FreeBSDNews.com

FreeBSD 11.0 vs Ubuntu 16.04 vs. macOS Sierra Benchmarks by Michael Larabel

By Leave a Comment

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.

freebsdairYesterday 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

What are the advantages of BSD as a PC OS? from freebsd

FreeNAS vs NexentaStor Community

By Leave a Comment

This article compares FreeNAS with NextentaStor Community. They are both storage operating systems, FreeNAS being based on FreeBSD.

Original: http://www.freenas.org/freenas-versus-nexenta/

RGB_FreeNAS_Shark_Logo_Onlight_Lg nexenta

High Level Comparison

FreeNAS and NexentaStor Community are Storage Operating Systems that support many of the same features like CIFS, SMB, NFS, and iSCSI protocols. Each system works with OpenZFS (v5000) with feature flags, most virtualization platforms, and have support, training and certification available.

FreeNAS

Started in October 2005 by Olivier Cochard-Labbe, FreeNAS is a free and open-source software network-attached storage (NAS) system based on FreeBSD and the OpenZFS file system and is licensed under the terms of the BSD License. In September 2009, the development team realized that FreeNAS would need to be completely re-written in order to incorporate modern features like a plug-in architecture, updates to the base system, and an up-to-date User Interface. To carry this out, the FreeNAS Team transferred the project over to iXsystems, who moved from a m0n0wall and PHP-based architecture to one based on FreeBSD’s NanoBSD embedded build system, the Python programming language, the Django CMS and the dojo JavaScript toolkit.

NexentaStor Community Edition

Alex Aizman and Dmitry Ysupov created the Nexenta OS project after Sun Microsystems released the bulk of its Solaris operating system under free software licenses as OpenSolaris. NexentaStor is derived from the former Nexenta OS and based on the illumos operating system, utilizing OpenZFS as an underlying filesystem. The software delivers unified file and block storage services to consumers. NexentaStor Community edition is free up to 18TB of raw storage and does not include all the features of the professional version.

[Read more…]

Comparative Introduction To FreeBSD For Linux Users

By Leave a Comment

FreeBSD user anismaj explains FreeBSD to users of Linux that are looking to make the switch, or try out something new.

Original post: http://www.unixmen.com/comparative-introduction-freebsd-linux-users/

Introduction

BSD was originally derived from UNIX and currently, there are various number of Unix-like operating systems descended from the BSD. While, FreeBSD is the most widely used open source Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD distribution). As it is implicitly said it is a free and open source Unix-like-operating system and a public server platform. FreeBSD source code is generally released under a permissive BSD license. It is true that it has similarities with Linux but we cannot deny that they differs in other points.

The remainder of this article is organized as follows: the description of FreeBSD will be treated in our first section.  The similarities between FreeBSD and Linux will be briefly described in the second section. While their differences will be discussed in the third section. And a comparison of their features will be summarized in our last section.

FreeBSD description

History

  • The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993, while its first CD-ROM distributed was FreeBSD1.0 on December 1993. Then, FreeBSD 2.1.0 was released in 1995 which gained the satisfaction of all users. Actually, many IT companies use FreeBSD and are satisfied where we can list those companies: IBM, Nokia, NetApp and Juniper Networks.

License

  • Concerning its license, FreeBSD is released under various source licenses. Its newest code called Kernel is released under the two-clause BSD license, offering the possibility to use and redistribute FreeBSD with absolute freedom. Other codes are released three- and four-clause BSD license and some others are released under GPL and CDDL.

Users

  • One of the important feature of FreeBSD, we can mention the various categories of its users. In fact, it is possible to use FreeBSD as a mail server, web server, FTP server and as a router due to the significant set of server-related software accompanied with it. Furthermore, ARM, PowerPC and MIPS are supported by FreeBSD so it is possible to use x86 and s86-64.

FreeBSD and Linux similarities

[Read more…]

Linux vs. BSD: Which Should You Use?

By Leave a Comment

Here’s another Linux vs BSD comparison, by user Danny Stieben of MakeUseOf.

At MakeUseOf, we cover Linux quite a bit as the “alternative” to Windows and Mac OS X. However, those aren’t the only three operating systems out there — there’s also the BSD family of Unix-like operating systems, which are technically speaking different from Linux.

In the name of fair competition, it’s time that we gave BSD operating systems some recognition as well. And there’s no better way to do that than to compare them against Linux. What’s different about BSD operating systems, and should you be running it instead of Linux? How does Linux and the best BSD desktop OS, PC-BSD, compare on the desktop?

Find out how the two compare: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/linux-vs-bsd-which-should-you-use/

SECURITY : OPENBSD VS FREEBSD

By Leave a Comment

This blog post by compares the security capabilities of FreeBSD and OpenBSD.

openBSDOpenBSD and FreeBSD are both great OS that I admire and use. OpenBSD is considered more secure since it is its main goal, but FreeBSD can be tweaked to be pretty well hardened as well. Depending on the forums or to who we ask, we will have different opinions. But what are the facts? Which OS is more secure and why?

I am not asking the question about which one is globally better, as “better” has a different meaning depending on the context and the needs (ISP routers, datafreebsd-logo-largebase servers, home gateway, desktop system, storage server or appliance, etc…). On some enterprises doing a major OS upgrade every 6 months or every year is doable, on others, it’s not possible at all. Also, it depends if one needs performance for streaming (Netflix), or if security is a top priority for a redondant firewall. Everyone needs is different, and both OS are highly useful.

If we strictly focus on security, how FreeBSD compares to OpenBSD security wise? In what follows, we will dig into memory protection, system and network security features, and default “out of the box” security. The purpose is to give unbiased facts, to compare point by point both OS. I am not trying to find the “best” OS and discredit the other, I love and use both :-) Let us try to find out the integrated security features of both OS, the visit continues below!

Check out the full comparison here – http://networkfilter.blogspot.com/2014/12/security-openbsd-vs-freebsd.html

Linux vs FreeBSD – a comprehensive comparison

By Leave a Comment

bsdnixIn this article by the Brio Team, Linux and FreeBSD are compared in terms of its developers, security, licensing, and compatibility with hardware and software. The author also explains which one may be a better fit for a specific user. In addition, it discusses the UNIX element of each kernel.

For most users, the difference between Linux and FreeBSD is not something significant, as the two operating systems frequently share even the same applications. Both of these Operating Systems are UNIX like, in their form and function; while they are developed mainly for non-commercial interests. However, on taking a closer look one can uncover more differences between the two.

Check out the full article here: http://brioteam.com/linux-versus-freebsd-comprehensive-comparison

PC-BSD vs. Ubuntu

By Leave a Comment

PC-BSD Logoubuntu_logo_black-orangeThis article by Make Tech Easier discusses the pros and cons of both PC-BSD and Ubuntu as an open-source desktop operating system. The two operating systems are compared by the ease of use as a desktop, starting with the installation process, desktop environment, and ending with application support and installation.

To read the full article with graphics, check out the following link: http://www.maketecheasier.com/pc-bsd-vs-ubuntu/

FreeBSD or CentOS

By 2 Comments

FreeBSD or CentOS? FreeBSD or Linux, that is the question.

Well, the answer is: “It depends on what you need the operating system for and what your hardware requirements are”.

What I like about members of the FreeBSD community, they generally acknowledge that their is no perfect operating system and that Linux has some strong points over FreeBSD, and the other way round. Discussions about differences between FreeBSD and Linux are often level headed and based on facts, though not everything is always measurable (sometimes something just feels….)

A good example is a recent discussion (CentOS vs FreeBSD) on the FreeBSD Forums about whether one should use FreeBSD as server or CentOS, a Linux distribution entirely derived entirely from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

Some of the strong points in favours of FreeBSD mentioned in the discussion are:

  • Learning UNIX basics
  • Better on older hardware (low overhead)
  • Stable and secure
  • ZFS Snapshots
  • FreeBSD Jails
  • Better memory footprint
  • Preferred for VPS (RootBSD is a leading hoster FreeBSD VPS’s)
  • Can run some Linux apps faster than on Linux itself
  • Better control over software (ports)
  • Updates and upgrades without ending up reinstalling
  • Good documentation
  • etc

Strong points for  CentOS:

  • Experience handy as there are more CentOS related jobs
  • Security updates are easier
  • Beefier hardware preferred
  • Faster install and update times
  • Slow package patch processes
  • No compiling from source (FreeBSD has pkg though)
  • Better hardware support
  • etc

Note, these features were mentioned in thread, you may have different views. Please don’t start a flame here ;-)

Benchmarks: FreeBSD, Oracle Linux, UFS and ZFS

By Leave a Comment

Some love benchmarks, others hate them, especially when ‘apples’ are compare with ‘pears’, when Linux is benchmarked against FreeBSD.

For what it’s worth there are some new benchmarks on openbenchmarking.org:

When looking at the FreeBSD vs Oracle Linux benchmarks, keep in mind that both operating systems are quite different kernels, FreeBSD 9 is an RC and that it’s easy to tweak some settings in FreeBSD to make it a lot faster.