My Journey back to FreeBSD (1/n)

Triggered by a friend, going all-in after EuroBSDCon

A lot has been going on in the last year and this is the start of many interesting years ahead. I met Vivian (more on that at the end) roughly a year ago and it has triggered my return to FreeBSD among other things. To dive deep, I went to the EuroBSDCon in Bruxelles this year, taking my wife and daugher with me for sight seeing (and chocolate). It was a great experience and getting to know the people behind FreeBSD has nothing but fueled my interest and commitment.

I had been using FreeBSD many years ago on a single server at home. I remember that it was the most stable system I’ve ever operated — no system update ever broke the system. Yet during my career I had never come across FreeBSD in the business context, so my attention just faded away and eventually the host got replace by a Linux box.

Why FreeBSD?

Everybody uses Linux to host workloads, so why on earth would you choose FreeBSD? I agree, the answer seems obvious — if everybody uses Linux, why would you want to use something different? Surely only if there are significant benefits — and yes, there are.

When you talk about Linux, you’re actually talking about a Linux distribution and that immediately brings up the debate — which…