Why should you be using FreeBSD?
 

Just read this on Phoronix so I decided to post the link and get feedback,

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTExMDg

Do you agree or disagree with the comments made?

They lump together all Linux distros. I really doubt that FreeBSD is more stable than distros like Slackware or RHEL. they also totally "forget" that driver support for Linux is magnitudes better.

There are way too many, "we're not Linux" style responses for my liking.

Well I read the list, and I'm not using FreeBSD yet.

Wait a sec...


Nope, still not.

I'll get back with you if that changes.

Which one's FreeBSD? Is it the one PCBSD is based on or is that NetBSD? Or am I thinking of OpenBSD being based on another one. Does DragonflyBSD have better hardware support than FreeBSD?
What happened to FreeSBIE? How long will MirOS BSD be supported for, is it better than DesktopBSD?
Is NeXT still BSD, is it the same as OSX? What on earth is OpenStep?
I can't understand what's going on with BSD it's far too fragmented!

I don't think there are over 700 derivatives of BSD currently so it should be easier for you to work the puzzle out.

Yes, quite true - and their not!

I guess stability can come down to the people who set up and maintain a system. A badly setup system will be unstable from time to time regardless if it's Windows, Linux or BSD.

I will give FreeBSD this, I have had several machines that have failed to install Linux for one reason or another, when I offer it a copy of FreeBSD it installs without trouble. This has happened on machines aging from 12 years ago to the present - perhaps I'm just lucky where it comes to FreeBSD?

I think I'll stick with completely un-fragmented Debian rather than move to that fragmented BSD.
I must admit though it's so difficult to get support for Debian and so hard to find other users because Slackware and Android exist.
Talk of "Linux fragmentation" may make some sense if you're talking about Windows, OSX or (more particularly iOS) but giving Linux's fragmentation as an argument for running FreeBSD is complete nonsense. I'm willing to bet there are more Debian users than FreeBSD users and possibly more Debian-derivative users than total BSD users.
I'm sure similar can be said of RHES and Redhat-derived distros.

I have nothing against BSD, by the way, and may well try it some day. I also know the anti-Linux comments may well have been tongue-in-cheek as were my comments about BSD fragmentation.

Looks like a fairly trite collection of comments to me. I suspect we're none the wiser for having read it.

For folks like me (who regularly use and deeply appreciate both GNU/Linux and FreeBSD), these sorts of exercises tend to resonate as particularly useless. Do what you like, and make an effort to improve your favorite projects and communities.

LOL yeah, a lot of BSD'ers run Linux on their desktops too so I guess those comments are made tongue-in-cheek :)

You should really try FreeBSD, the base installs easier than Debian (and supports WPA/2) and the documentation is as good as any out there.

As Linus says, use whatever gets the job done...

Well, I should be using and learning *BSD, but definitely not for the weird reasons mentioned in that post.

Regards.

I've had the opposite experience with FreeBSD. I'm currently running OpenBSD 5.1 on this aging IBM 850 MHz eServer. FreeBSD will not install on this machine. This is not a criticism of FreeBSD, but, it is a hardware incompatibility. OpenBSD runs like a top on this old box. :)
Each to his own. I really like FreeBSD and I do maintain a FreeBSD 9.0 VM on my main Slackware work station.

Yeah, it's not 100% (nothing is). Glad OpenBSD did the job :)

I've had FreeBSD run on various old machines but, not older server class hardware.

Thanks, man! I'm very happy with OpenBSD. :)