Ask HN: What stops you from using BSD as main workstation OS? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What stops you from using BSD as main workstation OS?

25 pointsjayp141835 comments

Basically what title says.

- Hardware support out of the box

I can be given a work laptop, slap some Debian or derivative along with XFCE, and I know that most hardware will work out of the box without much fuss (including but not limited to: webcams, video cards, wireless/bluetooth, thunderbolt docking station).

- Containers

They're just very good. FreeBSD looks like it has most of the pieces to get containers going but it's not their priority to get that going. The people at Joyend did that, reimplementing the docker server APIs to manage underlying zones. I wonder why don't FreeBSD do something similar.

- Reference documentation

I like to use RHEL and derivatives (CentOS) when I can, and the reference documentation its so, so, so good, ample and complete. The FreeBSD reference guide is good, but not as thorough and/or up to date as the RHEL documentation.

- systemd & NetworkManager

They're rock solid, battle tested and well-thought. systemd is much more than init and does a lot of system management, stuff that previously was simply not being done by anything else. BSDs lack that completely -- see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_AIw9bGogo

Funny, I choose OpenBSD (back in '94) instead of Linux as a desktop (text-only) because it had very good documentation available for kernel and userland stuff.

I am typing this from Ubuntu because I need some basic Wine emulation, Docker, and K8s. Not for work, just for tinkering.

I still have an OpenBSD vm around, but I don't use it much :-(

FreeBSD arguably did containers before Linux — except they’re called Jails in the BSD world.

But it looks like FreeBSD is joining the Linux container party with their recent release which implements initial support for native Linux containers.

Don’t forget the Arch wiki for documentation! Sure, only a minority of users run Arch, and probably a minority of those users are running it in production. But, it has some amazing documentation, especially when it comes to weird combinations of things people don’t usually see.

Popularity. I need to spend my time getting my job done not messing around trying to figure out why some tool that just works on Linux isn't working now. I really like BSD but I can't afford the time to get into the details of why something is broken when it just works on Ubuntu.

I agree. BSD just needs some benefit to use over Linux to consider the time wasted a good return. It used to be zfs but recently I just don't have it.

I use OpenBSD on all my utility boxes like firewalls, VPN endpoints, and internal nameservers. I use FreeBSD for my network storage. I find them to be a massive net savings admin hassle for those roles, but it's way, way too much hassle for any web server I have now and there's just no way I can tolerate either as a workstation. I might as well run Windows... Even MacOS is too much of a hassle to use as a main workstation. Linux offers "locally run all your stuff exactly as it is on prod", in exchange for a kinda janky desktop experience. It's worth it to go MacOS on the laptop as it's just so much slicker in exchange for not being able to do everything on the go. But I guess it all depends on what kind of stuff you're supporting.

I have a desktop and a laptop on OpenBSD already. They work fine.

One reason that I still have a Linux computer is that OBSD doesn't do SATA hotplugging. I use that for swapping an off site backup drive. More of a server issue.

My TV stuff all has hardware that only runs on linux. Also a server issue in my case.

Weirdly enough, for me the limits on BSD seem to be more on things that run on a server. Desktop use these days is just about having a browser that works.

Agree with you, browsers sux.

Time. And hardware, yes.

I run OpenBSD on an ancient T42 Thinkpad. IBM. I was very happy with the quick, easy install and extremely low memory usage — 53mb's with Xorg on idle. Sadly can't be main station because too weak for modern computer tasks. For text-based it's perfect.

Will try FuguIta, Live OpenBSD on USB to see his it runs on modern hardware, but now about to install GhostBSD on it. I botched a NomadBSD install after upgrading it to FreeBSD —CURRENT to try to solve issues like touchpad dead, audio out. I'm a noob and it's a (too) modern machine.

So I have mentally made the switch to *BSD — and as soon as I get one of my desktops up and running I will run OmniOSce, OpenIndiana and/or some other illumos based distro. It's worth it just to see the bootloader print: Starting UNIX…

Hardware support. I dont have the time or patience to port drivers for all the weird stuff I swap in and out. Lack of useful graphics drivers and 802.11ac support as well in that category. I'va had loads of troubles getting wifi cards in general to work across many BSD's and honestly I'd like to help, but its just way to much initial barriers to being useful for that kind of stuff.

FreeBSD tends to do best, and interestingly Nvidia even ships FreeBSD drivers, but from what I hear they're pretty bare bones.

Nothing, I switched from Linux to OpenBSD and it’s been great. I could see people bemoaning the lack of their flatsnaps and wine.

I switched from BSDs to Linux as main OS about 10+yrs ago, Linux got good enough. Linux has a wide range of apps. BSD is reserved for very specific use cases. If I want to run Unix on a very weird hardware maybe NetBSD. If I really care about everyday useable secure hardware then OpenBSD. I might explore FreeBSD for networking if I'm really convinced that network is the bottleneck and I'm hitting scaling issues granted I almost feel it's cheaper to just throw money at the problem and get more Linux boxes.

Having to resolve merge conflicts of scripts I never touched during an upgrade

In general, I don't trust FreeBSDs upgrade process after failing it several times on both desktop and server. The merging system scripts is a huge problem, but I've had other problems as well.

Personally I don't install any OS that forces me to manually create my partitions. Ultimately it's laziness on my part but also frustration: if I've never used the OS before, how should I have an opinion on what partitions I need/what size they should be?

That's not restricted to the BSDs, obviously. I also can't be arsed with Arch for that reason.

But the main reason is that I actually quite like Linux. I find it comfortable and I'm not really interested in switching any more.

The fact that Debian works fine for me gives me no reason to switch to BSD. I've heard wonderful things about it, but I just don't have enough reason to move.

so far some of the ssues I had (used NetBSD and FreeBSD) * h/ware compatibility (usb camera/mic not recognised, audio crashes)(FreeBSD) * gfx acceleration low (NetBSD) * software issues, chromium did not work with gnone-keyring (FreeBSD) * rtl-sdr s/ware PITA , there is support but not all the eg Linux apps work there (FreeBSD) also , mandatory in my case: work->home USB share files using LUKS disk encryption (no support from BSDs with the exception of Dragonfly) also I need virtualbox to test sites before production, alas this exist only on FreeBSD.

in general my issues were due to h/ware compatibility, FreeBSD is a great OS - esp for servers. YMMV I know people that run Free/NetBSD and have no issues, but they mainly use a browser (Firefox) plus some opensource apps, this is not my case.

Scroll Lock. My keyboard doesn't have that key. It makes using terminals efficiently impossible.

Nothing. macOS is my daily driver.

Deprecation of GNU userland is a major factor.

Which *BSD: Open, Net, Free, Firefly?

Even if I had figured that out, I don't trust that the server packages I want to use have enough people using it to have sorted out differences in packaging configurations and defaults between platforms.

There was a Linux/Debian userland packages on BSD flavour (can't recall the name) that seemed interesting but gave up on for a reason I also don't remember.

The fact that I'm an ios developer

same

I've been using OpenBSD on my laptop for quite a while, but its filesystem is a nightmare for cases where the system might suddenly crash or experience power losses. I will probably return to OpenBSD as soon as they implement something better than FFS2 in the kernel.

somebody's going to tell you that you're using it wrong, probably.

I swear by XFS and ZFS.

KVM. as is: running OSX as guest on a VM with acceptable performance ( vmware/virtualbox are painfully slow ) for compiling iOS apps.

I tried installing GhostBSD on my laptop (Dell Precision M6800) and I couldn't get it to install, even with the GUI installer. I tried a couple times and then just gave up and installed Ubuntu

I managed to install GhostBSD on a MacBook Air 11", but had to set up the partitions first from another Linux partition. The trackpad works, but not comfortably.

FreeBSD and OpenBSD didn't even have GUI installers, and without advanced partitioning, I think the OS is "proud" to be the only OS on the computer, and will end up being relegated to virtual machines.

Lack of like people describing how they use *bsd for modern life. Truthfully I hardly touch my personal computers these days. That time is mostly absorbed into “chores.”

Why doesn’t linux uses userland approach compared to bsd

Nothing. I write code for work and school on a variety of Macs.

smaller online community, harder to find solutions,

fear for potential driver issues.

usability wise, don't see too much difference compared to linux.

i downloaded an ISO and installed it in a VM. Network "card" didn't work out of the box so i left it.

Always hardware support

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