Hacker News Reader

Comment by Const-me | Hacker News Reader

> and Linux provided that home on the best dollar-for-dollar processors on the planet.

FreeBSD was very competitive. They both were launched around the same time, first version of Linux released in 1991, 386BSD in 1992. They share a lot of features, i386 target, posix compatibility. BSD pioneered some very important technologies, kqueue (epoll was couple years later in Linux), jail (docker was a decade later), etc.

I still don’t understand why everyone uses Linux now, but BSD only stayed in very niche markets.

View on HN

I don't remember where I first heard it, but the best formulation that I've heard over the years is that the BSDs are for people that love Unix; Linux is for people that hate Windows.

I honestly think there's a latent explosion of interest waiting for the BSDs in the near future. The sprint to bring a "modern UX" to the Linux ecosystem in the last decade has made it extremely easy for newcomers to adopt, but has also made it pretty nigh impossible to figure out what's actually going on in the background if you weren't along for the transitional periods. Whereas with the BSDs, the immediate learning curve is much higher, but at the end of that curve, you have knowledge of a coherent system that obeys legible and documented rules and the feeling, if not the reality, that you, the user, are in control of your computer.

The explanation I've always heard is that the AT&T lawsuit [1] kneecapped BSD just as the x86 BSD variants were getting started.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_In....

> I still don’t understand why everyone uses Linux now, but BSD only stayed in very niche markets.

Myself and others would argue it's because of the GPL. If you can't distribute a binary without releasing the source, more contributions are going to flow upstream.

> I still don’t understand why everyone uses Linux now, but BSD only stayed in very niche markets.

The AT&T and BSD lawsuit shutdown BSD development for a year or so and is cited as a major reason why Linux became the dominant POSIX open source operating system[1]. Marshall Mckusick[2] says at the end of a talk that he asked Linus why he didn't use BSD and his response was the uncertainty of the lawsuit[3].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc..... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Kirk_McKusick [3]: 47:30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVSXXeiFLgk

BSD was subject to legal uncertainty at the time due to its relationship with Unix. By the time those uncertainties were resolved, Linux already had momentum.

There was a lot of FUD in BSD space back in 90s. People were worried they might get sued out of existence. And the original version of FreeBSD was lacking some critical things because they had to get rid of a lot of proprietary code to avoid the wrath of AT&T and its successors.

Additionally, FSF was in need of a Kernel and they chose Linux. There was a lot of evangelism involved. While BSD was recovering for the its troubled past, Richard Stallman and Co. were pushing Linux to the rest of the world.

Even Apple considered using Linux as a base for what would become Mac OS X — it was called MkLinux.

By the time BSDs managed to get their act together, it was already too late — Linux had gained critical mass.

I started using Linux in 93. Why not BSD? Linux was user friendlier at the time. Really. I installed BSD as well but out of the box my up arrow did not even give me my previous commands. Also Slackware was easier to install, gave more guidance. Also BSD was for top experts only. Info was harder to find.

What timeframe are we talking about here? Maybe I'm late to the party, but even for "special interest" Linux in the late 90s was already kind of well-known compared to the BSDs. (I was in school back then, no internet, and only learned about Linux from some folks already studying computer science). And I'm just using that point of data because when I came in contact with Linux there wasn't really much about FreeBSD, so either that was my bubble or it was technically competitive but had already lost the popularity contest.

> it was technically competitive but had already lost the popularity contest.

I think that’s the case. It never gained traction outside of niche markets. Most ISPs in late 90s were running a lot of BSD-based servers, companies like Apple, Juniper, Sony, Nintendo are still using BSD kernel and/or other components in their products, but it was and still is relatively little-known OS.

I can’t say I’m happy about that. I’m currently working on an embedded Linux-based firmware, I’d gladly switched to BSD. Maybe it’s just my irrational fears but I feel BSD is more reliable. However, that would require too much work to accomplish. I need stable and reliable GPU and WiFi drivers; hardware vendors (ARM and Realtek, respectively) only ship drivers for Linux, and I don’t think I’m competent in that area to attempt to port them, I never did substantial work on Linux nor BSD device drivers.

> I still don’t understand why everyone uses Linux now, but BSD only stayed in very niche markets.

People don't really use Linux, they use GNU. GNU utilities tend to be much more feature rich than their Unix counterparts. GNU and Linux are so intertwined it's easy to forget.

I could be wrong, but I think that GNU could run on top of BSD just as well as on top of Linux. If that's correct, then GNU doesn't explain why Linux beat BSD at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com