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Comment by rgbrenner | Hacker News Reader

FreeBSD may or may not be faster than Linux for gaming.. but it does not matter -- freebsd is NOT a desktop OS. I've been using it for 15 years, 14 of those years on my desktop. Buggy desktops, no binary updates for ports, etc, etc. The entire thing is an exercise in frustration.

A decade ago, you could use FreeBSD on a desktop and it would be more or less similar to a Linux desktop. But Linux has more resources, and has invested more than FreeBSD into the desktop.. and FreeBSD has focused their limited resources on the server.

Today it's not even a contest. FreeBSD, if you like it, goes on a server. Linux on the desktop.

Need a workstation to develop the software for your FreeBSD server? - use Linux for the workstation and compile it on a FreeBSD build server. (I'm not kidding.. I actually use this setup for work...)

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Some of us still use FreeBSD on a desktop (well, maybe you don't consider xmonad a desktop...) But your point is valid -- it can be an exercise in frustration.

The big advantages Linux has now are mindshare, funding, drivers, and people that devote a lot of time to coming up with OS versions with binary packages that all work well together, so users don't have to build software from source. With FreeBSD that's theoretically possible, but if there's a big public repository of prebuilt binary packages for the latest (9.1) release, I am not aware of it, and my system doesn't know about it. So upgrades can be painful if you have a lot of ports and your machine isn't super-fast. And running into errors in the middle of the process seems par for the course -- then you get to figure out what's wrong and how to fix it.

I have heard good things about PC-BSD (based on FreeBSD) though. Apparently it's much more user-friendly for people looking to use it as a desktop environment.

"if there's a big public repository of prebuilt binary packages for the latest (9.1) release, I am not aware of it"

FreeBSD had a security breach shortly before 9.1.. so some of their hardware was offline. So packages were not available at release. They expect to make them available at some point. Then you can install out of date packages (since packages are frozen at release), and rebuild half of them to fix security or serious bugs.

"I have heard good things about PC-BSD"

I have also heard good things about PC-BSD. I've played with it a bit, and it seems promising. I haven't used it enough to recommend it.. but it seems like it's worth a try if you need a FBSD desktop. Definitely more promising than the other BSD desktop efforts I've seen over the years (all of which are dead AFAIK).

  Need a workstation to develop the software
  for your FreeBSD server? - use Linux for the workstation 
  and compile it on a FreeBSD build server.
  (I'm not kidding.. I actually use this setup for work...)

Can I ask why do you use a FreeBSD server ? Do you use it for bsd features likes jails or dtrace ?

I've always wanted to try freebsd but I don't really know how it would be better on a server than, say, debian.

There are some things like ZFS, that keep me on FBSD.. but that's only 2 of my servers. The biggest reasons are that it's what I know; and that I have a collection of software projects created over the past 15 years that run on FBSD, most of which do not compile cleanly in Linux or have fbsd-specific dependencies. So until I port them, FBSD is the only option.

I'm not the best person to ask to advocate FBSD. I'm planning a switch to Debian over the next year or so. Later this year, I'm planning to switch my mail servers and database servers to Debian (since those don't rely on my code). Then the porting should be finished, and everything else will switch except the ZFS servers. The ZFS servers should be gone by mid-2014. Why? Lack of virtualization support is the biggest problem.

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