I recently had to test compilation of a project for work on FreeBSD and feel like my eyes were opened.
I went into the task thinking "the BSDs are OLD" yet there must be something great about this operating system. It's beloved in certain communities and used at popular successful startups such as Netflix. There must be something I've been missing that those who cherish it have come to understand.
What I found was the perfect blend of modern and old school. It's not old feeling at all!
It had all of the newest GNU software (and otherwise) that I've come to know and love on other operating systems but also a sense of stability about the core that you don't get with Linux. There was a sense of underlying structure that had actually been planned out instead of discovered over time and it made the whole process of learning about how it worked a pleasure.
In addition, the FreeBSD manual was actually helpful and gave me a sense of completeness rather than "the text in this wiki is just scratching the surface of a complex wrapper for x that used to be y".
It's simple yet powerful, up to date but solid and I'd highly recommend FreeBSD as a result of the experience.
You have to install some things, poke around the system, do some general management, etc... I'm not claiming to be an expert but I really liked what I saw especially in the documentation (it looks outdated but the content is absolutely on point)
I went into the task thinking "the BSDs are OLD" yet there must be something great about this operating system. It's beloved in certain communities and used at popular successful startups such as Netflix. There must be something I've been missing that those who cherish it have come to understand.
What I found was the perfect blend of modern and old school. It's not old feeling at all!
It had all of the newest GNU software (and otherwise) that I've come to know and love on other operating systems but also a sense of stability about the core that you don't get with Linux. There was a sense of underlying structure that had actually been planned out instead of discovered over time and it made the whole process of learning about how it worked a pleasure.
In addition, the FreeBSD manual was actually helpful and gave me a sense of completeness rather than "the text in this wiki is just scratching the surface of a complex wrapper for x that used to be y".
It's simple yet powerful, up to date but solid and I'd highly recommend FreeBSD as a result of the experience.