NetBSD 10: Thirty Years, Still Going Strong

I get the feeling I should really take the plunge and start using one of the BSDs, at least as a web server or something. I rarely see them mentioned in job postings compared to Linux, but everything I hear about them as servers sounds so much less painful.

Turn as to whether Free vs Open vs Net makes the most sense. My very uncertain guess is Free is the easiest to get used to, and that you can't really go too wrong with any of them without a specialized use case.

mlyle2• 2 years ago

everything I hear about them as servers sounds so much less painful.

It's a different kind of pain.

The entire "distribution" is cohesive and clean in a way that no Linux distribution manages. A lot of duplication of effort and ugliness is avoided.

But everyone develops for Linux, and you run into places where things don't work. And performance doesn't come close to Linux on the top end or even high middle end.

jjav• 2 years ago

And performance doesn't come close to Linux on the top end or even high middle end.

There are presentation about how Netflix uses BSD for video delivery for its performance, so it can't be that bad.

roydivision3• 2 years ago

And performance doesn't come close to Linux on the top end or even high middle end.

The Playstation System software (Orbis OS) is a fork of FreeBSD:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_4_system_software

I'd guess performance was pretty high on Sony's list of priorities.

BSDobelix3• 2 years ago

And performance doesn't come close to Linux on the top end or even high middle end.

It's a mixed bag, a not so good benchmark:

https://senioradmin.de/BenchmarkBSDLinux.html

And a little better one (with FreeBSD13 but 14 is already out and it's much faster[1]):

https://www.phoronix.com/review/bsd-linux-eo2021

[1]https://www.phoronix.com/review/freebsd-14-epyc

BSDobelix3• 2 years ago

I went full in on FreeBSD, it just has the most features and biggest community. I have pf (the firewall), zfs or ufs(the real one :) ), HAST, two supported versions FB13/14, packages or ports (both available as head or quarterly), MAC, Jail's, Bhyve, Security Event Auditing, Secure-levels, Capsicum, File-flags etc etc. [1]

And one really important point for me, one can work ~instantly on the project:

-Read https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/porters-handbook/

-Open an account at https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/

-Send in patches and have fun.

-Search for outdated ports https://portscout.freebsd.org/

-Send in another patch.

[1] https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/security/

flomo• 2 years ago

This is the first time I've seen the NetBSD announcement. "Escape from the political wars" is an interesting bit because it sounded like 386BSD completely devolved into a flamewar, and this confirms that it was more political than technological.

Linus T wrote a book called "Just For Fun", and idk but maybe fun-factor maybe won out.

csdvrx• 2 years ago

With NetBSD, I've discovered an OS that gives me joy in a way that's hard to describe: NetBSD is neat, works everywhere, and its users are friendly.

It's not as well known as FreeBSD (or Linux) but yet you've got everything in a smaller community that's well organized and big enough that you can, share, and learn with them. I like that pace :)

I hope I will be able to offer minimal contributions to the kernel: for now, my project is adding an init_flag to pass the kernel to be loaded,and the init run too, like --init-args do similar on FreeBSD or Linux,

My other project is about boot time metrics: https://old.reddit.com/r/NetBSD/comments/1agmfja/collecting_... My other small project is for metering boot: I'ts just small sqlite database that'll automatically extract tslog boot info to better track regressions, improvements etc: with a kernel that now boots in 60 ms or less, you want very accurate numbers!

NetBSD 10: Thirty Years, Still Going Strong

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