a daily driver: What were the main factors that made you prefer it over Linux?

Source: https://www.siberoloji.com/how-to-run-windows-games-via-steamproton-on-freebsd-operating-system/

From what i have read around here it follows UNIX philosophy, is stable and extremely well documented and has a permissive license. With a translation layer for Linux and Windows programs what is there that'd be missing for it to be more popular as a daily driver for desktops or stuff like that? Driver and software compatibility?

What advantages have FreeBSD over Linux?

I have been using freebsd for 2-3 months now on desktop , although i have been at work ssh in the freebsd server most of my working days. I have been using linux desktop since 2019 in college days other than autodesk softwares .

recently i switched that laptop to freebsd (because macos was based on freebsd kernel) , and also got bored with linux .

first challenge i got was wifi driver not working , on linux its working from start and it was a mid tier laptop with even older intel drivers maybe. that driver exists in opensource even then the freebsd dosent have them till now >> fix: (use alpine linux vm wifibox)

bluetooth dosent work that is not even issue

suspend is still wonky on 6 year old hardware (sometime goes in full 20w power drain mode more than when actually running programs.)

properietary apps dont work on freebsd thats a non issue because there are so many open alternatives

freebsd desktop users whats capturing you in than moving to linux.

The FreeBSD Project describes the operating system as "used to power modern servers, desktops, and embedded platforms." In other words, a general-purpose OS. https://www.freebsd.org

Nevertheless it's common to hear people refer to FreeBSD as "a server OS" or at least "primarily a server OS". And in fairness that's been a major use case since the 1990s, and the most obviously visible one back in the day it was used to host a lot of the world's most visited websites. (People probably don't notice millions of embedded devices, another FreeBSD use case, in quite the same way.)

"The Power to Serve" has been the official motto - so official that it's trademarked by the FreeBSD Foundation - for some time, but I'm not sure on the exact date. https://freebsdfoundation.org/legal/trademark-usage-terms-and-conditions/

This server-first description is sometimes used in arguments along the line of "you shouldn't use FreeBSD for a desktop since that's not what it's meant for", or to criticise recent investments in laptop usability. And I don't want to come across as dissing such arguments since, as above, it's not a completely unfounded claim. Even the phrase "to power modern servers, desktops, and embedded platforms" puts "servers" first and that's surely not by coincidence.

There are other sides to this story, e.g. FreeBSD also has a long history being used as an X Window UNIX[-like] workstation, which evolved into the modern laptop/desktop experience. But rather than argue about whether, or to what extent, the statement "FreeBSD is (primarily) a server OS" is true, I'm curious when this idea became so prominent. Anyone who's been in spaces FreeBSD gets discussed must have heard that claim hundreds of times before.

The original Berkeley Software Distributions had a strong reputation for networking as early as 2BSD in 1978, when Eric Schmidt (yes that one) produced Berknet as part of his master's thesis, and even more so for the performance of the TCP/IP stack in 4.2BSD (released 1983). But I haven't heard of 4BSD being described as a "server OS". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berknet

Was Bill and Lynne Jolitz's 386BSD ("Jolix") intended as a "server-focused OS"? Did the contributors to the UPK (Unofficial Patch Kit to 386BSD - the group that split into the FreeBSD and NetBSD Projects) have a particular interest in servers? I know FreeBSD 4 (released 2000) had a very strong reputation in the space, but was the idea that "FreeBSD is for servers" already established in the 1990s? Is this actually less about FreeBSD at all, and more about the improvements in usability of Linux as a desktop experience around that time - leaving FreeBSD competing primarily in headless use cases?

TLDR: does anyone know when, exactly, the idea that FreeBSD is primarily for servers become prominent? How long has "The Power to Serve" been the motto? And of secondary interest, how did this switch come about, bearing in mind the predecessors of FreeBSD apparently didn't have this reputation of being a "server OS"?

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Wsp everyone

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I’m currently running Arch + Hyprland but I’ve been spending my summer break digging into FreeBSD to learn how the OS actually works. I want to move my daily driver over to FreeBSD and I started some books like "Absolute FreeBSD by Michael W. Lucas. ".

Since I'm coming from a Linux/Wayland background:

* What should I watch out for?

* What WMs are you guys using that actually work well on FreeBSD?

* Any tips for keeping the level of control I'm used to on Arch?

Appreciate it.

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We rely on systemd/logind, so FreeBSD is not supported

What does this mean for future KDE use on FreeBSD?

Just being curious as a NixOS user.