Why FreeBSD is less popular than Linux

Originally Posted by jmccue A little off topic, but is this true ? If so, even more glad I use tcsh I consider reading command history a security concern, some JAVA apps require you to use arguments like --user and --password

At least according to LSM(Tomoyo), and I don't doubt its reports. I get that Konqueror has to use inotify since it's also a file manager, but Firefox, why? Don't know if you have /sys in FreeBSD, but Firefox seems to take some rather liberal access to /sys (that it seemingly doesn't need at all). General snooping in /proc is also not so cool.

Originally Posted by zeebra At least according to LSM(Tomoyo), and I don't doubt its reports. I get that Konqueror has to use inotify since it's also a file manager, but Firefox, why? Don't know if you have /sys in FreeBSD, but Firefox seems to take some rather liberal access to /sys (that it seemingly doesn't need at all). General snooping in /proc is also not so cool.

Interesting, I did a search and found these from 2015:

LWN.net
reddit.com

Seems the patches OpenBSD made to Firefox with unveil makes a lot of sense. I hope Firefox in Linux does something similar. I heard there is a newish project to add something like unveil and pledge to Linux.

Originally Posted by jmccue Seems the patches OpenBSD made to Firefox with unveil makes a lot of sense. I hope Firefox in Linux does something similar..

Well, that seems like a very healthy and simple solution.

Nah, we don't have that. We have alot of things that can do such things and more, but that seems like a better general distributed way of doing it, since most don't use any of the provided options in GNU/Linux. Some use containers (aka jails in bsd), others use LSM and other form of namespaces and sandboxing, but I would guess we are a small minority.

I guess distroes COULD patch Firefox if they wanted.

Patches for vulnerabilities found in Firefox have to come upstream from Mozilla before the Maintainer can update and include the patched version in the ports tree.

Then I can update my ports tree, get the patched version and compile it from source.

If a vulnerability is found we're stuck with it till Mozilla fixes it and the downstream Maintainer gets the patch.

My only gripe with BSDs is the web browsers. They don't support the playback of some streaming sites like amazon prime, netflix, spectrum livetv.

Also, the grep command in BSDs don't support the 'P' option, perl compatibility. I use the 'P' option alot with grep in linux when using regex.

The BSDs are great for servers and ok as desktops if DRM playback is not important to you.

Originally Posted by Tux2025 The BSDs are great for servers and ok as desktops if DRM playback is not important to you.

That's not on BSD. That's on TBL, and the now irrelevant W3C, for putting EME into the official Web standards. Yes, it seems it came down to just one guy, albeit an important one, selling out or knuckling under to his and our loss.

I don't like anything being railroaded through by 'big corps' - it's never in a user's interests.

Personally, I use my computers online for browsing & forums, with a bit of shopping now & again, so have no interest in Netflix, or its ilk - but, too many unnecessary things are happening over the 'web' these days, slowing it down for 'normal' users - it was initially created for the sharing of information!

Originally Posted by fatmac Personally, I use my computers online for browsing & forums, with a bit of shopping now & again, so have no interest in Netflix, or its ilk

Streaming is important for me as I am a cable cutter. I watch movies, tv shows, news and some sports online. And some of these sites use DRM. Not a big fan of DRM, but it's the only way to watch these programs.

It's not the fault of any BSD, it's entirely down to google widevine and the big tech companies that choose to use it.

Originally Posted by Tux2025 My only gripe with BSDs is the web browsers. They don't support the playback of some streaming sites like amazon prime, netflix, spectrum livetv.

BSD's don't make browsers. It's not BSD Firefox, or BSD Opera. Those are third party programs and the same version of Firefox gets ported to Linux as FreeBSD

Originally Posted by Tux2025 Also, the grep command in BSDs don't support the 'P' option, perl compatibility. I use the 'P' option alot with grep in linux when using regex.

Not even bash? There is more than one shell available for use in the base system and several in the ports tree for installation.

Originally Posted by Tux2025 The BSDs are great for servers and ok as desktops if DRM playback is not important to you.

I don't have a problem with it playing the movies I have saved to disk

I have 7 laptops running FreeBSD that I use as desktops every day and one running Kali. Kali is OK as a desktop, Debian was my choice of Linux and I like using apt-get. but I use FreeBSD for general desktop activities online and feel much more secure shopping on ebay with my BSD boxen.

I do have a Thinkpad W520 that serves as my dedicated .mp3 player at 167 days uptime. I'll post mine, you can post yours and we can compare uptime for OS stability as a tangible benchmark.

I know this isn't the thread for it but I have so many screenshots there and the question of why FreeBSD isn't as popular as Linux is because it doesn't hold your hand and do everything for you like Mint or Ubuntu. A lot of people coming fo Linux get frustrated, give up and find some reason to the blame BSD and leave. Because it couldn't be they lack aptitude or it's too steep a learning curve. Could it?

I pulled the W520 mp3 player offline when the fan on my X61 mp3 player shut down gracefully when it was going out. It has a browser and all the standard programs I use on them all and I'll include the W520 I'm using now to keep them together. All that business about FreeBSD not making a good desktop doesn't make much sense when you've got shots of an X61 at 306 days uptime.

Just my $0.02. When I tried FreeBSD 15-20 years ago, it would boot extremely slowly, like 10-100x slower than Linux. Maybe it was some kind of driver issue. IDK. When it did boot, it was (t)csh instead of (ba)sh. Not that I prefer one over the other, but I just want to know one shell and not have to switch, mentally.

Running a stable base system + latest released desktop + browsers is probably a sound approach. Not really related to the kernel though. I'm sure a Linux distro could do that too. Debian Stable + Nix ?