Almost nobody cares about BSD anymore.

[CougTek]

FreeBSD 7.2 was released on the 4th of this month. I downloaded it and planned to share the torrent for a while. After I finished downloading the DVD and three CDs (for older systems), I let it run for a while. A few minutes ago, I noticed that I was only uploading at 3Kbps on each torrent and no more than 9 leechs were interested in every BSD torrent. I closed µtorrent.

Is BSD that much dead? There are obscur Linux distributions with more interest from the public.

 

[Chewy509]

FreeBSD has a place in my heart, but alas due to marketing Linux (*buntu in particular) seems to have the mindshare. I know all the Windows only guys at work, all seem to be asking me how to install Ubuntu or do it for them, even though I would rather install OpenSolaris or FreeBSD... Some don't even know that OpenSolaris or FreeBSD exist, until I tell them!

Even though I'm running SXCE (OpenSolaris) on my PC at this time, if OpenSolaris gets killed by Oracle (due to the recent Oracle buying Sun Microsystems), I would move back to FreeBSD, no questions asked.

PS. If I was to grab an ISO, it would be from the one of the official BSD mirrors via FTP, I wouldn't torrent it. Maybe this has something to do with it as well?

 

[Mercutio]

No question that for any but the most popular Linux distros I'd be downloading via FTP.

BSD has always been a sort of second place choice. I've had machines running it in the past, but for the most part it lags Linux for hardware support and in adding new features; one of the reasons I ended up on Linux in early 1995 was that my dual CPU 486 system could use both CPUs under Linux but not FreeBSD.

 

[Handruin]

Like Mercutio, I also would be downloading via FTP, not torrent. Just last night I installed CentOS and was very happy with it. I've tried FreeBSD in the past and it's more of a pain to setup than some of the newer distros so I don't bother with it.

 

[CougTek]

I'm mostly interested in FreeBSD because of the security level it provides. OpenBSD is supposed to be the least hackable OS, but FreeBSD should inherit most of the security benefits OpenBSD has. I have no proof for this position, just simple assosciation logic. FreeBSD should have many more features than OpenBSD too, so, without first-hand experience to be sure, I figure it should have the best of both worlds.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

I still haven't intalled it. I have an old Athlon XP 1600+ with 512MB of RAM waiting on my table. I hope it will run FreeBSD 7.2 fine.

 

[ddrueding]

Another thing in its favor security-wise is it's obscurity. There is no point developing an exploit for *BSD, as the market is even smaller than Linux.

 

[timwhit]

Another thing in its favor security-wise is it's obscurity. There is no point developing an exploit for *BSD, as the market is even smaller than Linux.

Isn't FreeBSD binary compatible with Linux though?

 

[Stereodude]

Another thing in its favor security-wise is it's obscurity.

The old security through obscurity argument. Apple relied on this one for a long time.

 

[ddrueding]

The old security through obscurity argument. Apple relied on this one for a long time.

I'm not saying that it guarantees security, but you can't say it doesn't help. Unless someone wants what you have very, very badly, they aren't going to write a custom exploit for you and your friends.

http://xkcd.com/538/

 

[Mercutio]

Isn't FreeBSD binary compatible with Linux though?

Sort of. As I recall some of the library files are different and you can add the Linux ones to your BSD machine and most stuff will work.

What I remember most about BSD compatibility with Linux was the way it was announced on USENET.

The post was titled: "You may now play Doom"

 

[Chewy509]

Isn't FreeBSD binary compatible with Linux though?

Yep, most linux binaries will work on FreeBSD systems, due to an emulation layer that the dynamic object loader uses to start binaries. (FreeBSD and Linux both use the same API/ABI, but different kernel interfaces, the emulation provides a dymanic remap of the kernel interface, so even apps that talk directly to the kernel work fine).

This is possible, due to the ELF object format supporting a OS/System field. the object loader on FreeBSD reads this field and can setup an emulation layer for those binaries marked as "linux".

Last time I read, this also works for SYSV marked binaries as well. (eg some x86 Solaris/HP-UX/AIX binaries).

FreeBSD jails (like Zones on Solaris) are also a nice touch as well, far better than just a chroot environment, without going to a full VM environment.

A few things are still lacking like are user roles and role based security. Where you can elevate a users permissions to perform certain functions as well, such as being able to mount cd-roms/dvd-roms, tape management, user management, power management, package management without giving them 'root' access.
Another item lacking (which may have been added recently, not too sure) is dynamic memory relocation for shared object files. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_space_layout_randomization ). OpenBSD was the first to implement, with MS implementing it for Vista/2008 +. Apple has some support for this in OSX 10.5.

But I will admit, a FreeBSD box is a harder target to hit than your average Ubuntu box, when looking at it from an 'out-of-box' experience.