I like the idea of FreeBSD, but I can’t see the point of giving up on my Linux conveniences to switch over to it. What advantages does it provide, and are they worth the switch, considering I’m losing a lot of software, as well as any semblance of gaming?
The advantage is that you can rebrand it, close the source and sell it as your invention.
Btw, did you know that Apple invented Unix?
Apple invented Unix?? What the hell are you talking about?
Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna at Bell Labs developed and invented Unix.
This was a joke about how Apple just takes open source stuff (in this case, they used FreeBSD as a basis for MacOS/iOS/iPadOS/tvOS/watchOS), rebrands it and then claims it was theirs.
What advantages does it provide
ZFS, mostly. There are some smaller peripheral things (like much better manpages), but these days the big one is probably ZFS. Zero licensing conflicts allows it to be an integral part of the kernel.
like better manpages
I want them now! I want the better manpages! Has someone decided to create inproved manpages for Linux? I think this could be a great idea for a project or an organisation. Manprove, the organisation to improve Unix manual pages.
Isn’t this actually impossible because manpages are maintained by distros? And the benefit of freedbsd being everything is created by the same team? Aka FreeBSD being a complete distro and not just a kernel?
FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE switched to the OpenZFS implementation[1]:
The ZFS implementation is now provided by OpenZFS. 9e5787d2284e (Sponsored by iXsystems)
So no big differences now, except for the licensing.
Can you explain the differences between the license like I’m five?
Linux is licensed under the GPL, which is described as “copyleft.” The GPL requires that if you want to use GPL code you need to license your modified code under the GPL.
FreeBSD is licensed under the BSD license, which is a permissive license. Basically as long as you stick the license statement in your documentation you can do whatever you want with BSD-licensed code. This is why commercial uses (like the Wii’s OS) tend to be BSD-based rather than Linux-based.
