Is FreeBSD a Real Unix? | Hacker News Reader

Is FreeBSD a Real Unix?

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25 pointsvermaden16 comments

Wow, that's a lot of words thqt can be summarized in one sentence: "We cannot call it Unix because Open Group copyrighted this term, but it inherits from 4.4BSD so I am going to call it Unix"

.. And even such a simple statrment contains error: it's not copyright, it's trademark.

I absolutely love FreeBSD!

Recently I was able to make Xorg working with AMDGPU on FreeBSD 13.1 in accelerated mode (EGL) on my AMD Cezanne based laptop. It took devs only four months to fix an issue in xf86-video-amdgpu which made Xorg to crash. ;-)

Which issue was that? Haven't had problems with Renoir and I'm slowly approaching (an upgrade to) Cezanne.

First, ChipID = 0x1638 was not supported (listed). Support for it was added in Linux DRM driver 5.7.19, but FreeBSD's drm-kmod lags far behind. The support has been added recently, but you have to manually clone drm-kmod from the repo, checkout branch 5.10-lts, compile and install.

Second, there were a couple of bugs in xf86-video-amdgpu which made Xorg to crash soon as it accesses AMDGPU device. Those were fixed pretty recently and not released yet, i.e. you have to manually apply a patch, compile and install.

Links to issues: https://github.com/freebsd/drm-kmod/issues/118 https://github.com/freebsd/drm-kmod/issues/167

With all these updates I'm pretty much happy with FreeBSD right now. All GLE software is now working on my Lenovo Ideapad. I'm heavy user of KiCAD, FreeCAD and other engineering graphics software. Even some proprietary windows CADs are working under wine32, though you have to dedicate quite some of your time to make it. ;-)

Support for mixed win32/win64 code (WoW64) is missing in FreeBSD Wine, so you cannot run Fusion 360 at the moment. Adding support for it would be one more great step towards making FreeBSD even better ;-).

Thanks for the very detailed response!

I'm using the "stock" x11-drivers/xf86-video-amdgpu from ports, currently 19.1.0_2. It's a smooth ride on FreeBSD 13.1-STABLE since 5.5-wip branch of https://github.com/freebsd/drm-kmod (I haven't yet tested 5.10-lts you mentioned).

I remember vaguely that something had to be compiled against kernel sources; most likely drm-kmod.

> Those were fixed pretty recently and not released yet, i.e. you have to manually apply a patch, compile and install.

If you're on FreeBSD RELEASE, the "STABLE" branch is a little more cutting edge. I'm using amdgpu Xorg acceleration with it for close to a year now.

> With all these updates I'm pretty much happy with FreeBSD right now.

Give me modern WiFi and I'll be, too! That's the only piece missing from a fully functional FreeBSD laptop. 2.4GHz is hell in urban areas.

I'm on 13.1-RELEASE.

As for WiFi, I had to replace stock MediaTek wireless card with Intel Wireless 7265. Works great with iwm driver, can connect to 5Ghz WIFI in 11ac mode with speeds up to 54Mbps (measured transfer rate is 3.2Mbytes/sec). Higher speeds and 11ax are not supported by this driver. There's a new WiP iwlwifi driver. It can do 11ax, but it behaves pretty unstable in my environment.

BTW, my laptop now suspends and resumes perfectly, this was hell of a problem on all FreeBSDs through out the history.

Silly to use the term UNIX at all, it was replaced by POSIX which is still not perfect but less amorphous. Anything that is POSIX-complaint or near-compliant is a usable system for someone who would have accepted a UNIX system last millennium.

Some versions of Windows have been POSIX compliant, even without WSL, so you can't entirely rely on that. It's a very basic spec.

Sure, I specifically use these POSIX orientated emulation layers for the process of porting "UNIX" apps. I would consider windows an acceptable replacement for UNIX as long as one isn't working with people who use its native interfaces by default.

Yes, but without WSL you had to install SUA (Subsystem for Unix Applications) which gave you a shell and all the Unix things you like, so it's really not different (even if the POSIX it gave you was really old and crusty).

I actually liked SUA more than WSL, which I like more than WSL2, since it seems like they keep moving farther and farther away from making Windows actually POSIX compliant and instead just offering a container for your pesky POSIX needs.

When Novell bought UNIX Labs from AT&T, it donated the UNIX™ trademark to the Open Group. TOG is the organization that created the POSIX test suite and administers the tests.

In other words, for 29 years now, "this is UNIX" means "it passes the POSIX test suite". The terms are basically interchangeable.

FreeBSD has not passed testing, because nobody is willing to pay.

So, officially no, it is not.

Linux has passed.

Currently, only 1 Linux distro holds a current certificate: Huawei EulerOS. https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3622.htm

Previously, Inspur K-UX had it too: https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3617.htm

Interestingly both are RHEL rebrands, i.e. they are basically the old CentOS Linux.

This means that Linux™ is a UNIX™. Officially. And has been for years.

If Linux can be Unix then sure -why the hell not?

http://www.linuxfocus.org/English/July1999/article79.html

Just use Apple's XNU with the BSD userland. Mac's a fully accredited Unix.

macOS is Unix, which probably makes Xnu a Unix kernel, but you still need the rest of the OS, and don't think Darwin is officially UNIX™, in a trademark sense.

Lineage wise I would concur with the article that the BSDs (and Darwin) are Unix systems.

Of course Linux isn't Unix but is Unix-like, and we all know that GNU's Not Unix.

Yes, it is.

Monterey is UNIX™. On x86: https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3673.htm

And on Arm: https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3678.htm

It is really not hard to check -- the list is right here and it is not long: https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/

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