{"slug": "freebsd", "name": "FreeBSD", "category": "os", "category_name": "Operating systems and desktop", "description": "Open-source Unix-like operating system descended from BSD, used on servers, desktops and embedded systems.", "recommenders": 45, "commenters": 72, "warners": 5, "score": 40.068, "rising": 4.2, "first": "2025-11-02", "latest": "2026-10-31", "why": "Liked for thorough documentation and a coherent, simple base system, rock-solid servers, and jails, ZFS and bhyve.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 53, "neutral": 23, "compare": 3, "warn": 5}, "spark": [13, 2, 5, 1, 7, 2, 1, 2, 4, 4, 7, 5], "listed": true, "loved": ["Stability", "Jails, ZFS, bhyve"], "caveat": "Desktop rough edges", "short_quote": "I find it pleasant and I prefer it over Linux, if I do not mind its paper cuts (for Desktop use).", "icon": true, "domain": "freebsd.org", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.freebsd.org/", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["FreeBSD"], "verdict": [{"text": "Liked for thorough documentation and a coherent, simple base system,", "cites": [{"id": 758518512, "item_id": 47407407, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47407407", "by": "AdieuToLogic", "date": "2026-03-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the project's documentation is a gold standard IMHO", "excerpt": "> I use FreeBSD at work every since day and while I don't hate it, I do wish we just used Linux. There are more guides, tools, etc for Linux than for FreeBSD. Regarding guides specifically, FreeBSD has exceptional resources: FreeBSD Handbook[0] FreeBSD Porter's Handbook[1] FreeBSD Developers' Handbook[2] The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System[3] Not to mention that the FreeBSD man pages are qui", "context": "long-time FreeBSD user and fan", "use_case": "operating system", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Love FreeBSD"}, {"id": 758439856, "item_id": 47402491, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47402491", "by": "xenophonf", "date": "2026-03-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love FreeBSD for its documentation.", "excerpt": "I love FreeBSD for its documentation. To answer your question about Wayland specifically: https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/wayland/ If you want something with a graphical environment ready to run, check out GhostBSD, which is based on FreeBSD and features MATE: https://www.ghostbsd.org/", "context": "", "use_case": "operating system", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Love FreeBSD"}, {"id": 763270704, "item_id": 47704419, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47704419", "by": "wolvoleo", "date": "2026-04-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's a holistic system which means it's much easier to understand, not a collection of random parts thrown together.", "excerpt": "Interesting. I use FreeBSD on my desktop too but it's really a desktop so I don't have to bother with WiFi or bluetooth. I generally dislike laptops for ergonomic reasons, and I never bring my computers anywhere anyway so I just buy NUCs. Not having to buy for a display, keyboard, trackpad, battery helps keep the price down. I like it for several reasons. It's a holistic system which means it's much easier to underst", "context": "uses it on a NUC desktop", "use_case": "desktop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "FreeBSD Laptop Compatibility: Top Laptops to Use with FreeBSD"}]}, {"text": " rock-solid servers,", "cites": [{"id": 737742832, "item_id": 46108927, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46108927", "by": "jandrusk", "date": "2025-12-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Truly a rock solid OS and I use it for my personal DNS servers and never had any issue", "excerpt": "What is love? Baby don't reboot me, baby don't reboot me :) Truly a rock solid OS and I use it for my personal DNS servers and never had any issue, it just run and runs and runs with minimal bloat. I think it's way more stable than Linux, but obviously has some work to be a comptetive desktop. I've recently developed the philosophy of using Omarchy as my desktop and servers are FreeBSD unless there's some reason it d", "context": "", "use_case": "DNS servers", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Love Letter to FreeBSD"}, {"id": 782152048, "item_id": 48884503, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48884503", "by": "Gud", "date": "2026-07-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "On the server I prefer FreeBSD because of it's amazing flexibility", "excerpt": "I don't understand the constant (almost always unsubstantiated) criticism of the *BSDs from many Linux advocates. Personally I evaluate each OS by it's merit, and I've concluded that OpenBSD, FreeBSD and some Linux distributions(I use arch btw) are solid operating systems. On the server I prefer FreeBSD because of it's amazing flexibility, and stable yet evolutionary base system and in my opinion, superior init syste", "context": "", "use_case": "server OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Theo de Raadt: \"You've been smoking something mind altering\" (2007)"}, {"id": 779733776, "item_id": 48733361, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48733361", "by": "assimpleaspossi", "date": "2026-06-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "FreeBSD is my daily driver and I only reboot for major upgrades", "excerpt": "FreeBSD is my daily driver and I only reboot for major upgrades (which is required). I never power off cause I work on it, off and on, throughout the day and night (for my own company).", "context": "runs own company", "use_case": "daily driver OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Have You Restarted Your Computer This Week?"}]}, {"text": " and jails, ZFS and bhyve.", "cites": [{"id": 733706113, "item_id": 45856632, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45856632", "by": "cullumsmith", "date": "2025-11-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I highly recommend this approach. I run ~all of my digital footprint on FreeBSD jails.", "excerpt": "I highly recommend this approach. I run ~all of my digital footprint on FreeBSD jails. After surveying how many jail managers have come and go in the last decade, I decided to just roll my own using a single shell script called jailctl [0]. Nothing fancy, just VNET jails based on ZFS templates (vanilla FreeBSD rootfs) and epair interfaces (which I truck to various VLANs on the host's egress interface). One pattern th", "context": "runs all digital footprint on FreeBSD jails", "use_case": "running services in jails", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immutable Software Deploys Using ZFS Jails on FreeBSD"}, {"id": 734485168, "item_id": 45905323, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45905323", "by": "clan", "date": "2025-11-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I daily drive FreeBSD on my desktop with KDE.", "excerpt": "I daily drive FreeBSD on my desktop with KDE. It is not as smooth as Linux and requires a little more tinkering compared to Linux. But I love it! The killer features for me: - The pf firewall. Rules you actually understand! - Jails! When you cannot have Zones this will do. - Native ZFS. Stable, mature, safe and with all the features you can dream of. - Linuxulator. Binary compatibility with Linux if need be. Can be p", "context": "daily drives FreeBSD", "use_case": "desktop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "A brief look at FreeBSD"}, {"id": 768541184, "item_id": 48033824, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48033824", "by": "kuon", "date": "2026-05-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I recently switched from Linux to freebsd on my work computer and things have been mostly working.", "excerpt": "I recently switched from Linux to freebsd on my work computer and things have been mostly working. With linux chroot I can use the few apps missing BSD port. I did this because I manage a fleet of BSD based server (BSD runs zfs and bhyve with VM on it) and I wanted the same base system for me. I wonder how BSD friendly those laptop are. In any case I am so happy to see some open hardware solution.", "context": "manages a fleet of BSD-based servers", "use_case": "work desktop matching BSD servers", "switched_from": "Linux", "story": "StarFighter 16-Inch"}]}, {"text": " The most common caveat is desktop rough edges and patchy hardware support,", "cites": [{"id": 781487888, "item_id": 48842993, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48842993", "by": "HackerThemAll", "date": "2026-07-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "As much as I love FreeBSD, it has its rough edges when it comes to daily use.", "excerpt": "As much as I love FreeBSD, it has its rough edges when it comes to daily use. And an upgrade, while much smoother than it used to be in the \"make buildkernel; make buildworld\" times, is still lacking and can break the system. The saddest is that FreeBSD is massively underfunded. They still manage to do great stuff, make massive improvements. If the big corporations like Apple, who made billions on FreeBSD, could just", "context": "", "use_case": "daily OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Moving to FreeBSD from Linux"}, {"id": 758857712, "item_id": 47428607, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47428607", "by": "drewlander", "date": "2026-03-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I find it pleasant and I prefer it over Linux, if I do not mind its paper cuts (for Desktop use).", "excerpt": "I use it as a daily driver. I have tried to use it in some shape or form for the past 20 years. I made a career in Linux and Windows, but always have had a heart for FreeBSD. A person I consider by technical mentor, loved FreeBSD. My first \"Admin\" job was at a small ISP where he worked. That was where I got my first taste of FreeBSD which I believe was version 5.3? He made sure that all consoles were set to show beas", "context": "Career in Linux and Windows, long-time FreeBSD user", "use_case": "daily driver desktop and server", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Love FreeBSD"}, {"id": 734485168, "item_id": 45905323, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45905323", "by": "clan", "date": "2025-11-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I daily drive FreeBSD on my desktop with KDE.", "excerpt": "I daily drive FreeBSD on my desktop with KDE. It is not as smooth as Linux and requires a little more tinkering compared to Linux. But I love it! The killer features for me: - The pf firewall. Rules you actually understand! - Jails! When you cannot have Zones this will do. - Native ZFS. Stable, mature, safe and with all the features you can dream of. - Linuxulator. Binary compatibility with Linux if need be. Can be p", "context": "daily drives FreeBSD", "use_case": "desktop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "A brief look at FreeBSD"}, {"id": 732685888, "item_id": 45792868, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45792868", "by": "irusensei", "date": "2025-11-02", "stance": "warn", "quote": "As of now the FreeBSD scheduler is not making full use of big.LITTLE.", "excerpt": "Nice website design. I don't like to use the same stuff I use for work at home because home is supposed to be fun. So I used to have everything FreeBSD but I've stopped using around 2020 when I've started buying computers that have different core configurations like ARM RockChip and Intel Alder Lake. I believe the term is called big.LITTLE when you have efficient and performance cores. As of now the FreeBSD scheduler", "context": "", "use_case": "home server OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Using FreeBSD to make self-hosting fun again"}]}, {"text": " especially Wi-Fi on laptops.", "cites": [{"id": 796782288, "item_id": 49798893, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49798893", "by": "liendolucas", "date": "2026-09-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Everything except the wifi works flawlessly (daily driver for working).", "excerpt": "Running FreeBSD on a Lenovo Thinkbook 16 G7 ARP that was bought brand new less than a year ago. Everything except the wifi works flawlessly (daily driver for working). And the wifi is easily fixable either buying a non expensive dongle or waiting for the next release. Also running bhyve as daily driver with Ubuntu for development purposes. Everything works without issues, perfectly.", "context": "", "use_case": "daily driver laptop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "I said no and Apple said yes"}, {"id": 741251856, "item_id": 46328241, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46328241", "by": "Lammy", "date": "2025-12-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "very happy Framework 12 owner (currently dual-booting Windows 11 Enterprise and FreeBSD 15.0 + Wayland + KDE)", "excerpt": "Small correction: the AX211 card in the Framework 12 is able to connect to networks, not just scan. What you're missing is that a bunch of the Wi-Fi firmware blobs were removed from the base system between FreeBSD 14.2 and 14.3, and since 14.3 came out in June 2025 I assume that's what was tested. An upgrade from 14.2 to 14.3 would also have kept working, just not a fresh install of 14.3 or 15.0. A user needs some ot", "context": "Framework 12 owner", "use_case": "laptop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "The FreeBSD Foundation's Laptop Support and Usability Project"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Stability", "summary": "Commenters call it rock solid on servers, running for long periods without issues.", "quotes": [{"id": 737742832, "item_id": 46108927, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46108927", "by": "jandrusk", "date": "2025-12-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Truly a rock solid OS and I use it for my personal DNS servers and never had any issue", "excerpt": "What is love? Baby don't reboot me, baby don't reboot me :) Truly a rock solid OS and I use it for my personal DNS servers and never had any issue, it just run and runs and runs with minimal bloat. I think it's way more stable than Linux, but obviously has some work to be a comptetive desktop. I've recently developed the philosophy of using Omarchy as my desktop and servers are FreeBSD unless there's some reason it d", "context": "", "use_case": "DNS servers", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Love Letter to FreeBSD"}, {"id": 782152048, "item_id": 48884503, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48884503", "by": "Gud", "date": "2026-07-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "On the server I prefer FreeBSD because of it's amazing flexibility", "excerpt": "I don't understand the constant (almost always unsubstantiated) criticism of the *BSDs from many Linux advocates. Personally I evaluate each OS by it's merit, and I've concluded that OpenBSD, FreeBSD and some Linux distributions(I use arch btw) are solid operating systems. On the server I prefer FreeBSD because of it's amazing flexibility, and stable yet evolutionary base system and in my opinion, superior init syste", "context": "", "use_case": "server OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Theo de Raadt: \"You've been smoking something mind altering\" (2007)"}, {"id": 752966148, "item_id": 47060384, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47060384", "by": "cullumsmith", "date": "2026-02-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's nice coming home to FreeBSD and old boring stuff like pam_krb5 and nslcd. It just works.", "excerpt": "Nice. I run a very similar setup, but opted for a stack of OpenLDAP / MIT Kerberos / PowerDNS on my \"domain controllers.\" OpenLDAP does multimaster replication and is the backend for DNS records and the Kerberos database. The hardest part was figuring out OpenLDAPs configuration syntax, especially the correct ldif incantations for things like nested group memberOf= queries, schemas, and ACLs. It's somewhat inscrutabl", "context": "", "use_case": "home servers", "switched_from": "", "story": "Native FreeBSD Kerberos/LDAP with FreeIPA/IDM"}]}, {"label": "Jails, ZFS, bhyve", "summary": "Jails, native ZFS and the bhyve hypervisor are cited as key reasons to run it.", "quotes": [{"id": 733706113, "item_id": 45856632, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45856632", "by": "cullumsmith", "date": "2025-11-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I highly recommend this approach. I run ~all of my digital footprint on FreeBSD jails.", "excerpt": "I highly recommend this approach. I run ~all of my digital footprint on FreeBSD jails. After surveying how many jail managers have come and go in the last decade, I decided to just roll my own using a single shell script called jailctl [0]. Nothing fancy, just VNET jails based on ZFS templates (vanilla FreeBSD rootfs) and epair interfaces (which I truck to various VLANs on the host's egress interface). One pattern th", "context": "runs all digital footprint on FreeBSD jails", "use_case": "running services in jails", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immutable Software Deploys Using ZFS Jails on FreeBSD"}, {"id": 734485168, "item_id": 45905323, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45905323", "by": "clan", "date": "2025-11-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I daily drive FreeBSD on my desktop with KDE.", "excerpt": "I daily drive FreeBSD on my desktop with KDE. It is not as smooth as Linux and requires a little more tinkering compared to Linux. But I love it! The killer features for me: - The pf firewall. Rules you actually understand! - Jails! When you cannot have Zones this will do. - Native ZFS. Stable, mature, safe and with all the features you can dream of. - Linuxulator. Binary compatibility with Linux if need be. Can be p", "context": "daily drives FreeBSD", "use_case": "desktop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "A brief look at FreeBSD"}, {"id": 768541184, "item_id": 48033824, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48033824", "by": "kuon", "date": "2026-05-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I recently switched from Linux to freebsd on my work computer and things have been mostly working.", "excerpt": "I recently switched from Linux to freebsd on my work computer and things have been mostly working. With linux chroot I can use the few apps missing BSD port. I did this because I manage a fleet of BSD based server (BSD runs zfs and bhyve with VM on it) and I wanted the same base system for me. I wonder how BSD friendly those laptop are. In any case I am so happy to see some open hardware solution.", "context": "manages a fleet of BSD-based servers", "use_case": "work desktop matching BSD servers", "switched_from": "Linux", "story": "StarFighter 16-Inch"}]}, {"label": "Documentation", "summary": "The Handbook and man pages are praised as complete and consistent.", "quotes": [{"id": 758518512, "item_id": 47407407, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47407407", "by": "AdieuToLogic", "date": "2026-03-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the project's documentation is a gold standard IMHO", "excerpt": "> I use FreeBSD at work every since day and while I don't hate it, I do wish we just used Linux. There are more guides, tools, etc for Linux than for FreeBSD. Regarding guides specifically, FreeBSD has exceptional resources: FreeBSD Handbook[0] FreeBSD Porter's Handbook[1] FreeBSD Developers' Handbook[2] The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System[3] Not to mention that the FreeBSD man pages are qui", "context": "long-time FreeBSD user and fan", "use_case": "operating system", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Love FreeBSD"}, {"id": 758439856, "item_id": 47402491, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47402491", "by": "xenophonf", "date": "2026-03-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love FreeBSD for its documentation.", "excerpt": "I love FreeBSD for its documentation. To answer your question about Wayland specifically: https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/wayland/ If you want something with a graphical environment ready to run, check out GhostBSD, which is based on FreeBSD and features MATE: https://www.ghostbsd.org/", "context": "", "use_case": "operating system", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Love FreeBSD"}, {"id": 802658290, "item_id": 50166143, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50166143", "by": "deltarholamda", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "FreeBSD is very good as well on this front.", "excerpt": ">`man` pages are consistently incredible I love this part of OpenBSD so much. FreeBSD is very good as well on this front. Sometimes the terseness of the man pages gets to me, but it's all there. I used OpenBSD as a daily driver way back, somewhere around v3.5, on a somewhat elderly Thinkpad. It was perfectly adequate. I still use it for various systems that I pretty much just set and forget. Extremely reliable, and p", "context": "", "use_case": "man pages quality", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenBSD 8.0"}]}, {"label": "Daily driver", "summary": "Several users run it as their everyday desktop or laptop OS, including on recent hardware.", "quotes": [{"id": 796782288, "item_id": 49798893, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49798893", "by": "liendolucas", "date": "2026-09-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Everything except the wifi works flawlessly (daily driver for working).", "excerpt": "Running FreeBSD on a Lenovo Thinkbook 16 G7 ARP that was bought brand new less than a year ago. Everything except the wifi works flawlessly (daily driver for working). And the wifi is easily fixable either buying a non expensive dongle or waiting for the next release. Also running bhyve as daily driver with Ubuntu for development purposes. Everything works without issues, perfectly.", "context": "", "use_case": "daily driver laptop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "I said no and Apple said yes"}, {"id": 780534944, "item_id": 48783434, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48783434", "by": "BSDobelix", "date": "2026-07-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have FreeBSD on all my personal machines and i feel the opposite of handicapped", "excerpt": "I have FreeBSD on all my personal machines and i feel the opposite of handicapped, however i use Linux (CachyOS) for gaming (as a VM with pass-thru).", "context": "", "use_case": "personal machines", "switched_from": "", "story": "FreeBSD Ate My RAM"}, {"id": 758857712, "item_id": 47428607, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47428607", "by": "drewlander", "date": "2026-03-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I find it pleasant and I prefer it over Linux, if I do not mind its paper cuts (for Desktop use).", "excerpt": "I use it as a daily driver. I have tried to use it in some shape or form for the past 20 years. I made a career in Linux and Windows, but always have had a heart for FreeBSD. A person I consider by technical mentor, loved FreeBSD. My first \"Admin\" job was at a small ISP where he worked. That was where I got my first taste of FreeBSD which I believe was version 5.3? He made sure that all consoles were set to show beas", "context": "Career in Linux and Windows, long-time FreeBSD user", "use_case": "daily driver desktop and server", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Love FreeBSD"}]}, {"label": "Coherent design", "summary": "Users find it a holistic, easier-to-understand system with simple rc scripts.", "quotes": [{"id": 763270704, "item_id": 47704419, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47704419", "by": "wolvoleo", "date": "2026-04-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's a holistic system which means it's much easier to understand, not a collection of random parts thrown together.", "excerpt": "Interesting. I use FreeBSD on my desktop too but it's really a desktop so I don't have to bother with WiFi or bluetooth. I generally dislike laptops for ergonomic reasons, and I never bring my computers anywhere anyway so I just buy NUCs. Not having to buy for a display, keyboard, trackpad, battery helps keep the price down. I like it for several reasons. It's a holistic system which means it's much easier to underst", "context": "uses it on a NUC desktop", "use_case": "desktop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "FreeBSD Laptop Compatibility: Top Laptops to Use with FreeBSD"}, {"id": 790435680, "item_id": 49402230, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49402230", "by": "gwynforthewyn", "date": "2026-08-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "When I switched to FreeBSD and saw /etc/rc.local, it made far more sense to me.", "excerpt": "I <3 the BSDs, and they're the reason that the quote from \"A Research Unix Reader\" stuck in my memory! I started on the linuxes, pre-systemd by many years, and remember system v init levels seeming straightforwards but weird. When I switched to FreeBSD and saw /etc/rc.local, it made far more sense to me. I never even _thought_ about what 'rc' might mean, though. Seeing the quote from Doug McIlroy many years later lod", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "Linux", "story": "Learning about \"The Unix Time-Sharing System\""}, {"id": 800622240, "item_id": 50038890, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50038890", "by": "kscarlet", "date": "2026-10-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I tried to get into Linux codebase and gosh it's so much harder than FreeBSD.", "excerpt": "In many case it is the sheer accidental complexity. I tried to get into Linux codebase and gosh it's so much harder than FreeBSD. And Chromium, LLVM... I don't believe it has to be that way. I use Common Lisp software (besides Emacs) written by human for anything I can and these have always been a joy to use or work with. It seems the way industry is heading towards wrt LLM will make this even much, much worse.", "context": "", "use_case": "readable codebase", "switched_from": "", "story": "Grieving the loss of details"}]}, {"label": "Ports and packages", "summary": "The ports and pkg systems are described as complete and flexible.", "quotes": [{"id": 786113024, "item_id": 49132064, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49132064", "by": "Gud", "date": "2026-08-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use FresBSD, where I rarely run in to this problem, that something is missing from ports.", "excerpt": "The problem is that there is a LOT of missing stuff in the Arch repos. I use FresBSD, where I rarely run in to this problem, that something is missing from ports. However, it is a common occurrence in Arch. Which is a shame, because it\u2019s otherwise a fine operating system.", "context": "", "use_case": "general OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Arch Linux disables AUR package adoption"}, {"id": 793839408, "item_id": 49614963, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49614963", "by": "joey486DX4", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "we used FreeBSD stable with current ports in a small business setting. A mostly unchanging base system but always the most recent user facing software", "excerpt": "Nobody asked, but a quarter century ago we used FreeBSD stable with current ports in a small business setting. A mostly unchanging base system but always the most recent user facing software (KDE iirc). Linux distros only recently started doing this with the rise of flatpaks on top of immutable distros (or Debian stable).", "context": "ran it in a small business setting", "use_case": "small business servers", "switched_from": "", "story": "FreeBSD 14.5-Release"}, {"id": 793501056, "item_id": 49593816, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49593816", "by": "spauldo", "date": "2026-09-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "FreeBSD in particular is pretty decent there.", "excerpt": "Depends on what you need. Software compatibility is mostly good, as long as it doesn't have a dependency on systemd or some other Linux-specific feature. Driver support varies, but FreeBSD in particular is pretty decent there. FreeBSD has a Linux compatibility feature that lets you run native Linux binaries. I've never used it so I can't say how good it is, though - all the stuff I use runs fine natively. The major B", "context": "", "use_case": "daily driver OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Research carried out using NetBSD"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Desktop rough edges", "summary": "Even fans say desktop use has paper cuts and needs more tinkering than Linux.", "quotes": [{"id": 781487888, "item_id": 48842993, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48842993", "by": "HackerThemAll", "date": "2026-07-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "As much as I love FreeBSD, it has its rough edges when it comes to daily use.", "excerpt": "As much as I love FreeBSD, it has its rough edges when it comes to daily use. And an upgrade, while much smoother than it used to be in the \"make buildkernel; make buildworld\" times, is still lacking and can break the system. The saddest is that FreeBSD is massively underfunded. They still manage to do great stuff, make massive improvements. If the big corporations like Apple, who made billions on FreeBSD, could just", "context": "", "use_case": "daily OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Moving to FreeBSD from Linux"}, {"id": 758857712, "item_id": 47428607, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47428607", "by": "drewlander", "date": "2026-03-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I find it pleasant and I prefer it over Linux, if I do not mind its paper cuts (for Desktop use).", "excerpt": "I use it as a daily driver. I have tried to use it in some shape or form for the past 20 years. I made a career in Linux and Windows, but always have had a heart for FreeBSD. A person I consider by technical mentor, loved FreeBSD. My first \"Admin\" job was at a small ISP where he worked. That was where I got my first taste of FreeBSD which I believe was version 5.3? He made sure that all consoles were set to show beas", "context": "Career in Linux and Windows, long-time FreeBSD user", "use_case": "daily driver desktop and server", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Love FreeBSD"}, {"id": 734485168, "item_id": 45905323, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45905323", "by": "clan", "date": "2025-11-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I daily drive FreeBSD on my desktop with KDE.", "excerpt": "I daily drive FreeBSD on my desktop with KDE. It is not as smooth as Linux and requires a little more tinkering compared to Linux. But I love it! The killer features for me: - The pf firewall. Rules you actually understand! - Jails! When you cannot have Zones this will do. - Native ZFS. Stable, mature, safe and with all the features you can dream of. - Linuxulator. Binary compatibility with Linux if need be. Can be p", "context": "daily drives FreeBSD", "use_case": "desktop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "A brief look at FreeBSD"}]}, {"label": "Hardware support", "summary": "Wi-Fi may need firmware fetched separately, and big.LITTLE CPUs are not fully used by the scheduler.", "quotes": [{"id": 796782288, "item_id": 49798893, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49798893", "by": "liendolucas", "date": "2026-09-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Everything except the wifi works flawlessly (daily driver for working).", "excerpt": "Running FreeBSD on a Lenovo Thinkbook 16 G7 ARP that was bought brand new less than a year ago. Everything except the wifi works flawlessly (daily driver for working). And the wifi is easily fixable either buying a non expensive dongle or waiting for the next release. Also running bhyve as daily driver with Ubuntu for development purposes. Everything works without issues, perfectly.", "context": "", "use_case": "daily driver laptop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "I said no and Apple said yes"}, {"id": 741251856, "item_id": 46328241, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46328241", "by": "Lammy", "date": "2025-12-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "very happy Framework 12 owner (currently dual-booting Windows 11 Enterprise and FreeBSD 15.0 + Wayland + KDE)", "excerpt": "Small correction: the AX211 card in the Framework 12 is able to connect to networks, not just scan. What you're missing is that a bunch of the Wi-Fi firmware blobs were removed from the base system between FreeBSD 14.2 and 14.3, and since 14.3 came out in June 2025 I assume that's what was tested. An upgrade from 14.2 to 14.3 would also have kept working, just not a fresh install of 14.3 or 15.0. A user needs some ot", "context": "Framework 12 owner", "use_case": "laptop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "The FreeBSD Foundation's Laptop Support and Usability Project"}, {"id": 732685888, "item_id": 45792868, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45792868", "by": "irusensei", "date": "2025-11-02", "stance": "warn", "quote": "As of now the FreeBSD scheduler is not making full use of big.LITTLE.", "excerpt": "Nice website design. I don't like to use the same stuff I use for work at home because home is supposed to be fun. So I used to have everything FreeBSD but I've stopped using around 2020 when I've started buying computers that have different core configurations like ARM RockChip and Intel Alder Lake. I believe the term is called big.LITTLE when you have efficient and performance cores. As of now the FreeBSD scheduler", "context": "", "use_case": "home server OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Using FreeBSD to make self-hosting fun again"}]}, {"label": "Upgrades", "summary": "Upgrades are smoother than before but can still break the system.", "quotes": [{"id": 781487888, "item_id": 48842993, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48842993", "by": "HackerThemAll", "date": "2026-07-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "As much as I love FreeBSD, it has its rough edges when it comes to daily use.", "excerpt": "As much as I love FreeBSD, it has its rough edges when it comes to daily use. And an upgrade, while much smoother than it used to be in the \"make buildkernel; make buildworld\" times, is still lacking and can break the system. The saddest is that FreeBSD is massively underfunded. They still manage to do great stuff, make massive improvements. If the big corporations like Apple, who made billions on FreeBSD, could just", "context": "", "use_case": "daily OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Moving to FreeBSD from Linux"}]}, {"label": "Server setup", "summary": "One user struggled with rc.d logging, PM2 bugs and configuring the firewall securely.", "quotes": [{"id": 771667904, "item_id": 48229244, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48229244", "by": "adamddev1", "date": "2026-05-21", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I enjoyed my foray into trying FreeBSD for my personal server. There's something cool, clean, simple and \"punk rock\" about it. But I have up as my main pain points were:", "excerpt": "I enjoyed my foray into trying FreeBSD for my personal server. There's something cool, clean, simple and \"punk rock\" about it. But I have up as my main pain points were: - PM2 was buggy on FreeBSD, which I used to manage my processes - An alternative, using `rc.d` to run daemons was just so hard to get logs working. - The firewall required too much self configuration to get it right with all the best security practic", "context": "", "use_case": "personal server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Blog ran on Ubuntu 16.04 for 10 years. I migrated it to FreeBSD"}]}, {"label": "Network reliability", "summary": "One long-time user saw Intel NICs repeatedly go offline under load from mbuf exhaustion.", "quotes": [{"id": 758424992, "item_id": 47401562, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47401562", "by": "commandersaki", "date": "2026-03-16", "stance": "warn", "quote": "the network stack was consistently unreliable for me using Intel NICs on Supermicro servers.", "excerpt": "Ran a FreeBSD colocated server for about a decade that went through generations of hardware. I really want to like the OS, except it's most touted feature, the network stack was consistently unreliable for me using Intel NICs on Supermicro servers. They would go offline usually after some load due to mbuf resource exhaustion. I never got to the bottom of it even though I posted to the bugs database and would diligent", "context": "ran a FreeBSD colocated server for about a decade", "use_case": "colocated server", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Love FreeBSD"}]}, {"label": "Security hardening", "summary": "One commenter left over late adoption of ASLR and W^X.", "quotes": [{"id": 786240146, "item_id": 49140009, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49140009", "by": "ninefathom", "date": "2026-08-01", "stance": "warn", "quote": "FreeBSD was so late to adopt modern low-level security practices like ASLR and W^X that I walked away from them about ten years ago.", "excerpt": "Presently in my home you'll find Debian, Alpine, and Manjaro Linux installations running almost constantly (plus Android if you wish to be pedantic), each for their various niches. You'll also find more esoteric stuff like OpenVMS/VAX 7.3 (on actual VAX hardware), Mac OS 7.5.5 and 9.2.2 and 10.4.11 (each on their native hardware as well), and occasionally 9front or Haiku or QNX or OpenIndiana for various purposes. Th", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "NetBSD 11.0 Released"}]}], "who": [{"by": "assimpleaspossi", "context": "web dev company owner for 22 years", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50062128", "date": "2026-10-12"}, {"by": "lproven", "context": "owns ThinkPad X200/X220 machines", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49896293", "date": "2026-09-29"}, {"by": "liendolucas", "context": "uses FreeBSD on a work machine with Ryzen 7", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49800583", "date": "2026-09-22"}, {"by": "CrociDB", "context": "programmer with an old ThinkPad T490s", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49798560", "date": "2026-09-22"}, {"by": "jeffbee", "context": "ran servers in 1999", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49789093", "date": "2026-09-21"}, {"by": "toast0", "context": "worked at Yahoo and WhatsApp running FreeBSD fleets", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49624634", "date": "2026-09-09"}, {"by": "joey486DX4", "context": "ran it in a small business setting", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49614963", "date": "2026-09-08"}, {"by": "BSDobelix", "context": "11 years FreeBSD user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49589873", "date": "2026-09-06"}, {"by": "doublerabbit", "context": "FreeBSD user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49230275", "date": "2026-08-09"}, {"by": "darkurtpanke", "context": "systems programmer seeking work", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49164278", "date": "2026-08-03"}, {"by": "rootnod3", "context": "homelab user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49141165", "date": "2026-08-01"}, {"by": "rleigh", "context": "former Debian developer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48976688", "date": "2026-07-20"}], "tags": ["for servers", "for home servers", "for desktop daily drivers", "for network appliances", "for Linux switchers"], "use_cases": ["laptop os", "operating system", "server os", "daily driver os", "desktop os", "servers"], "compared": [{"slug": "linux", "name": "Linux", "co": 27, "switched_from": 4, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "openbsd", "name": "OpenBSD", "co": 15, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 2}, {"slug": "debian", "name": "Debian", "co": 8, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "ubuntu", "name": "Ubuntu", "co": 8, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "zfs", "name": "ZFS", "co": 8, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "netbsd", "name": "NetBSD", "co": 7, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "macos", "name": "macOS", "co": 3, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "bhyve", "name": "bhyve", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 803442368, "item_id": 50215148, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50215148", "by": "phkamp", "date": "2026-10-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "that allowed me to make FreeBSD the first kernel which could be wrangled to nano-seconds", "excerpt": "(Card carrying time-nuts member here.) Yes, I used to have two Cesium standards in my basement, and that allowed me to make FreeBSD the first kernel which could be wrangled to nano-seconds. These days timekeeping is much more routine and standard hardware, but even if you miss out on LORAN-C and time-by-telephone and leap-seconds, it can still be lots of fun. Once you get into it, you can look at the log files, call ", "context": "time-nuts member, used to run Cesium standards", "use_case": "precise timekeeping", "switched_from": "", "story": "Time Nuts (2005)"}, {"id": 739122688, "item_id": 46195168, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46195168", "by": "jmmv", "date": "2025-12-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I've been using BSDs and old-style Linux startup systems for almost 30 years now", "excerpt": "Thanks! > I moved away from FreeBSD to Debian for hosting my things because the process/daemon management was too tricky. It indeed is tricky. To be honest, I wasn't \"put off\" by it because I've been using BSDs and old-style Linux startup systems for almost 30 years now... but the lack of abstraction shows, and I don't think it's great. The daemon(8) wrapper is neat to integrate pre-existing servers into rc.d, but I ", "context": "", "use_case": "hosting services", "switched_from": "", "story": "From Azure Functions to FreeBSD"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47397574", "title": "I Love FreeBSD", "mentions": 6}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46100892", "title": "A Love Letter to FreeBSD", "mentions": 6}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49136736", "title": "NetBSD 11.0 Released", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45899189", "title": "A brief look at FreeBSD", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47701148", "title": "FreeBSD Laptop Compatibility: Top Laptops to Use with FreeBSD", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49797982", "title": "I said no and Apple said yes", "mentions": 2}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"warn": 1, "neutral": 3, "recommend": 13, "compare": 2}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 1}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 3}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 2}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 7, "warn": 1}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 1, "warn": 1, "neutral": 3}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 1}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 1, "warn": 1, "recommend": 4}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 4, "warn": 1}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 7, "neutral": 2}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 2, "compare": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 805015168, "item_id": 50313448, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50313448", "by": "jmspring", "date": "2026-10-31", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I run FreeBSD", "excerpt": "I occasionally spin up VMs with this and OS2. I miss the era of operating system options. But but linux. It has it's place, I run FreeBSD, but for desktop, options dimish. I like apple hardware, I like apple hardware trackpad support. Running Linux on a MacBook is not something I would ever do. I used FreeBSD on stinkpads for years.", "context": "", "use_case": "operating system", "switched_from": "", "story": "Infinite Mac: BeOS"}, {"id": 804689633, "item_id": 50293102, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50293102", "by": "helterskelter2", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "compare", "quote": "FreeBSD is better, but when I last used the handbook it had plenty of outdated chapters", "excerpt": "NetBSD is IMHO the most beginner friendly nix out there. It's small, lean, and well documented. You could know almost nothing about nix, read their handbook, and come the other side half competent. Linux (my daily driver) by comparison is a constantly moving target with no single source for coherent documentation and where anything goes. FreeBSD is better, but when I last used the handbook it had plenty of outdated c", "context": "Linux daily driver", "use_case": "Unix OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "NetBSD adds a new text editor called atto"}, {"id": 804427760, "item_id": 50276735, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50276735", "by": "craftkiller", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Check out the commit history on FreeBSD and look at all the contributions from Netflix.", "excerpt": "> no contributions That's just obviously not true. Check out the commit history on FreeBSD and look at all the contributions from Netflix. Off the top of my head they contributed kTLS and asynchronous sendfile which made it such that a single syscall could send the full contents of a file over a socket even with TLS. Grepping through the git logs for the \"Sponsored by\" lines shows these top results: 15925 The FreeBSD", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "AlpineBSD"}, {"id": 802658290, "item_id": 50166143, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50166143", "by": "deltarholamda", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "FreeBSD is very good as well on this front.", "excerpt": ">`man` pages are consistently incredible I love this part of OpenBSD so much. FreeBSD is very good as well on this front. Sometimes the terseness of the man pages gets to me, but it's all there. I used OpenBSD as a daily driver way back, somewhere around v3.5, on a somewhat elderly Thinkpad. It was perfectly adequate. I still use it for various systems that I pretty much just set and forget. Extremely reliable, and p", "context": "", "use_case": "man pages quality", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenBSD 8.0"}, {"id": 802543648, "item_id": 50158978, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50158978", "by": "asveikau", "date": "2026-10-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use it to run llms on FreeBSD.", "excerpt": "Another interesting story is that on FreeBSD, Nvidia actually provides a port of their proprietary binary driver. The user mode piece does not support cuda, but I successfully ran a Linux emulator container that can run cuda with a FreeBSD kernel. I use it to run llms on FreeBSD. But that is freebsd, not openbsd. I couldn't imagine it on OpenBSD because the priorities are very different", "context": "", "use_case": "running LLMs with Nvidia driver", "switched_from": "", "story": "Wine ported to OpenBSD"}, {"id": 800994050, "item_id": 50062128, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50062128", "by": "assimpleaspossi", "date": "2026-10-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "All in C, fastcgi, FreeBSD, postgresql and h2o-server", "excerpt": "I started a web dev company 22 years ago after developing an online menu ordering system for a restaurant I owned. I, then we, did pretty much the same thing as talked about in the posting but we used fastcgi. I started with C because I knew C. That was my real job. It ran so well, the franchise bought the software from me--and then devolved it to all the Microsoft stuff and had issues upon issues from then on out. T", "context": "web dev company owner for 22 years", "use_case": "server OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Modern Web App in C"}, {"id": 800622240, "item_id": 50038890, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50038890", "by": "kscarlet", "date": "2026-10-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I tried to get into Linux codebase and gosh it's so much harder than FreeBSD.", "excerpt": "In many case it is the sheer accidental complexity. I tried to get into Linux codebase and gosh it's so much harder than FreeBSD. And Chromium, LLVM... I don't believe it has to be that way. I use Common Lisp software (besides Emacs) written by human for anything I can and these have always been a joy to use or work with. It seems the way industry is heading towards wrt LLM will make this even much, much worse.", "context": "", "use_case": "readable codebase", "switched_from": "", "story": "Grieving the loss of details"}, {"id": 799243888, "item_id": 49952743, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49952743", "by": "sdcfgy", "date": "2026-10-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "About a year ago I switched from Debian to FreeBSD", "excerpt": "I completely missed that thread. Just the first post is horrifying. About a year ago I switched from Debian to FreeBSD (after going back the other way in 2003) because even that was getting wonky. Glad I\u2019m far far away from this crap.", "context": "", "use_case": "main OS", "switched_from": "Debian", "story": "OpenBSD Developers Reject Uutils Coreutils"}, {"id": 798340690, "item_id": 49896293, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49896293", "by": "lproven", "date": "2026-09-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I run Haiku, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Ubuntu, and Pop OS, and all of them go like stink and are daily-drivable", "excerpt": "Indeed. I know of two \"best laptops ever made\": Drew DeVault says it's the X200: https://drewdevault.com/blog/Fucking-laptops/ \u00ab The best laptop ever made is the ThinkPad X200, and I have two of them. \u00bb He has a very strong case. I own one. It is certainly one of the best ever. On the other hand, Brad Taunt says it is the X220: https://btxx.org/posts/x220/ \u00ab The X220 ThinkPad is the greatest laptop ever made and you\u2019", "context": "owns ThinkPad X200/X220 machines", "use_case": "daily use on ThinkPad X220", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google ending ChromeOS support two years early"}, {"id": 796809328, "item_id": 49800583, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49800583", "by": "liendolucas", "date": "2026-09-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm confident FreeBSD can be run on those well too.", "excerpt": "I don't know what you consider \"actually new\" hardware. The machine I use to work has 16 Gb of RAM. Ryzen 7 and an AMD GPU. For me that's a pretty decent and recent hardware. If you meant the lastest of the latest GPU, processor, chipset and so you you might better off with Linux. But the fact that the computer that was given to me was boxed from factory and bought after two weeks after started is a sign of recent ha", "context": "uses FreeBSD on a work machine with Ryzen 7", "use_case": "work machine OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "I said no and Apple said yes"}, {"id": 796782288, "item_id": 49798893, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49798893", "by": "liendolucas", "date": "2026-09-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Everything except the wifi works flawlessly (daily driver for working).", "excerpt": "Running FreeBSD on a Lenovo Thinkbook 16 G7 ARP that was bought brand new less than a year ago. Everything except the wifi works flawlessly (daily driver for working). And the wifi is easily fixable either buying a non expensive dongle or waiting for the next release. Also running bhyve as daily driver with Ubuntu for development purposes. Everything works without issues, perfectly.", "context": "", "use_case": "daily driver laptop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "I said no and Apple said yes"}, {"id": 796776960, "item_id": 49798560, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49798560", "by": "CrociDB", "date": "2026-09-22", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "running FreeBSD", "excerpt": "A newer guide would be good, as some of the information now is a bit outdated. But I love the concept. My main laptop where I do lots of programming and writing is an old T490s, i7 8th Gen, 16 gigs of RAM, running FreeBSD, that I paid around 150 euros last year. :)", "context": "programmer with an old ThinkPad T490s", "use_case": "programming and writing laptop", "switched_from": "", "story": "Used ThinkPad Buyer's Guide (2019)"}, {"id": 796625489, "item_id": 49789093, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49789093", "by": "jeffbee", "date": "2026-09-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "For anything where we could avoid Sun we used FreeBSD.", "excerpt": "At my employer in 1999 we were maintaining home-grown binary modification to the Solaris kernel so that TCP segment send and receive were not O(N^2) where N was the number of addresses on the interface :-/ It was, as far as I could tell, an operating system that nobody had ever tried to use before. For anything where we could avoid Sun we used FreeBSD. One of the nice things about the free Unixes of that time was tha", "context": "ran servers in 1999", "use_case": "servers", "switched_from": "Solaris", "story": "What Sun got wrong"}, {"id": 795468610, "item_id": 49716788, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49716788", "by": "sellmesoap", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love FreeBSD", "excerpt": "I never dug into the failure, but I once had a ZFS get to a state where it would crash the kernel on mount, I was able to mount it with checks turned off an recover what was important, but it was a spooky experience. I live on the bleeding edge of file systems for my desktop, I was on reiser4 back when that was fresh, I daily drive bcachefs (it's been great!) Mostly I've been lucky, I don't usually keep an openbsd sy", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "GEFS on OpenBSD: A Early Preview"}, {"id": 793994144, "item_id": 49624634, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49624634", "by": "toast0", "date": "2026-09-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used FreeBSD at Yahoo and WhatsApp, using RELEASE at both.", "excerpt": "> I cannot imagine any reason why somebody would want to use RELEASE for production. I used FreeBSD at Yahoo and WhatsApp, using RELEASE at both. I'm sure there were some times where some groups were running other than RELEASE (and they were running Yahoo builds anyway), but at both places when I was there, we didn't have habit of upgrading the OS. To my knowledge, none of the servers I ran at Yahoo had an OS update ", "context": "worked at Yahoo and WhatsApp running FreeBSD fleets", "use_case": "production servers", "switched_from": "", "story": "FreeBSD 14.5-Release"}, {"id": 793839408, "item_id": 49614963, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49614963", "by": "joey486DX4", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "we used FreeBSD stable with current ports in a small business setting. A mostly unchanging base system but always the most recent user facing software", "excerpt": "Nobody asked, but a quarter century ago we used FreeBSD stable with current ports in a small business setting. A mostly unchanging base system but always the most recent user facing software (KDE iirc). Linux distros only recently started doing this with the rise of flatpaks on top of immutable distros (or Debian stable).", "context": "ran it in a small business setting", "use_case": "small business servers", "switched_from": "", "story": "FreeBSD 14.5-Release"}, {"id": 793501056, "item_id": 49593816, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49593816", "by": "spauldo", "date": "2026-09-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "FreeBSD in particular is pretty decent there.", "excerpt": "Depends on what you need. Software compatibility is mostly good, as long as it doesn't have a dependency on systemd or some other Linux-specific feature. Driver support varies, but FreeBSD in particular is pretty decent there. FreeBSD has a Linux compatibility feature that lets you run native Linux binaries. I've never used it so I can't say how good it is, though - all the stuff I use runs fine natively. The major B", "context": "", "use_case": "daily driver OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Research carried out using NetBSD"}, {"id": 793437968, "item_id": 49589873, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49589873", "by": "BSDobelix", "date": "2026-09-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use FreeBSD on all my machines for everything", "excerpt": "I use FreeBSD on all my machines for everything sinc about 11 years GUI is I3/X11/AMD-Card everything works, but please test it yourself, it's like with linux, you just know what's not/is working if you use it daily for all your edge-cases (maybe your scanner, maybe your barcode-scanner your Bluetooth-Stuff your wireless etcetc) Overall i really love FreeBSD for everything computing (Pi/Laptop/Workstation/Servers). A", "context": "11 years FreeBSD user", "use_case": "desktop, laptop, servers", "switched_from": "", "story": "Research carried out using NetBSD"}, {"id": 792024689, "item_id": 49501543, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49501543", "by": "BoredomIsFun", "date": "2026-08-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "simple predictable kernel OOM killer", "excerpt": "> such as how poorly it handles running out of memory What is interesting, FreeBSD last time I used it, had far ,pre simple predictable kernel OOM killer. Anyway, I always either switch off swap on Linux machines or install EarlyOOM.", "context": "", "use_case": "OOM handling", "switched_from": "", "story": "Haiku R1/beta6 has been released"}, {"id": 790435680, "item_id": 49402230, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49402230", "by": "gwynforthewyn", "date": "2026-08-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "When I switched to FreeBSD and saw /etc/rc.local, it made far more sense to me.", "excerpt": "I <3 the BSDs, and they're the reason that the quote from \"A Research Unix Reader\" stuck in my memory! I started on the linuxes, pre-systemd by many years, and remember system v init levels seeming straightforwards but weird. When I switched to FreeBSD and saw /etc/rc.local, it made far more sense to me. I never even _thought_ about what 'rc' might mean, though. Seeing the quote from Doug McIlroy many years later lod", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "Linux", "story": "Learning about \"The Unix Time-Sharing System\""}, {"id": 788685825, "item_id": 49292864, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49292864", "by": "hedora", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "FreeBSD isn\u2019t too shabby these days either.", "excerpt": "I\u2019ve been using devuan more or less since day one. I highly recommend it. FreeBSD isn\u2019t too shabby these days either.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Single log line is 49KB+ (ext4) / 110KB+ (btrfs) of systemd-journald disk writes"}, {"id": 787684401, "item_id": 49230275, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49230275", "by": "doublerabbit", "date": "2026-08-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use FreeBSD.", "excerpt": "> Stop getting your news from corporate propaganda and the outrage mob. Mate, It's even bundled with FreeBSD releases which is as far from corporate propaganda and outrageous mob you can get. I use FreeBSD. With every new install of firefox requires you have to remove: sponsored content and news from tabs, Pocket. It asks you if you desire to use Mozilla Ai and many other Mozilla third party shite. So maybe it should", "context": "FreeBSD user", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft Edge is about to lock out older ad blockers, just like Chrome did"}, {"id": 786628448, "item_id": 49164278, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49164278", "by": "darkurtpanke", "date": "2026-08-03", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Docker, FreeBSD, and I once fixed a mainframe.", "excerpt": "Location:Cape town. Remote: Yes. Obviously. I don\u2019t do office culture. I prefer quiet dark room with a 4K monitor and a mechanical keyboard. Willing to relocate: Only if the relocation involves a data center, a hackerspace, or a country with no extradition treaties. Otherwise, no. Technologies:Go, Rust, C, C++., Docker, FreeBSD, and I once fixed a mainframe. Don\u2019t ask how. MongoDB, I\u2019ve written my own key value store", "context": "systems programmer seeking work", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2026)"}, {"id": 786258641, "item_id": 49141165, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49141165", "by": "rootnod3", "date": "2026-08-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "only the file server is running FreeBSD now", "excerpt": "Absolutely. My daily driver on all my machines. My homelab started with FreeBSD on all machines with liberal use of jails. Now it is fully OpenBSD and only the file server is running FreeBSD now. All laptops are also OpenBSD, even the M2 Macbook Air", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "file server", "switched_from": "", "story": "NetBSD 11.0 Released"}, {"id": 786240146, "item_id": 49140009, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49140009", "by": "ninefathom", "date": "2026-08-01", "stance": "warn", "quote": "FreeBSD was so late to adopt modern low-level security practices like ASLR and W^X that I walked away from them about ten years ago.", "excerpt": "Presently in my home you'll find Debian, Alpine, and Manjaro Linux installations running almost constantly (plus Android if you wish to be pedantic), each for their various niches. You'll also find more esoteric stuff like OpenVMS/VAX 7.3 (on actual VAX hardware), Mac OS 7.5.5 and 9.2.2 and 10.4.11 (each on their native hardware as well), and occasionally 9front or Haiku or QNX or OpenIndiana for various purposes. Th", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "NetBSD 11.0 Released"}, {"id": 786238033, "item_id": 49139877, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49139877", "by": "somat", "date": "2026-08-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "On desktop,I use a NFS home dir to a freebsd(zfs) fileserver.", "excerpt": "On desktop,I use a NFS home dir to a freebsd(zfs) fileserver. But I have to admit, that is not so much concern about the filesystem quality as I want a good(backed up, raid) storage system, and rather than trying to build good storage on all my system I just did it once (the fileserver) and use that as a home dir for almost everything. For instance. I have a laptop that only syncs intermittently to the main file serv", "context": "", "use_case": "file server with ZFS", "switched_from": "", "story": "NetBSD 11.0 Released"}, {"id": 786214961, "item_id": 49138435, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49138435", "by": "somat", "date": "2026-08-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I have a freebsd fileserver", "excerpt": "I use obsd as a desktop system, I would not necessarily recommend this to anyone, you give up a lot, but obsd is my ultimate comfort system, it is small but full featured. I feel I understand the system far more than I ever did linux, which is one of the good guys. Compare to windows where despite using it my whole life I always feel I understand barely at all. But openbsd is so well put together I love using it, So ", "context": "", "use_case": "file server", "switched_from": "", "story": "NetBSD 11.0 Released"}, {"id": 786113024, "item_id": 49132064, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49132064", "by": "Gud", "date": "2026-08-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use FresBSD, where I rarely run in to this problem, that something is missing from ports.", "excerpt": "The problem is that there is a LOT of missing stuff in the Arch repos. I use FresBSD, where I rarely run in to this problem, that something is missing from ports. However, it is a common occurrence in Arch. Which is a shame, because it\u2019s otherwise a fine operating system.", "context": "", "use_case": "general OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Arch Linux disables AUR package adoption"}, {"id": 783627008, "item_id": 48976688, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48976688", "by": "rleigh", "date": "2026-07-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "That's part of the reason why I switched to FreeBSD as a replacement for a good bit of stuff I previously did on Linux.", "excerpt": "I've been developing open source software since the late '90s. I was a Debian developer for nearly 15 years. I stopped actively participating in this stuff about 10 years ago. I'm involved in a few libraries and that's it. The \"Linux\" ecosystem is utter chaos, and there are too many developers who are their own worst enemies. There's too much churn, and too little strategic thought. Compatibility is king. Microsoft k", "context": "former Debian developer", "use_case": "replacing Linux for stability", "switched_from": "Linux", "story": "How proprietary formats have become Microsoft\u2019s main tool for lock-in"}, {"id": 782152048, "item_id": 48884503, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48884503", "by": "Gud", "date": "2026-07-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "On the server I prefer FreeBSD because of it's amazing flexibility", "excerpt": "I don't understand the constant (almost always unsubstantiated) criticism of the *BSDs from many Linux advocates. Personally I evaluate each OS by it's merit, and I've concluded that OpenBSD, FreeBSD and some Linux distributions(I use arch btw) are solid operating systems. On the server I prefer FreeBSD because of it's amazing flexibility, and stable yet evolutionary base system and in my opinion, superior init syste", "context": "", "use_case": "server OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Theo de Raadt: \"You've been smoking something mind altering\" (2007)"}, {"id": 781487888, "item_id": 48842993, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48842993", "by": "HackerThemAll", "date": "2026-07-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "As much as I love FreeBSD, it has its rough edges when it comes to daily use.", "excerpt": "As much as I love FreeBSD, it has its rough edges when it comes to daily use. And an upgrade, while much smoother than it used to be in the \"make buildkernel; make buildworld\" times, is still lacking and can break the system. The saddest is that FreeBSD is massively underfunded. They still manage to do great stuff, make massive improvements. If the big corporations like Apple, who made billions on FreeBSD, could just", "context": "", "use_case": "daily OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Moving to FreeBSD from Linux"}, {"id": 780534944, "item_id": 48783434, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48783434", "by": "BSDobelix", "date": "2026-07-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have FreeBSD on all my personal machines and i feel the opposite of handicapped", "excerpt": "I have FreeBSD on all my personal machines and i feel the opposite of handicapped, however i use Linux (CachyOS) for gaming (as a VM with pass-thru).", "context": "", "use_case": "personal machines", "switched_from": "", "story": "FreeBSD Ate My RAM"}, {"id": 780482960, "item_id": 48780185, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48780185", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Poor FreeBSD folks though. After so many years trying to\npresent themselves as better alternative, the road just\ngot steeper ...", "excerpt": "This is why I use Linux. :> Poor FreeBSD folks though. After so many years trying to present themselves as better alternative, the road just got steeper ...", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "FreeBSD Ate My RAM"}, {"id": 780106804, "item_id": 48756675, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48756675", "by": "unsungNovelty", "date": "2026-07-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "As am exploring BSD these days, I am in FreeBSD forums", "excerpt": "Forums are communities which are curated. If it has a good owner, it will nurture good discussions. Because they have to adhere to rules. Or be banned. There was a tech magazine forum in India which was crazy cool. Learned a lot from it. But most forums go through a learning process. Way too many great discussions and it gets popular. And then some new/old idiots will start pushing the lines which will lead to over m", "context": "", "use_case": "exploring BSD", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bring Back Crappy Forums"}, {"id": 779733776, "item_id": 48733361, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48733361", "by": "assimpleaspossi", "date": "2026-06-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "FreeBSD is my daily driver and I only reboot for major upgrades", "excerpt": "FreeBSD is my daily driver and I only reboot for major upgrades (which is required). I never power off cause I work on it, off and on, throughout the day and night (for my own company).", "context": "runs own company", "use_case": "daily driver OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Have You Restarted Your Computer This Week?"}, {"id": 777202656, "item_id": 48575166, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48575166", "by": "doublerabbit", "date": "2026-06-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use FreeBSD and I don't trust that either unless I can do make install world.", "excerpt": "> I bet you would, though, if the built OS image were 100% reproducible except for the signature. CryptoSecure, depends how done but again, neither can be fully trusted when they were headed by government agencies in the past. I don't trust Linux now that Microsoft got mits on it with WSL. RedHat sold-out to IBM and Debian got in bed with Canonical. Arch & Valve I might lead more too but then again I guess they've go", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users"}, {"id": 775647297, "item_id": 48477956, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48477956", "by": "hedora", "date": "2026-06-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "FreeBSD got really good over the last few years, and is even more insulated than devuan is.", "excerpt": "You can still run devuan. I highly recommend it, though FreeBSD got really good over the last few years, and is even more insulated than devuan is. I currently have one systemd infected machine, two devuan machines and two freebsd. Next step is paving the systemd one (it randomly craps out) and probably putting FreeBSD on it, but I\u2019m on the fence. It\u2019s a family member\u2019s machine, and devuan is less change.", "context": "Runs two devuan, two FreeBSD, one systemd machine", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "macOS Container Machines"}, {"id": 772160080, "item_id": 48260005, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48260005", "by": "netrap", "date": "2026-05-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use FreeBSD daily in my work, but no, I don't on desktop", "excerpt": "FreeBSD does not have a desktop installer yet.. the powerpoint alludes to that being a coming feature though.. I think people here should chill out about her not using FreeBSD as the daily driver.. I use FreeBSD daily in my work, but no, I don't on desktop...", "context": "", "use_case": "work", "switched_from": "", "story": "FreeBSD Foundation Executive Director Tries Daily Driving FreeBSD on Laptop"}, {"id": 772151536, "item_id": 48259471, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48259471", "by": "ksec", "date": "2026-05-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "deploying on Linux and FreeBSD", "excerpt": "I mean I am happy if they kept FreeBSD to be Server focused. I have been using a Mac / Windows and deploying on Linux and FreeBSD, i don't see why both the consumer and the server / enterprise has to have the same OS stack all the time.", "context": "", "use_case": "server deployment", "switched_from": "", "story": "FreeBSD Foundation Executive Director Tries Daily Driving FreeBSD on Laptop"}, {"id": 772058528, "item_id": 48253658, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48253658", "by": "solid_fuel", "date": "2026-05-23", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I actually just did this for a web application on FreeBSD 15.", "excerpt": "> An alternative, using `rc.d` to run daemons was just so hard to get logs working. I actually just did this for a web application on FreeBSD 15. It wasn't too bad, but I used `daemon` to send stdout & stderr into syslog and then I just added a syslog config to send that to it's own file. Roughly, I did this: # /usr/local/etc/rc.d/app: # PROVIDE: app # KEYWORD: shutdown . /etc/rc.subr name=\"app\" rcvar=\"app_enable\" lo", "context": "", "use_case": "hosting web application", "switched_from": "", "story": "Blog ran on Ubuntu 16.04 for 10 years. I migrated it to FreeBSD"}, {"id": 768541184, "item_id": 48033824, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48033824", "by": "kuon", "date": "2026-05-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I recently switched from Linux to freebsd on my work computer and things have been mostly working.", "excerpt": "I recently switched from Linux to freebsd on my work computer and things have been mostly working. With linux chroot I can use the few apps missing BSD port. I did this because I manage a fleet of BSD based server (BSD runs zfs and bhyve with VM on it) and I wanted the same base system for me. I wonder how BSD friendly those laptop are. In any case I am so happy to see some open hardware solution.", "context": "manages a fleet of BSD-based servers", "use_case": "work desktop matching BSD servers", "switched_from": "Linux", "story": "StarFighter 16-Inch"}, {"id": 763270704, "item_id": 47704419, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47704419", "by": "wolvoleo", "date": "2026-04-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's a holistic system which means it's much easier to understand, not a collection of random parts thrown together.", "excerpt": "Interesting. I use FreeBSD on my desktop too but it's really a desktop so I don't have to bother with WiFi or bluetooth. I generally dislike laptops for ergonomic reasons, and I never bring my computers anywhere anyway so I just buy NUCs. Not having to buy for a display, keyboard, trackpad, battery helps keep the price down. I like it for several reasons. It's a holistic system which means it's much easier to underst", "context": "uses it on a NUC desktop", "use_case": "desktop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "FreeBSD Laptop Compatibility: Top Laptops to Use with FreeBSD"}, {"id": 758857712, "item_id": 47428607, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47428607", "by": "drewlander", "date": "2026-03-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I find it pleasant and I prefer it over Linux, if I do not mind its paper cuts (for Desktop use).", "excerpt": "I use it as a daily driver. I have tried to use it in some shape or form for the past 20 years. I made a career in Linux and Windows, but always have had a heart for FreeBSD. A person I consider by technical mentor, loved FreeBSD. My first \"Admin\" job was at a small ISP where he worked. That was where I got my first taste of FreeBSD which I believe was version 5.3? He made sure that all consoles were set to show beas", "context": "Career in Linux and Windows, long-time FreeBSD user", "use_case": "daily driver desktop and server", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Love FreeBSD"}, {"id": 758518512, "item_id": 47407407, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47407407", "by": "AdieuToLogic", "date": "2026-03-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the project's documentation is a gold standard IMHO", "excerpt": "> I use FreeBSD at work every since day and while I don't hate it, I do wish we just used Linux. There are more guides, tools, etc for Linux than for FreeBSD. Regarding guides specifically, FreeBSD has exceptional resources: FreeBSD Handbook[0] FreeBSD Porter's Handbook[1] FreeBSD Developers' Handbook[2] The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System[3] Not to mention that the FreeBSD man pages are qui", "context": "long-time FreeBSD user and fan", "use_case": "operating system", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Love FreeBSD"}, {"id": 758439856, "item_id": 47402491, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47402491", "by": "xenophonf", "date": "2026-03-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love FreeBSD for its documentation.", "excerpt": "I love FreeBSD for its documentation. To answer your question about Wayland specifically: https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/wayland/ If you want something with a graphical environment ready to run, check out GhostBSD, which is based on FreeBSD and features MATE: https://www.ghostbsd.org/", "context": "", "use_case": "operating system", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Love FreeBSD"}, {"id": 741251856, "item_id": 46328241, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46328241", "by": "Lammy", "date": "2025-12-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "very happy Framework 12 owner (currently dual-booting Windows 11 Enterprise and FreeBSD 15.0 + Wayland + KDE)", "excerpt": "Small correction: the AX211 card in the Framework 12 is able to connect to networks, not just scan. What you're missing is that a bunch of the Wi-Fi firmware blobs were removed from the base system between FreeBSD 14.2 and 14.3, and since 14.3 came out in June 2025 I assume that's what was tested. An upgrade from 14.2 to 14.3 would also have kept working, just not a fresh install of 14.3 or 15.0. A user needs some ot", "context": "Framework 12 owner", "use_case": "laptop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "The FreeBSD Foundation's Laptop Support and Usability Project"}, {"id": 737742832, "item_id": 46108927, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46108927", "by": "jandrusk", "date": "2025-12-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Truly a rock solid OS and I use it for my personal DNS servers and never had any issue", "excerpt": "What is love? Baby don't reboot me, baby don't reboot me :) Truly a rock solid OS and I use it for my personal DNS servers and never had any issue, it just run and runs and runs with minimal bloat. I think it's way more stable than Linux, but obviously has some work to be a comptetive desktop. I've recently developed the philosophy of using Omarchy as my desktop and servers are FreeBSD unless there's some reason it d", "context": "", "use_case": "DNS servers", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Love Letter to FreeBSD"}, {"id": 734485168, "item_id": 45905323, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45905323", "by": "clan", "date": "2025-11-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I daily drive FreeBSD on my desktop with KDE.", "excerpt": "I daily drive FreeBSD on my desktop with KDE. It is not as smooth as Linux and requires a little more tinkering compared to Linux. But I love it! The killer features for me: - The pf firewall. Rules you actually understand! - Jails! When you cannot have Zones this will do. - Native ZFS. Stable, mature, safe and with all the features you can dream of. - Linuxulator. Binary compatibility with Linux if need be. Can be p", "context": "daily drives FreeBSD", "use_case": "desktop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "A brief look at FreeBSD"}, {"id": 733706113, "item_id": 45856632, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45856632", "by": "cullumsmith", "date": "2025-11-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I highly recommend this approach. I run ~all of my digital footprint on FreeBSD jails.", "excerpt": "I highly recommend this approach. I run ~all of my digital footprint on FreeBSD jails. After surveying how many jail managers have come and go in the last decade, I decided to just roll my own using a single shell script called jailctl [0]. Nothing fancy, just VNET jails based on ZFS templates (vanilla FreeBSD rootfs) and epair interfaces (which I truck to various VLANs on the host's egress interface). One pattern th", "context": "runs all digital footprint on FreeBSD jails", "use_case": "running services in jails", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immutable Software Deploys Using ZFS Jails on FreeBSD"}, {"id": 732685888, "item_id": 45792868, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45792868", "by": "irusensei", "date": "2025-11-02", "stance": "warn", "quote": "As of now the FreeBSD scheduler is not making full use of big.LITTLE.", "excerpt": "Nice website design. I don't like to use the same stuff I use for work at home because home is supposed to be fun. So I used to have everything FreeBSD but I've stopped using around 2020 when I've started buying computers that have different core configurations like ARM RockChip and Intel Alder Lake. I believe the term is called big.LITTLE when you have efficient and performance cores. As of now the FreeBSD scheduler", "context": "", "use_case": "home server OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Using FreeBSD to make self-hosting fun again"}]}