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?

[–] duncesplayed@lemmy.one 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] lnxtx@feddit.nl 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[1] https://www.freebsd.org/releases/13.0R/relnotes/

[–] lambda@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can you explain the differences between the license like I'm five?

[–] raptir@lemdro.id 6 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] theshatterstone54@feddit.uk 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] dino@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago

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?

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