My primary reasons: 1) Native OpenZFS support, which I use extensively 2) Jails: a more sane and secure containerization system that act more like manageable VMs rather than static deployables. 3) dtrace is essentially "god mode" for debugging syscalls and applications. 4) when needing to custom build 3rd party software (in my case, things like MariaDB), the ports tree build system is far simpler than anything else out there. I don't want to have to fuss with build environments, toolchains, or other crap that g
How is FreeBSD's ZFS support any more native than Linux's, when FreeBSD uses a port of ZFS-on-Linux? FreeBSD uses OpenZFS, which uses ZoL as its upstream. Both the FreeBSD and Linux implementation basically work the same way too, the OpenZFS core with an SPL (Solaris Porting Layer) to interface with the kernel.
At this point, no, it isn't using ZoL. The ZoL codebase was changed into the primary OpenZFS codebase, with "ZoL" now containing the "linux" specific bits, just like "ZoF" containing the FreeBSD specific bits. What makes it "native" on FreeBSD is that it is included in-kernel, and is the default filesystem at install time. Everything in FreeBSD is built around the inclusion of ZFS now. The entire ecosystem of other system utilities are being built with the assumption that ZFS exists. This includes things like iocage for containerization, which creates and manages ZFS datasets for you automatically, giving seamless access to ZFS features on a per-container level, such as snapshots, replication, quotas, reservations, and native performance.
Good reasons to switch? (Score:2)
I run Mint at home and it does what I need, but I'm curious what advantages there might be to switching to FreeBSD.
What might be some compelling reasons why someone would use or switch to FreeBSD from another Linux distro? Security, performance, stability...?
Re: (Score:5, Insightful)
My primary reasons:
1) Native OpenZFS support, which I use extensively
2) Jails: a more sane and secure containerization system that act more like manageable VMs rather than static deployables.
3) dtrace is essentially "god mode" for debugging syscalls and applications.
4) when needing to custom build 3rd party software (in my case, things like MariaDB), the ports tree build system is far simpler than anything else out there. I don't want to have to fuss with build environments, toolchains, or other crap that g
Re: (Score:2)
How is FreeBSD's ZFS support any more native than Linux's, when FreeBSD uses a port of ZFS-on-Linux? FreeBSD uses OpenZFS, which uses ZoL as its upstream. Both the FreeBSD and Linux implementation basically work the same way too, the OpenZFS core with an SPL (Solaris Porting Layer) to interface with the kernel.
Re:Good reasons to switch? (Score:2)
At this point, no, it isn't using ZoL. The ZoL codebase was changed into the primary OpenZFS codebase, with "ZoL" now containing the "linux" specific bits, just like "ZoF" containing the FreeBSD specific bits. What makes it "native" on FreeBSD is that it is included in-kernel, and is the default filesystem at install time. Everything in FreeBSD is built around the inclusion of ZFS now. The entire ecosystem of other system utilities are being built with the assumption that ZFS exists. This includes things like iocage for containerization, which creates and manages ZFS datasets for you automatically, giving seamless access to ZFS features on a per-container level, such as snapshots, replication, quotas, reservations, and native performance.