Ask HN: Does anyone here use a BSD for their main OS? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Does anyone here use a BSD for their main OS?

35 pointslynndotpy29 comments

I'm one of those insufferable Linux nerds who went to Linux early in life after getting fed up with Windows. People said the grass was greener on the other side, and IMO they were right!

But I've heard tell of fields of even greener grass, all descendants of a mythical "BSD".

But I'm wondering if that grass is greener only in theory. Are these tales of verdant fields true? I don't have the same amount of free-time to tinker that I had when I first tried Linux, but I have the same curiosity.

So, to my question: Does anyone here use BSD in any 'real' capacity? Say, as a personal desktop or a server or an embedded system?

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I use FreeBSD daily since 2005.

Currently on ThinkPad W520 laptop:

- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2022/04/14/freebsd-13-1-on-th...

I used desktops in the past or other ThinkPad Laptops.

I still prefer it to Linux/Windows/macOS on the laptop/desktop for many reasons.

Some if these reasons I wrote here:

- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2020/09/07/quare-freebsd/

Regards.

Great blog post.

It doesn't sound like something FreeBSD would do, but I wonder how much more traction Jails would get, if it was renamed to "FreeBSD Containers."

The name Jails always struck me as a more appropriate name for RBAC or similar.

It's sometimes easy for those of us who've been here several decades to forget that a vast percentage of people in the industry now were too young to remember, let alone be aware of the FreeBSD <=4.6 days.

Not sure. I sometimes myself use 'containers' for them - as this is just what they are:

- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2021/12/15/secure-containeriz...

- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2019/06/05/rabbitmq-cluster-o...

When Jails were implemented this 'feature' was called OS Level Virtualization. When Docker was introduced in 2014 it renamed itself from that OS Level Virtualization to Containers and it got a lot of traction.

Linux had earlier attempts at OS Level Virtualization like OpenVZ for example (used that in the past too).

The World also had a lot of other 'container' technologies before Docker such as

- FreeBSD Jails

- Solaris Zones/Containers

- IBM WPAR

- HP Virtual Machines

- HP SRP Containers

... but for some reason Docker was 'the thing' instead of them - while doing generally the same or less better.

Regards.

I use OpenBSD for my main laptop, FreeBSD for my backup laptop, and OpenBSD on an APU2 as a router in my home lab.

Depending on your use case and patterns, OpenBSD may be completely useful or totally lacking; it doesn't have bluetooth, you're not going to be able to use proprietary software or play many games, and the smaller community and tighter security standards make the available pool of ported software smaller. However, it has great laptop support, an extremely cohesive and well-documented userland, and a very simple and easy install/upgrade process.

FreeBSD can basically replace Linux for any usecase except laptops, because it's power management kinda sucks. It has optional Linux binary compatibility, WINE, the bhyve hypervisor, ZFS support, FreeBSD jails, more ports than many Linux distros, and a decently cohesive userland. I far prefer OpenBSD for actual daily use, but FreeBSD is perfectly usable.

> Free/OpenBSD laptop support

Very useful anecdote - thank you

I've been using FreeBSD as my only OS, for servers, Retro Gaming System, on the Raspberry Pi, HTPC and desktop for 13 years.. Check out my Youtube channel with mainly desktop orientated slant.... You'll be amazed at what it can do.... https://www.youtube.com/robonuggie

Check his youtube channel for real, it's amazing

Not really. I don't have any specific reason to move, no argument has been made to me of something that will work better in BSD. But I'm more than willing to hear what people have to say.

In general I follow the money. Even in Open Source, the things that work best are generally the things that have more people dumping money on it. Linux has soooo much more money poured to it they're not even in the same galaxy as BSD. I don't wanna have to go back to the early 2000's time of having to fight against broken graphics drivers or jumping 1000 hoops to have wireless or a touchpad working.

I use OpenBSD as my home router, on a tiny pcengines APU4. Also have some virtual server instances at cloud providers for various tasks.

Been doing that for a long, long time, and never regretted it. OpenBSD is just such a clean and straightforward system.

20 years ago, I used to run OpenBSD as the main OS on my desktop. I don't remember why I stopped and went back to Linux, but it was most likely both for hardware support reasons and for running binary only software. I later switched to MacOS exclusively for desktop purposes.

Whenever I buy a new laptop, I install OpenBSD (and inevitably despise the experience), then install FreeBSD (and remember how I need some things that simply don't work in BSD), then end up using Arch.

This last FreeBSD install was working perfectly, but my wifi card had a breaking bug so I went to Arch. I've been waiting for almost 3 years for Arch to break hard enough to need a reinstall so that I can go back to FreeBSD (now that the wifi card is fixed). But Arch just keeps on tickin'

I am too used to gnu tools to use it. It’s doable but then I’m back to the MacOS hell.

I do like how simple and cohesive it is though. Things are super simple. No systemd, too. Also the community is small but very helpful. And the handbook and documentation is great. Plus ZFS is baked in.

I switched my build server (I code on my macbook and build on a machine in my basement) to FreeBSD. Just for fun though, I didn't have any pressing need to switch off of Linux. In fact, there isn't really much of a difference. The terminal commands seem more "Unixy" and "oldschool" and also more sensical/sensible.

I tried to run it on a laptop, but driver support lags behind Linux (which already lags Windows). Driver quality (which affects things like wifi connection stability) is also worse (anecdotally).

The major selling point of BSD seems to be servers. There are tons of interlocking security features like jails and capabilities built into the kernel.

I use OpenBSD on my one computer; it fully meets my needs; I find it a minimal, clean, functional system. It allows you to do all the things you would expect from a desktop, except those for which there is no third-party support.

Not really, I have and do occasionally use FreeBSD and NetBSD though. Its one of those cases where you have to pick the hardware for the OS, not the other way around, as even "supported" hardware may not work.

Most of the issues I've had have been bugs in networking drivers, lack of graphics drivers can be hindering depending on use case. Most miserable experience of my life was trying an RDP session on DragonflyBSD with nothing but a generic framebuffer driver.

I am not opposed to putting NetBSD on retro machines, such as my Alpha, but the retrocomputing community tends to think I'm crazy for that.

I use OpenBSD on my laptop, home NAS and webserver.

It might not be ideal (performance wise, filesystem) but I don't have much time to learn and manage 3 different OSs (I do it in my spare time, ).

I actually deliberately familiarized myself with OpenBSD knowing that it was a clean and neat OS, so that I could gain useful knowledge and habits with moderate invested time, and be able to leverage it later on.

And I do almost never find myself running in circles trying to understand what's wrong, as I would with Linux back then.

Yeah, I even have it on my phone. It's called macOS/iOS.

Technically a microkernel implementing common Unix syscalls plus BSD userland.

I used GNU/Linux for 7-8 years, but returned back to FreeBSD using it for dozen of yeas. On each home and work PC, on each VPS and server I rule. Only that OS. http://www.stargrave.org/WareHistory.html http://www.stargrave.org/Ware.html

Not as main OS, still use it for very important tasks: my home NAS uses XigmaNAS which is FreeBSD based, and I plan to return soon to a BSD based firewall such as OpnSense. I'm very happy for the experience, however, at least in the above incarnations, it still doesn't fully support 802.11ac and the ARM architecture, which is a bummer because they're becoming ubiquitous.

How do you like XigmaNAS?

I sometimes hear it in discussions on TrueNAS. Did you try TrueNAS?

> How do you like XigmaNAS?

I probably lack the expertise to rate it from a professional point of view, but for my home use it does its job fine. I never experienced any crashes or data losses, and my last year resync of two RAID1 ZFS pools to new bigger disks went fine. Uptimes up to 1.5 years and always interrupted for maintenance or blackouts (no space for a UPS, but this will change soon). I use the embedded version flashed on a USB dongle mounted directly on the motherboard, a Supermicro X7SPA-L employing a AtomD410 CPU which does the job without the need of a fan. I found the max supported RAM amount (4GB) enough for normal use despite ZFS; used RAM rarely goes beyond 50-60%. Disks are all WD Red Plus (not the infamous SMR ones) which ensures it stays cool and silent. If I have some criticism to move is the file manager supplied with the web interface that sometimes refuses to move files (all data, non system files) without any explanation. I would love having a text file manager such as mc available, but the embedded version doesn't allow to install more software, probably to save space and reduce flash memory wear.

About TrueNAS, i heard of it but never tried it. I might try it after I relocate a few months from now as i plan to build a 2nd NAS for redundancy.

I used OpenBSD on an X220 for years and it was lovely. Sadly I ended up going freelance, which meant having to do things like run Teams and Citrix, so I bought a Mac. I keep thinking I'll get it out again, but so far I haven't been able to countenance "I spent ~$4k on laptop X, but boy using laptop Y is just so nice", so I haven't done it.

I heard BSD is popular among security engineers. Just wondering 1) is it true? and 2) how exactly do you use it for security research? Is it mostly for defense or for offense? Thanks!

Like using OpenBSD, but my use cases don't really fit it.

> heard tell...

> Mythical...

> Verdant fields...

I think you'd be best served with hobbitOS. ;)

I would probably still use NetBSD if I didn't need to do video editing.

Really if you want a proper desktop OS, though, you should look at Haiku.

I used FreeBSD decades ago at a dot com company. I keep PowerPC Macs going if Darwin counts as a bsd.

OpenBSD on my laptops and my router.

Yes freebsd on every server and nearly every client.

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