Comment by turtledragonfly
4 days ago
> FreeBSD was perfectly fine but it didn't do anything I needed that Linux didn't already do.
I broadly agree, even as a FreeBSD fan myself; things have converged a lot over the decades. But still, I generally feel that while you can get the same work done in both, FreeBSD does things better (and/or cleaner, more elegant, etc) in many cases.
The overall feeling of system cohesion makes me happier to use it, from small things like Ctrl-T producing meaningful output for all the base OS tools, to larger and more amorphous things like having greater confidence core systems won't change too quickly over time (eg: FreeBSD's relatively stable sound support, versus Linux's alsa/pulse/pipewire/..., similar for event APIs, and more).
Though I totally feel your pain about latest-and-greatest hardware driver support. Has gotten better since the '90s, but that gap will probably always be there due to the different development philosophies.
I hope FreeBSD never gets too "Linux-y"; it occupies it's own nice spot in the spectrum of available options.
> I hope FreeBSD never gets too "Linux-y"
What would that mean?
Partly what I mentioned above: a higher rate of development "churn" — incorporating new systems or technology before it's well-baked or well-integrated with the rest of the OS, only to be replaced a few years later with something else. The kerfuffle over WireGuard in FreeBSD 13 (ultimately backing it out of that release) is, I think, one recent-ish example of the FreeBSD devs taking a stance to demand a certain quality bar for such things.
Another aspect for me is documentation. I've been disheartened recently by how some faster-paced changes to the FreeBSD ports system aren't well-documented, so 'man ports' and the handbook are a bit out-of-sync with reality. Being able to read the handbook and the manpages to get an accurate education on the OS has always felt right to me, and the Linux ecosystem doesn't do it nearly as well, I feel.
I think generally it's a cathedral-vs-bazaar sort of difference. I hope FreeBSD stays more cathedral-y than Linux.