Linux dominates the VPS world, and for good reason. Debian, Ubuntu, Alma, and Rocky are everywhere, well-supported, and familiar.  (And yes, you can run RedHat Enterprise for free under a dev license if you want to).

Linux has a number of big advantages, but it’s not the only OS on the planet.  Besides Windows, there are also the BSDs: Free, Open, and Net.  I won’t get into the last two, because honestly if you want to run either of those two, you’re already thoroughly immersed in the BSDverse.

But let’s talk FreeBSD for a moment.  Should you run it?  There are some pros and cons.

Pro: A Cohesive, Integrated Operating System

FreeBSD is developed as a complete operating system, not a kernel plus thousands of loosely coordinated userland projects. The base system is designed, documented, and versioned together.

This gives you several benefits:

• The documentation is excellent and thorough, in ways Linux honestly can only dream of.
• There is less “cascading change” effects.  If one of the developers needs to make a change to a network utility, for example, they can also make changes to the kernel and other tools all at once to keep things consistent.  This means that you’re not constantly changing firewall systems, network tools, etc. the way Linux historically has.
• There’s “one throat to choke” (the dev team’s) if something is broken.  You don’t have the phenomenon of abandoned projects or code that gets less love and attention because that particular developer has lost interest.  It’s all one grand codebase.

Pro: ZFS Is Still a Killer Feature

Yes, Linux has ZFS now, but FreeBSD’s ZFS integration remains best-in-class.

On FreeBSD, ZFS feels native because it is.  Boot environments just work, and all the other benefits from ZFS (snapshots, replication, etc.) are just assumed.

So for storage-heavy VPS setups, backup nodes, etc. FreeBSD + ZFS is an excellent combination.

Con…or Pro?  Semi-Pro?: Jails

Containers are everywhere, and FreeBSD doesn’t have Docker.  But FreeBSD jails predate Docker by years.

Jails offer many if the same benefits, and have tight OS integration (once again, the OS assumes they exist and people will use them).  Jail are “chroot” on steroids and feel a little “closer to the metal” than Docker, since you’re using the same kernel, whereas with Docker, you’e got more layers.

However, there such a huge number of people using Docker and so many Docker recipes that Jails can feel like you’re recreating things from scratch.  No doubt, you can do many of the same things with Jails, it’s just that you don’t have reams and reams of tutorials with “docker pull” commands.

Con: Smaller Ecosystem

Pick any software you want to run on Linux and you can google a recipe that will show you step-by-step how to run it.  Most people you talk to will run that software on Linux, and as a consequence, bugs on Linux will be fixed faster.  There’s an order of magnitude more answers about Linux toics on StackOverflow, more tutorials, and more blog posts.

AI somewhat fills this gap, because it can show you how to install or configure something on FreeBSD as effortlessly as it can for Linux, but nevertheless, the mindshare and ecosystem is tons bigger on Linux that FreeBSD.

Con: Hardware and Software Gaps/Lags

FreeBSD hardware support lags behind Linux because there is a smaller army of developers working on drivers.  Vendors who release their software routinely for Linux may not for FreeBSD.

Likewise, the ports/packages systems (FreeBSD’s analogue to apt, dnf, etc.) may have older versions, missing niche packages, and less robust testing.

Pro: Fight the Monoculture!

There was a time when the Unixverse was teeming with diversity.  Today, it’s become largely a Linux landscape with many other Unices having fallen by the wayside.  This is good and bad.  Because Linux is a commodity, it makes adoption easy and usage widespread.  However, it also means that there is less room for new ideas.

It’s easy to make the argument that once you learn the ps command on Linux, learning it with slightly different flags for BSD is a waste of time.  And some of the Linux vs. BSD differences are purely “they chose this, we chose that” without any clear benefit of one over the other.  Linux, of course, while SysV nominally, has a ton of BSD in it.  Every Unix I’ve ever encountered is a blend of both family trees.

If I was setting up a new IT environment from scratch for a startup, it’d take a lot of convincing for me to chose something other than Linux or Windows for the server environment.  But the joy of being a hobbyist is that you can choose and experiment with whatever you want.  Maybe a FreeBSD VM is in your future?  Why not give it a true?  You might enjoy mixing demons with penguins in your LowEndEmpire.

raindog308

Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.

Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.

His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.

You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.