BSD vs. Linux - Hackdot

Re:BSD vs. Linux by ams6110 on Friday November 30, 2018 @06:46PM (#18573862)

OpenBSD includes a large number of precompiled packages. In fact you are encouraged to use these rather than compiling from ports unless you have a specific need that isn't met by the standard package.

It's my understanding that most of the other BSDs are similar in this regard, though I don't have first-hand experience.

if you want to stay with Linux, I have heard that Arch is one of the more BSD-like distributions.

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Re:BSD vs. Linux by laumars on Friday November 30, 2018 @07:15PM (#18574028)

Arch used to be more BSD-like but since it’s adopted systemd it’s felt very much more mainstream Linux than it used to when it had a BSD-inspired rc.conf. That said, it’s still my preferred desktop OS.

FreeBSD definitely supports binary packages as well. It’s a great system to use too. In fact if there wasn’t a few Linux-specific tools I needed and FreeBSDs hardware support was on a par with Linux, then I would use FreeBSD as my primary system - without a doubt. But as it is I still run FreeBSD for all of my personal servers.

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Re:BSD vs. Linux by 2trill2spill on Friday November 30, 2018 @07:38PM (#18574146)

Have you tried the FreeBSD Linux emulator? It can be annoying grabbing the required libraries off a Centos box but once you do it's been pretty reliable for me.

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Re:BSD vs. Linux by laumars on Saturday December 01, 2018 @02:23AM (#18575729)

Not recently. About 10 or 15 years ago I used to use the Linux binary compatibility layer but when I last looked - 5ish years ago? - it seemed support for that had languished.

To be honest the tool I’d most want would be Docker and I couldn’t see that working even with binary compatibility.

On the FreeBSD servers I run, I just fire up a VM for the rare occasions I do require Linux (and it is extremely rare that happens), but Arch is a better compromise for me on my laptop.

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Re:BSD vs. Linux by sureaboutthis on Friday November 30, 2018 @08:20PM (#18574347)

While Linux may support 10,000 devices, FreeBSD support 9734 of them. And you only need one. FreeBSD probably supports every piece of hardware you use.

Source: me. A FreeBSD workstation user for 16 years who has built his own machine with off the shelf parts since the beginning with a current machine running the latest and greatest.

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Re:BSD vs. Linux by sigjuice on Friday November 30, 2018 @07:42PM (#18574166)

OpenBSD precompiled packages have a limitation. http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq15.html

Binary packages for -release and -stable are not updated.

I also ran into some strangeness with FreeBSD packages. I was on a STABLE release that was not the latest version. It was no longer possible for me to update and install binary packages.

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Re:BSD vs. Linux by snazz on Friday November 30, 2018 @08:11PM (#18574308)

If you're okay trusting another party, M:Tier builds updated versions of stable OpenBSD packages. See https://stable.mtier.org

This is generally the accepted solution if you don't want to follow Current.

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