Re:Deep Diving into the Strengths of FreeBSD
by forgotpwd16 on Thursday May 06, 2021 @09:11AM
(#27062670)
I see. It isn't the implementation, as I understood the argument to be about, but rather the environment around it. What you're concluding is basically the core difference between Linux distros and BSDs. Whereas the former are built as an assemble, the later define a base system making them more coherent. The better documentation can be said is result of this. Disappointingly the submitted article mentions nothing of those.
That article is much better:
There's other OS specific features that FreeBSD does better with regards to ZFS such as ACLs too. But like with trashed volumes, they're edge cases.
FreeBSD also has better bundled tooling for working with ZFS. By this I don't mean `zfs` and `zpool` but little shell scripts et al that are FreeBSD specific.
Then there is the documentation. If you're running Linux then all the documentation regarding server management is about standard server management (ie with an ext4 or xfs root). But FreeBSD documentation will talk about how to do management with the assumption you're running ZFS. The FreeBSD docs (which are excellent, by the way) has pages and pages on ZFS outside of the stuff published by ZoL (which is pretty poor it has to be said) and OpenZFS. And I say the last points as someone who's had to manually compile kernel modules on Linux to get the latest patch to support a feature that made it to FreeBSD first.
I do have servers running ZFS + Linux and they work really well. So I'm not taking anything away from that architecture. But when things go wrong or you're trying to do something a little more specialised outside of basic file storage, ZFS has always felt like an awesome hack on top of Linux rather than an integral part of it's design. Unlike with FreeBSD where the same people managing the kernel and userland are the same people pushing ZFS as the default file system. If Torvalds, Pottering or others held ZoL in the same esteem then I'm sure the edge cases I've described would go away (Linux certainly has the larger developer community).