Tried using freebsd for a firewall not too long ago. Had to relearn everything and reimplement some tools I was used to….
I know the article is tounge in cheek, but tbh nothing said stroke a chord for me
Perhaps you yearn for a simpler time, when ifconfig configured your network interfaces.
It still does.
When /etc/motd didn’t download advertisements from the web.
On all distros I use it doesn’t (yeah I got a few Ubuntu servers that in theory would count, but you can disable the dynamic motd if this is really an issue for you)
When adults actually packaged their software, instead of shipping 400 MB Flatpaks that make syscalls over D-Bus.
The only place where I use flatpaks/appimages is on my steamdeck… Does rocky really use flatpaks as packaging or is it just that rocky doesn’t package enough and plasma somehow has flatpaks as a feature?
Sysctl Tweaks
source: trust me, bro
Actually no, but man it would be interesting to know why those sysctl settings are good/needed
Hope you can live with 802.11g.
Nope
Using different audio devices simultaneously
Oh yeah I remember those times
I know this post is mostly documentation for them to write down what was necessary. I do the same, but it has no actual value for me as I don’t really know why I would switch to freebsd (and I installed it a while ago on a laptop as well…) and this illustrates just how not smooth it is for beginners to actually make the switch…
And now I feel like an old neckbeard…
Sorry for my micro rant :/
Does rocky really use flatpaks as packaging or is it just that rocky doesn’t package enough and plasma somehow has flatpaks as a feature?
Many graphical applications like Gajim on Rocky required the use of Flatpaks, because the libraries in EPEL are often too old for developers to bother with. But my primary motivation for moving off Rocky was RedHat’s rug-pull of the CentOS sources.
Actually no, but man it would be interesting to know why those sysctl settings are good/needed
The hardening ones are pretty frequently recommended in various places. The motivation for the networking ones was given immediately prior to the line you quoted. Maybe I’ll write a future post about how I calculated those values, but it seemed overly technical and boring for a desktop article. TLDR is that it increases some window sizes / default buffers to get better TCP performance over high latency links. Obviously YMMV
illustrates just how not smooth it is for beginners to actually make the switch
Totally agree, I would never recommend FreeBSD for any beginner. But for someone that’s been using some form of Unix for a decade or more, I think the main selling point of FreeBSD is how infrequently anything changes. The rate of churn is extremely slow.
Many graphical applications like Gajim on Rocky required the use of Flatpaks, because the libraries in EPEL are often too old for developers to bother with. But my primary motivation for moving off Rocky was RedHat’s rug-pull of the CentOS sources.
Ohh late for the party. Yeah we were using some kind of red hat for some clusters because red hat was/is the owner/main developer of the software running on it (Ceph) and out of tradition on some other clusters (HPC).
Personally I never really liked point release distros like debian or red hat and preferred rolling release distros for private use.
The hardening ones are pretty frequently recommended in various places. The motivation for the networking ones was given immediately prior to the line you quoted.
I’m a big proponent of sane defaults and always question settings that are blind recommendations that aren’t somehow the distro default. There are obviously some optimizations that only make sense for servers or desktops (exclusive or), but hardening settings either are sane or break things. I love having a list of settings I can tweak, but “because people recommended them” isn’t normally something I go by. If I change some defaults I need to know why or I will stand in front of the settings after a few years and just go “must have had a reason for this” and not touch it even though there are now better defaults.
But for someone that’s been using some form of Unix for a decade or more, I think the main selling point of FreeBSD is how infrequently anything changes. The rate of churn is extremely slow.
Yeah, I’ve been using Linux and BSD in some form or another for 2 decades now as well, but am moving away from many distros that are moving slow. There are multiple forms of slow
no development
stable apis and abis
no updates (as in Debian/Red Hat)
I can only tolerate the second one and actually love it when I get it, but it is sometimes hard to discern.
Anyway thanks for answering my rant
I’ve not used it on vanilla FreeBSD, but my Morello box (CheriBSD: FreeBSD plus CHERI patches) is working well with KDE’s Wayland compositor. Kernel, GPU drivers, Wayland compositor, and so on are all memory safe.
Super cool! Another FreeBSD laptop user here - i3 rather than KDE, though. Good to see FreeBSD getting more visibility.
another one: https://mro.name/FreeBSD-XFCE/ here :-)
I really enjoyed the teenagers comment! You should have also mentioned the horrors of systemD-timesink.d!
Timesinkd….I’ll be using that from now on!
Tried using freebsd for a firewall not too long ago. Had to relearn everything and reimplement some tools I was used to…. I know the article is tounge in cheek, but tbh nothing said stroke a chord for me
It still does.
On all distros I use it doesn’t (yeah I got a few Ubuntu servers that in theory would count, but you can disable the dynamic motd if this is really an issue for you)
The only place where I use flatpaks/appimages is on my steamdeck… Does rocky really use flatpaks as packaging or is it just that rocky doesn’t package enough and plasma somehow has flatpaks as a feature?
Actually no, but man it would be interesting to know why those sysctl settings are good/needed
Nope
Oh yeah I remember those times
I know this post is mostly documentation for them to write down what was necessary. I do the same, but it has no actual value for me as I don’t really know why I would switch to freebsd (and I installed it a while ago on a laptop as well…) and this illustrates just how not smooth it is for beginners to actually make the switch… And now I feel like an old neckbeard… Sorry for my micro rant :/
Many graphical applications like Gajim on Rocky required the use of Flatpaks, because the libraries in EPEL are often too old for developers to bother with. But my primary motivation for moving off Rocky was RedHat’s rug-pull of the CentOS sources.
The hardening ones are pretty frequently recommended in various places. The motivation for the networking ones was given immediately prior to the line you quoted. Maybe I’ll write a future post about how I calculated those values, but it seemed overly technical and boring for a desktop article. TLDR is that it increases some window sizes / default buffers to get better TCP performance over high latency links. Obviously YMMV
Totally agree, I would never recommend FreeBSD for any beginner. But for someone that’s been using some form of Unix for a decade or more, I think the main selling point of FreeBSD is how infrequently anything changes. The rate of churn is extremely slow.
Ohh late for the party. Yeah we were using some kind of red hat for some clusters because red hat was/is the owner/main developer of the software running on it (Ceph) and out of tradition on some other clusters (HPC). Personally I never really liked point release distros like debian or red hat and preferred rolling release distros for private use.
I’m a big proponent of sane defaults and always question settings that are blind recommendations that aren’t somehow the distro default. There are obviously some optimizations that only make sense for servers or desktops (exclusive or), but hardening settings either are sane or break things. I love having a list of settings I can tweak, but “because people recommended them” isn’t normally something I go by. If I change some defaults I need to know why or I will stand in front of the settings after a few years and just go “must have had a reason for this” and not touch it even though there are now better defaults.
Yeah, I’ve been using Linux and BSD in some form or another for 2 decades now as well, but am moving away from many distros that are moving slow. There are multiple forms of slow
I can only tolerate the second one and actually love it when I get it, but it is sometimes hard to discern. Anyway thanks for answering my rant
Does this mean that Wayland doesn’t work on FreeBSD or that he just doesn’t like Wayland?
Both?
Wayland allegedly works on FreeBSD but I could not get it working with KDE.
Ah, I see. I’ve had some trouble with KDE/Wayland combination in the past (like 2023 and earlier) under Linux too. Perhaps comparable problems.
Wayland support is in a decent shape on FreeBSD. There is an active group of users and maintainers making sure that it works well.
https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/wayland/
I’ve not used it on vanilla FreeBSD, but my Morello box (CheriBSD: FreeBSD plus CHERI patches) is working well with KDE’s Wayland compositor. Kernel, GPU drivers, Wayland compositor, and so on are all memory safe.