> Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux
On the server/router maybe. For IT pros maybe.
The desktop is a whole different matter.
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On the desktop, Linux is going to be challenging anyway. Many people love that challenge and make it work, and that's cool. But my point is that if you can make it work on desktop Linux you will make it work on FreeBSD as well, given some decent skill.
> But my point is that if you can make it work on desktop Linux you will make it work on FreeBSD as well, given some decent skill.
As someone who has run Linux and FreeBSD desktops for years -- no, Linux on the desktop is actually quite a bit better and easier to use than FreeBSD.
> Linux on the desktop is actually quite a bit better and easier to use than FreeBSD.
As someone who actually started learning *NIX on BSDs and later switched to Linux, I think "quite a bit better and easier" is an understatement. I tried the latest FreeBSD last year on a not so recent Lenovo laptop and it was a horrible experience.
Desktop Linux is pretty comfortable and intuitive, actually. There's no challenge involved.
A guy I know (relatively skilled) spent a whole week setting up Linux on his laptop the other day. So I don't think it's always as predictable as to say there's never a challenge involved in 2022.
Not sure what do you want to prove with that anecdotal point. I've seen coworkers spend a month or 2 with both their new and old mac or windows laptops because they weren't seeing the end of migrating their stuff from one computer to another and setting up their dev environment.
Some people are just bad at this.
Why are your anecdotes better than that post's anecdotes?
Just install Ubuntu if you quite literally cannot grasp GNU/Linux. No, your "guy" is not "relatively skilled", that's an absurd claim when it took an entire week setting up Linux on a laptop. It has never, ever taken me more than an hour or two with mainstream distros, or more than 3 days max. for more complicated distros such as Gentoo or Arch - but the system would be minimally operational within a day, always. You would literally have to one-finger press your keyboard whilst also learning how to read for the first time simultaneously, to make the install of Linux on a LAPTOP last a week.
Installation does not just mean finishing the setup from the livecd. We have to work at copying our apps, configs, etc and it can be a lot of "long tail" work to get things exactly as before.
Out of curiosity, how hard would Linux have to be to setup for you to no longer define "relatively skilled" as "able to setup Linux in < a week"?
He should try putting OSX on the hardware. Wouldn't even start to work.
Clearly OSX is not ready for the desktop yet.
It's too bad Linux's success isn't defined as "Can be installed on as many types of hardware as OSX" then, eh?
I just installed Fedora 36 on my Thinkpad. It went pretty smoothly. Single monitor, AMD CPU/iGPU.
There are a few gripes about the discoverability of the keyboard shortcuts. Unity was good with this, holding down the Win/Meta key showed all the DE shortcuts.
Also, there is not an easy way to change certain settings (like system font!) without installing an obscure package "Tweaks" that should be built into the system settings.
Can you quickly try and connect to my 4K 60Hz monitor without the whole room breaking into laughter?
Have you not ever used a Linux distro?
I haven't had an issue with monitors since before Ubuntu 8.
Seems ridiculous you're going to claim that Linux, which dominates the phone/handheld industry, would have issues in regards to using high resolution/high DPI monitors along with lower spec ones concurrently.
I think of all OS's, my bet would probably be that this is a way bigger issue on Windows than on Linux or Mac.
What you’re saying is probably valid for a desktop (especially if it doesn’t use Nvidia), but laptops (especially Nvidia ones) are still far from perfect. Personal experience with Ubuntu on a recent Thinkpad:
* When using Wayland, until VERY recently (latest nvidia drivers), the entire system would freeze when hooking up an external monitor. Okay, no problem I’ll use X.
* Hygrid graphics just completely doesn’t work, loads of glitches, glacially slow framerates on external monitors, etc. Okay, I turn off hybrid graphics in the BIOS, but that absolutely trashes battery life.
* X does not let you run different scale factors concurrently. You can’t set your laptop screen to 2x and your external monitor to 1x. Wayland does let you, but see above.
* I have two 4K monitors hooked up to my laptop. Whenever I resume from sleep, there’s a very good chance that only one or zero of the monitors is detected. They both power on, but only one (or sometimes none) of them actually has a signal. Cycling power on the monitor usually fixes the issue. My coworker has a Thinkpad from the same line but a generation earlier, and it had the exact same problem, so this has apparently been around a while and still isn’t fixed.
I was referring to laptops, which most developers use these days.
umanwizard's reply is interesting.
Also - I have been using Linux for 26 years, if that matters. However, on the desktop I largely moved to macOS (then called OS X) in 2003.
Anecdotally, as a user of a different distribution and desktop environment, yes. Just Works.
If that's true then there's been substantial improvements on that front recently (which is good). As I recall, that was a tricky problem since your laptop screen likely runs another resolution, different DPI, etc so connecting to an additional screen makes things go haywire.
"Relatively" seems like it's doing a lot of work there.
Ubuntu is clearly better for average people on the desktop than FreeBSD. (And I’d argue that macOS is in turn clearly better for most people than Ubuntu).
But FreeBSD is great as a desktop for tinkerers — if you want something that’s simple enough that you can actually understand how it works, and whose source code you can quite easily jump into, modify, and rebuild, it blows Linux out of the water.
I have been daily driving FreeBSD as a desktop since the last time this article was posted and I love it. It is super consistent and reliable, and after I got it set up, I don't have to worry about anything breaking. I can easily use it daily for coding and web browsing, and it feels as smooth and fast as a Linux setup on the same hardware.
That said, I still have a Linux system for things like gaming, Cuda, and containers. Though, as I never have time to game anyways, I could just use the Linux system as a server.
But, I've used Linux for 10+ years and it only started annoying me recently so I may also get frustrated with freeBSD eventually.
macOS is a fine Unix desktop to drive your FreeBSD servers from...
Can you watch Netflix on FreeBSD yet? That was what prevented me from switching from Linux last time I tried.