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FreeBSD is an amazing operating system

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BSD

What I failed to realize back then was that FreeBSD was (and it still is) designed as a complete multi-purpose operating system meant to be setup and tuned according to specific use cases. When I occasionally installed FreeBSD it didn't always perform as well as a default Debian GNU/Linux installation for the same task. Even FreeBSD on my FTP server at home eventually got replaced by Debian GNU/Linux because FreeBSD had to be rebooted every third day or so otherwise the performance degraded a lot. Debian on the other hand performed without any "hick-ups".

Later in the years to come GNU/Linux also got better hardware support, and often when I wanted to install FreeBSD some stupid hardware didn't work. Hardware was very expensive back then and I didn't have the option to purchase hardware that I knew would work on FreeBSD. All of these issues eventually made me use GNU/Linux more than FreeBSD. Today this is no longer a problem as FreeBSD has great support for most modern hardware.

Later I discovered and learned about many of the tuneable options and specific settings in FreeBSD, which makes it possible for the system administrator to tailer FreeBSD to his specific needs. I eventually ended up using FreeBSD as my main desktop computer for a very long time.

Some of the things I love about FreeBSD are: [...]

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Thoughts from Thom Holwerda

  • FreeBSD is an amazing operating system

    The BSDs just aren’t my thing. I’m not a developer, and I’m not a system administrator. Over the past six months or so, I’ve moved all my machines and all my workflows over to Linux – my laptop, my main PC (used for everything that isn’t translating), and my office PC (for my translation work), and I couldn’t be happier (in the interest of full disclosure, I do keep Windows around on my main PC for possible future Windows-only games, and I have a Windows 10 virtual machine on my office PC for some Windows-specific translation software I need to keep around).

    As I was planning this careful migration, I never once considered using any of the BSDs. For the simpler, almost exclusively desktop oriented work that I do, BSD just doesn’t seem like the right tool for the job – and that’s okay, I’m not the target audience – and I suspect there are many people like me. I think the BSDs are stronger for not trying to be everything to all people, and this more focused development seems to be exactly why someone chooses BSD over Linux.

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