Why would someone choose FreeBSD over Linux?

Question

Why would someone choose FreeBSD over Linux? What are the advantages of FreeBSD compared to Linux? (My shared hosting provider uses FreeBSD.)

score 143 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 06 '11 at 11:22

143

If you want to know what's different so you can use the system more efficiently, here is a commonly referenced introduction to BSD to people coming from a Linux background.

If you want more of the historical context for this decision, I'll just take a guess as to why they chose FreeBSD. Around the time of the first dot-com bubble, FreeBSD 4 was extremely popular with ISPs. This may or may not have been related to the addition of kqueue. The Wikipedia page describes the feelings for FreeBSD 4 thusly: "…widely regarded as one of the most stable and high performance operating systems of the whole Unix lineage." FreeBSD in particular has added other features over time which would appeal to hosting providers, such as jail and ZFS support.

Personally, I really like the BSD systems because they just feel like they fit together better than most Linux distros I've used. Also, the documentation provided directly in the various handbooks, etc. is outstanding. If you're going to be using FreeBSD, I highly recommend the FreeBSD Handbook.

answered Jun 06 '11 at 11:22

Hank Gay

3,549

By fit together, do you mean more integrated? – tshepang Jun 06 '11 at 13:38
@Tshepang It's tough for me to put into words, but "integrated" might be a good description. I find that when I guess how something works, I'm right on the BSDs far more often than I am on the Linux distros I've tried (except maybe Gentoo). – Hank Gay Jun 06 '11 at 18:47
@HankGay: That's interesting. Thanks also for the good answer. – tshepang Jun 06 '11 at 22:02
1

@Tshepang It's possible that this is entirely a personal experience, and it's probably less common among people who have extensive Linux experience before they ever see a BSD. Another explanation that I've come up with is that I learned most of what I know about BSD by reading the official project docs, yet I learned most of what I know about (most) Linux distros by Googling. Gentoo is again the exception (their wiki was an excellent resource when I was exploring Gentoo), which makes me think I understand the reason for certain decisions better on those systems. – Hank Gay Jun 07 '11 at 09:51
@HankGay: I haven't used an BSD, but I'd vouch for you, because, although distros are trying hard to ease the experience, the Linux landscape is full of inconsistencies. – tshepang Jun 07 '11 at 11:44
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My favorite example of the "integration" aspect of FreeBSD: On FreeBSD, you configure network interfaces with "ifconfig". On Linux, you configure network interfaces with "ifconfig"...and "brctl" and "vconfig" and "ethtool" and "iwconfig" and "ip" and... – larsks Jun 11 '11 at 00:59
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First link is very interesting, thank you – marto Oct 11 '11 at 10:47
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@marto Glad you found it useful. I remember thinking "This is awesome" the first time I stumbled across it. – Hank Gay Oct 13 '11 at 20:14
@HankGay . I have seen good linux documentation at redhat.com docs. Have you seen them ? Is freebsd handbook better than redhat docs ? – bagavadhar Sep 10 '12 at 17:45
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@ashwin FreeBSD handbook is hands-down the best docs I've seen for an OS. The closest I've seen is probably the Gentoo handbook. The BSD man pages also tend to be very nice, although OpenBSD's man pages are probably better than FreeBSD's. – Hank Gay Sep 10 '12 at 21:10
Wow - Not only is it informative, it's almost the first place a Windows admin should start when getting into the nix environment. "Seasoned" Windows admins like myself struggle boatloads when it comes to grasping some of the core nix concepts, and the explanations of the differences of BSD and Linux work at their core gives excellent insight as to not only the differences, but why certain things work the way they do. For example, I had no idea most BSD software is compiled locally when installed! – IceMage Aug 24 '15 at 17:29
Great links, thanks :-). First link is really interesting (although in some details a bit outdated on Linux side + FreeBSD is using SVN :-)). – pevik Dec 13 '15 at 17:51
How long ago was that first guide written, because a lot of it (eg references to Gentoo, Red Hat) seem like they may be say 15 years old. – trr Jun 28 '17 at 23:18
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I was a developer in a UNIX environment at the time of the dot-com bubble. I'm pretty sure that ISP's (and a lot of other high-volume servers around the world) chose FreeBSD for its reliability. A co-worker convinced me to install Linux on one of my home computers. I tried five or six different distributions, all of which were buggy to the point of frustration. I was about to give up on "UNIX" at home when I ran across FreeBSD. I installed it and fired it up. I let it run for a month before I shut it down just to save electricity. "Bullet proof" is how I've described it ever since. – Bob Jan 05 '19 at 13:41
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@trr Page 5 references the kernel's relative lack of version control aside from a BitKeeper repository. That means it was written in the days before git, so it can't be any newer than 2005. – rootmeanclaire Oct 08 '21 at 03:33

score 61 · Answer 2 · edited Jan 24 '12 at 03:00

61

FreeBSD has a reputation for a more robust network stack. From professional experience at a previous company, we had a proxy server that was falling over from the load. When we threw FreeBSD on it, the server handled the load with ease for well over a year (I moved on - could still be working).

NetBSD has a reputation for running on a ton of different hardware.

OpenBSD has a (well-deserved) reputation for being extremely secure.

It's Unix, it's robust and it's free. No real reason to avoid it, but you'll miss out on the new hotness that the Linuxes tend to have.

edited Jan 24 '12 at 03:00

Kevin

40,767

answered Jun 06 '11 at 15:10

Greg Cain

1,163

What were you running before the FreeBSD? – BigSack Aug 22 '13 at 10:11
That was a while ago. Given the time frame, probably CentOS or RHEL 4. – Greg Cain Aug 26 '13 at 16:08
And you still using it somewhere, i mean BSD? – BigSack Aug 26 '13 at 17:35
That was a few jobs ago. I'm not currently using it. I can't speak for my employer at the time. – Greg Cain Aug 26 '13 at 21:28
What the heck would "new hotness" be? – Jinxed Jun 05 '16 at 17:32
@Jinxed support for new hardware. – Devesh Saini Jul 26 '16 at 17:49
@DeveshSaini: E.g.? – Jinxed Jul 28 '16 at 15:31
3

@Jinxed For example, the recent release of Linux 4.7 supports the AMD Radeon RX 480 (which is also a recent hardware). But we have to wait for more time to hear announcement for support of same hardware. That's new hotness – Devesh Saini Jul 28 '16 at 17:45

score 36 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 28 '11 at 19:03

I prefer the license philosophy of BSD license vs GPL license. To me, free means do pretty much whatever you want with the code. It's so free you can make it not free like apple did.

Practically it probably has no impact on me, but I prefer it on principle and was one of the reasons I chose to use FreeBSD over Linux.

Another reason is I wanted to tinker, I find when when I use Ubuntu I'm not putting on my unix hat; instead I'm just using the GUI everywhere as if I was in windows (which is not necessarily a bad thing just different).

Don't use Ubuntu, or if you do, don't use the GUIs ^_^ Arch linux and maybe XFCE for you ;-) — lmat - Reinstate Monica, Jul 18 '22 at 13:46

score 29 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 12 '11 at 05:29

29

FreeBSD is an operating system. Linux is a kernel. So in your question you're comparing apples and orange seeds.

Licensing and device support would be my two top reasons why someone would choose one over the other

answered Oct 12 '11 at 05:29

EhevuTov

488

4

Technically, the kernel can be the whole operating system (in limited-use devices), but in practice it usually is not. Drivers and any other programs that are used to directly control the operation of hardware are all a part of the operating system. FreeBSD is NOT comparable to Linux, but it IS comparable to a Linux distribution. Linux, technically, is just a kernel (though most people don't know this). – Bob Jan 05 '19 at 16:39
https://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/03
Paragraph 2.
– Grant Curell Oct 11 '21 at 14:58
GNU/Linux is usually the intent of "Linux". You're right that it's better to specify. For instance, we're certainly not talking about Android/Linux here! – lmat - Reinstate Monica Jul 18 '22 at 13:47

score 18 · Answer 5 · edited Jan 22 '16 at 18:36

The difference between BSD and Linux distributions dated back to the early days of Unix.

AT&T owned Unix, but due to restrictions it could not compete in the computing industry. Due to this, they licensed Unix to Berkeley. Berkeley took off with this customizing and tweaking everything until eventually there was no AT&T code really present in their new OS, named BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution.)

Enter a bit later, Linus Torvalds was in an Operating Systems class working with an incomplete Unix clone called Minix, which was meant to train students in building an OS. Linus took off with this idea and founded the Linux branch.

Now my experience lies more with OpenBSD, and from that perspective the difference is staggering. It's been mentioned that OpenBSD is more secure, with only 2 exploits in its history it's earned that right.

The founder Theo de Raadt believed that security should be a primary focus and that many Linux and other BSD systems were not dedicated to writing good code, and instead focused too much on adding new features just to add them.

OpenBSD has a release schedule of 6 months, anything that cannot be implemented fully and securely within that time period is not added. Compared to Linux distributions like Ubuntu, who never test a danged thing before releases, this is a huge key to peace of mind for many sysadmins and server ops.

Worth noting that "2 exploits in its history" -> "2 exploits in the default install". — nishanthshanmugham, Jan 08 '22 at 10:05

score 17 · Answer 6 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:13

Here's something I wrote about BSD unix variants in answer to a similar question on serverfault. Broadly, the code base of BSD systems is more tightly controlled than a typical linux distro. You will get something a bit more like a traditional unix and the system is very robust with a more conservative change policy.

If you're a pure open-source shop and not dependent on any commercial software like Oracle then a BSD unix system will give you a very stable, well understood and controlled software platform, more so than Linux. Most of the historic issues like poor driver or SMP support have been resolved years ago, particularly on mainstream server hardware.

If you want a traditional unix desktop then a BSD unix will give you this as well as any linux distro. If you're after an end-user system you might be better off with Ubuntu or Fedora. Gentoo Linux was based on a derivative of the BSD 'ports' packaging system.

score 14 · Answer 7 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

Like @User, I prefer the BSD license and is the main reason I use it as my primary OS.

I'm in no way against the GPL, but if a MIT/MIT-like licensed app is available, I will use it first over a similar application that is GPL'd.

It's so free you can make it not free

That's very attractive to the business-oriented, as well as users such as myself.

The Ports system is beyond compare (IMNSHO) and has been a model for imitation by several Linux distros (Gentoo comes immediately to mind).

Also, because FreeBSD isn't as prevalent on the desktop as Linux (PC-BSD is a fabulous), my inner geek has to use it as my desktop OS. I can't help it.

So far, there isn't anything on Windows that Linux can't do, and anything on Linux that FreeBSD can't do. ...and that includes Flash - without running under the Linuxulator: gecko-mediaplayer+Firfox+GreaseMonkey+Linterna Magicka.

score 4 · Answer 8 · edited Jan 02 '13 at 11:34

Documentation:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/

Development consistency:

http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/release/

License

Copyright 1992-2012 The FreeBSD Project. All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE FREEBSD PROJECT ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE FREEBSD PROJECT OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

The views and conclusions contained in the software and documentation are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing official policies, either expressed or implied, of the FreeBSD Project.

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Jun 06 '11 at 18:49

1

For a long time, FreeBSD's 'ports collection', which means the software available for it through its package manager, was bigger and better than what was in the Linux repositories. I would imagine that's not true now, although i don't know of any statistics.

answered Jun 06 '11 at 18:49

Tom Anderson

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The ports collection is "outside" of its package manager. The size of a ports collection is irrelevant, as is the number of "ports" in the collection. Sure, it should contain any software not available in the repos that you want to use, but that is about it. – thecarpy Dec 13 '17 at 09:12

Why would someone choose FreeBSD over Linux?

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