Let's Try BSD, Part 1 of 7: Introduction (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFlyBSD)
Let's Try BSD, Part 1 of 7: Introduction (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFlyBSD)
In this series, I'll be trying out each of the four major BSD operating systems (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and DragonFlyBSD), including install, configuration, and web serving. We're paying a visit to the weird cousins from the other continent, and we'll have some fun exploring the OTHER free opera...
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BSD will always be faster. That's a given. It is not flexible, however. It has a very specific purpose. This is why Apple chose this as the origin for OS X, which has now been bastardized to an unrecognizable variation, but if you check the main kernel, will still read as DragonFlyBSD.
BSD might be faster but companies choose BSD because the BSD License is much more flexible than the Linux General Public License. Apple was even able to create their own license, the APSL. They would not be able to do that using Linux.
While that is true, the question is whether that's a good thing, or not, and for whom.
It’s a good thing for the owners of the codebase, but often, a bad thing for the community (even if the community contributes to said codebase).
For example, FOSS maintainers sometimes will (want to) relicense to protect their income stream:
https://github.com/CaffeineMC/sodium-fabric/issues/2400
https://github.com/LizardByte/Sunshine/pull/150
While corporations might literally have maintainers sign away their rights so they can take the work from their own community:
https://lwn.net/Articles/937369/ (canonical requires a CLA, though this + the subsequent re-license might have happened anyway)
https://lwn.net/Articles/935592/ (RPM spec files are MIT licensed at the Fedora level. There are likely chnages to RPM files contributed by the community that are now source-restricted in RHEL)
https://networkbuilders.intel.com/docs/networkbuilders/accelerate-snort-performance-with-hyperscan-and-intel-xeon-processors-on-public-clouds-1680176363.pdf (See section 2.2. Previously, this work was BSD)
Mixed bag, really.
Faster in what sense? Would you kindly point me to the benchmarks used? It’s easy to find the opposite results so I’m curious.
Smaller footprint in general, compiled as one (not multimodal kernel+extensions), simpler security models, and simpler init system. All of these will make it snappier out of the box than Linux, just not in the ways you'd want, say, a desktop to be faster.
This just dropped as well. You can see where the differences are: https://www.phoronix.com/review/bsd-linux-threadripper-7980x
That makes some sense I suppose. What was it about DragonFlyBSD and macOS kernel?
I’m not sure how much I’d buy into phoronix benchmarks in this case. CentOS Strea, 9 was performing as good, if not better than, the recently released Ubuntu 24.04 and 2 week old FreeBSD 14.1 despite having a 3 year old kernel and being compiled with an equally old version of GCC. Linux is currently suffering from a pstate bug with AMD, too.
There’s a reason the BSDs are hardly used in HPC.
JFC. The end all be all of Linux benchmarks, and you're standing up to discredit their results? Phoronix practically wrote the modern book on Linux benchmarks, but please tell us how they are wrong or mistaken.
3 other commentors have deleted theirs already for their inane fanboyisms. You want want to make 4, or do you have some new energy to bring to the conversation?
Why are you being inflammatory for no reason? I’m just saying I don’t think it’d be correct for an OS 3 years in the past to be neck and neck with modern stuff. Log off the computer and go outside lmao
Why are you? Touch grass.
This just dropped as well: https://www.phoronix.com/review/bsd-linux-threadripper-7980x
FreeBSD doesn't have desktop environment built in. So maybe running from command line or installation is a lot faster.
Desktop environments are optional if using a Linux distribution. Also as long as a desktop environment doesnt take all resources, there shoudlnt be much difference in benchmarks.