searching for “linux” and “freebsd” Someone asked me about this the other day and I decided to see how often the two keywords had shown up in my past writings here. (Score another for WordPress: searching is very fast and requires no configuration — it’s just there.) This is perhaps the post spells out some of what I think makes FreeBSD superior.
- there is a single source for the codebase, not an ever-increasing number of slightly divergent distributions
- the kernel and userland are treated as a single entity, so they never get out of sync
- the ports collection crushes RPM like a bug: 10,000 ports that do just about anything you can imagine, with all dependencies managed for you
- and did I mention performance? Or reliability?
So while I have had problems, some self-inflicted, others just “the stuff that happens,” it’s been a good experience. The FreeBSD project comes from the one true UNIX pedigree, and while that code may be in the minority now, the ingenuity and aesthetic that informed it, 25 years ago, is kept alive today.