User /r/MindCrunch is contemplating making the switch from Linux to a FreeBSD desktop environment. The /r/freebsd community provides feedback on compatibility and how to make the switch.
Switching to FreeBSD from Linux as Desktop OS – pre-checking software compatibility from freebsd
User Andy Mender is back with another insightful blog about FreeBSD. Read what he writes about FreeBSD’s storage capabilities — ZFS, bhyve, as well as an article about FreeBSD to Debian at the links below. 
For the last couple of weeks I have been delving deeper into the arcane arts of FreeBSD, paying extra attention to containers (jails), local/remote package distribution (poudriere) and storage utilities (ZFS RAID, mirrors). Truth be told, with every ounce of practical knowledge I was increasingly impressed by this Unix-like operating system. It’s nothing short of amazing, really! The irony lies in the fact that FreeBSD is an underdog in the Unix world (less than OpenBSD or Illumos, but still), despite the fact that it excels as a server environment and established many technologies currently in focus (process isolation, efficient networking and firewalls, data storage, etc.) years ago already. GNU/Linux is picking up pace, but it still has a long way to go.
……
What I mean to say is that FreeBSD has its place in the world and the time is ripe to truly begin to appreciate it!
Since the Zettabyte File System (ZFS) is steadily getting more and more stable on non-Solaris and non-FreeBSD systems, I decided to put my data pool created for the previous entry to the test. In principle, it should be possible to migrate a pool from one operating system to another. Imagine the following scenario – a company is getting new hardware and/or new IT experts and needs to migrate to a different OS. In my case it was from FreeBSD to Debian and vice versa. All data volumes were located in a single pool, but depending on the size of the company, it might be several pools instead. Before even thinking of migrating it is first important to make sure that all I/O related to the pool(s) to be migrated was stopped. When the coast is clear we can “zpool export <pool>” and begin our exodus to another operating system.
This article by user osemotions details a FreeBSD 11 desktop installation, as a Linux user steering the wheel. Read about their trial using FreeBSD below, in addition to trying out TrueOS.
A Penguin tries FreeBSD 11.0 RELEASE on an old i386 PC as his main desktop operating system, for the first time, for a weekend.
The story begins, you guess, with the operating system installation using the FreeBSD i386 hybrid image in order to boot a USB key.
Installation
Installation went without problems and everything flowed as I expected. For a user who lives in the world of Debianized Penguins, being able to install the superb ZFS filesystem is somewhat interesting at least.
A Penguin tries out FreeBSD 11 as a desktop operating system: http://www.osemotions.com/a-penguin-tries-freebsd-as-a-desktop-operating-system/
A Penguin tries out TrueOS: http://www.osemotions.com/a-penguin-tries-out-trueos-formerly-pc-bsd/
User Andy Mender tells us of his experience switching over to FreeBSD, having been a long time Linux user. You can also see his older blogs documenting his journey of using both open source operating systems.
I guess it should be no surprise that I returned to FreeBSD once more. One of the reasons I originally started learning C was to be able to help writing/fixing wireless drivers for FreeBSD. Although I haven’t reached that point of proficiency just yet, I feel FreeBSD is truly the place I belong after all. From the intrinsic order of a cathedral, through good programming practices and complete documentation to great system-level tools (jails, zfs, bhyve, etc.). Reading the most recent issue of Admin: Network & Security made it even clearer to me. GNU/Linux is growing strong in the server sector, with new GUI-driven tools and frameworks for container management. Personally, I think that’s awesome! It’s a win for the whole open-source world. However, Unix is more than just GNU/Linux – people often forget about Solaris/OpenIndiana and the various BSD-based operating systems (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonflyBSD, etc.). They too are great server platforms, one can learn a lot from. There are scenarios in which a non-Linux Unix is more suitable for the same or similar tasks.
Original post: https://linuxmender.wordpress.com/2017/02/26/freebsd-there-and-back-again/
Related links: Debian vs FreeBSD?, FreeBSD as a Desktop OS?
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Original post: https://thechroniclesofrenard.blogspot.com/2017/02/convincing-linux-guy-to-use-freebsd.html
Bryan Lunduke’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkK9UDm_ZNrq_rIXCz3xCGA
This article by user Aditya Tiwari (Fossbytes.com) talks about some pros and cons of both Linux and BSD operating systems. Follow the link below to read the entire comparison.
Short Bytes: Linux and BSD are two open source operating system families inspired by the 20th-century operating system Unix. Several things set the two apart like hardware support, development philosophy, etc. Also, Linux is more popular than BSD.
When you start to get out of the Windows ecosystem, the very first thing you see is macOS. But, chances are less that you may go for it, mostly because of the price tag. Moving further, you come across Linux flaunting its open source badge. Most people confuse Linux as an operating system and it has been a topic of controversy for a long time. Thus, some people refer a Linux operating system as GNU/Linux.
Difference Between Linux And BSD | Open Source Operating Systems
User eerielinux discusses their experience in using both Linux and *BSD operating systems. PC-BSD and TrueOS are also mentioned. The author describes what its like using ZFSonLinux and ZFS on a FreeBSD system. Follow the link below for the full story.
This is kind of the post that I wanted to write much earlier this year. After running a Linux-only environment at home for years, I had become less and less happy with the general direction things seem to be heading. I had run FreeBSD and OpenBSD on real hardware (old laptops) and several versions of PC-BSD in VirtualBox over the years. In January I decided to step forward and install PC-BSD (10.2) on my primary computer for daily usage. It remained a short episode – and this post will describe why. When TrueOS was released to the public I decided to try out that right away. But that will be another post.
Original article: https://eerielinux.wordpress.com/2016/11/25/back-and-forth-linux-afull storynd-bsd/
Michael Larabel of Phoronix performed several benchmark tests between the latest FreeBSD (note that it is not the official 11.0-RELEASE), Ubuntu, and macOS Sierra operating systems on the MacBook Air. The tests performed range from SQLite, OpenMP, to the LLVM Clang compiler. See the link below for the detailed results.
Yesterday I published some macOS 10.2 vs. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS benchmarks from a Mac Mini and MacBook Air systems. For those curious if BSDs can outperform macOS Sierra on Apple hardware, I tested the MacBook Air with FreeBSD 11.0 compared to the Linux and macOS results on that Core i5 system. Here are those results.
FreeBSD 11.0 AMD64 was tested on the Haswell-based MacBook Air and it actually worked well. Even the HD Graphics 5000 were playing nicely with the FreeBSD DRM Intel driver. The MacBook Air is equipped with a Core i5 4250U CPU with HD Graphics 5000, 4GB of DDR3 memory, and a 120GB Apple SSD. The install was smooth and was off to the races with testing.
Read about the benchmark results: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?item=freebsd-ubuntu-sierra&num=1&page=article
Related links:
Phoronix discussion – FreeBSD 11.0 Comes Up Short In Ubuntu 16.04 vs. macOS Sierra Benchmarks
Phoronix September 2016 Recap – Vim 8.0, macOS Sierra, Libreboot, & GCC Were Popular In September
Phoronix – FreeBSD 11 Is Still Being Respun & Tested, Hope To Release Next Week
ELI5 – What are the differences between LINUX and BSD? from linux4noobs
Michael Larabel of Phoronix documents his recent benchmarks between early versions of FreeBSD 11.0, DragonFlyBSD, and various Linux distributions. See the link below for the full report — ranging from SQLite tests, PostMark, GraphicsMagick, to LAME MP3 encoding.
Following last week’s DragonFlyBSD 4.6 benchmarks I carried out a fresh comparison of FreeBSD 10.3 vs. FreeBSD 11.0 (Beta 4 at the time) along with the DragonFlyBSD results and a few of the popular Linux distributions. Here are those numbers.
Tested for this comparison were DragonFlyBSD 4.4.3, DragonFlyBSD 4.6.0, FreeBSD 10.3, FreeBSD 11.0-BETA4, Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS, Ubuntu 16.10 in its current development state, Intel Clear Linux, and CentOS Linux 7. The x86_64/amd64 version of each OS was tested on a clean install each time using the same system hardware and each OS left to its default settings/packages.
Full report: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?item=freebsd11-beta-benchmarks&num=1&page=article
This article by Hamza Sheikh details his journey of moving from Linux to FreeBSD. He discusses everything from the ports offered, BSD licensing, choosing from the various BSD distributions, to ZFS. See the link below for the full story.
Before going into why FreeBSD is now my preferred OS for learning UNIX, let us review why I used Linux for a long time.
I started with Red Hat (before RHEL) in the early 2000s; tried to install it on a variety of hardware from CDs found in the back pages of books from the library. There was not a single working install so I gave up. Then came the Ubuntu hype, and around 2006 I built a computer specifically to install and learn it. Everything – except Wi-Fi – worked out of the box. I managed to get Wi-Fi working with ndiswrapper reading a lot of community documentation. I now had a working box and I began my Linux journey.
Why FreeBSD? by Hamza Sheikh – https://bsdmag.org/why_freebsd/