104 engineers on Hacker News describe using FreeBSD first-hand: 37 endorse it, 9 regret it, 11 are mixed.
“Similarly, default CUA key bindings like Ctrl+left and Ctrl+right don't work and tend to emit garbage when used on the console.”
regret · personal · lproven · 2026-10-29 · source ↗ · wrong label?“on the servers that host networking services I much prefer FreeBSD, for the ease of administration”
endorse · production · adrian_b · 2025-12-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?“As much as I love FreeBSD, the release schedule is a real challenge in production”
mixed · production · andrehacker · 2025-12-01 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Been doing that for production database clusters (Postgres) for hundreds of thousands of users for over a decade now”
endorse · production · 10 yr · tete · 2025-12-01 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Most of my FreeBSD servers for work got installed and never needed an OS upgrade until they were replaced by better hardware.”
endorse · production · toast0 · 2025-12-01 · source ↗ · wrong label?“even going so far as to trying to build it on OpenStep 4.2 (from 1997) and FreeBSD 2.0 (from 1994), I gave up.”
regret · personal · xenophonf · 2025-11-09 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Linux had better SMP performance for the first decade or so vs. FreeBSD as we started to buy beefier multi-core and multi-socket servers.”
regret · production · otterley · 2025-07-26 · source ↗ · wrong label?“when I ran FreeBSD for work, we only did kernel and OS updates for important things. That's not to say FreeBSD is perfect; it's not”
mixed · production · toast0 · 2024-04-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I have been running my own NAS the hard way: FreeBSD, ZFS, manual samba/NFS shares”
regret · personal · gosub100 · 2023-11-30 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've made the switch and don't regret it one bit. My home server and projects all in freebsd now.”
endorse · personal · waynesonfire · 2022-11-07 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Now that I've been using it a few day, wow, let me say that it's AMAZING. So, so fast and beautiful.”
endorse · personal · SequentialDSG · 2021-12-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Since we've moved to tracking -current, we rebase every few weeks... All in all, life is much, much, much better on the bleeding edge.”
mixed · production · drewg123 · 2021-10-06 · source ↗ · wrong label?“FreeBSD 11 (+/- 1) changed page inactivity policies in an unexpected way and resulted in undesired swapping for our use cases”
regret · production · toast0 · 2021-09-16 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Having run all these thing in prod (except BTRFS, it ate a mirror on my desktop), I'll say that even the LVM + + is so much more hacky than geom on FreeBSD”
endorse · production · salmo · 2021-05-07 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Imo OpenBSD on laptop, FreeBSD on server/desktop. But they're both great and I don't think you'd regret either one”
endorse · personal · bromonkey · 2020-12-01 · source ↗ · wrong label?“One of my servers just scored over 400 days uptime”
endorse · production · doublerabbit · 2020-11-24 · source ↗ · wrong label?“My colo setup is running FreeBSD w/ ZFS which is very stable for backending VPN servers, web servers and app servers”
endorse · production · tristor · 2020-11-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“FreeBSD was the first Unix I ever worked on professionally. I agree, it's amazing, and I love admining it.”
endorse · production · jedberg · 2020-01-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I now do kernel performance work for a large CDN, where we run FreeBSD.”
endorse · production · drewg123 · 2019-07-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“it's just too bloody hard to survive in ports on freebsd for this stuff. It's become corner case.”
mixed · production · 30 yr · ggm · 2018-12-14 · source ↗ · wrong label?“a local FreeBSD VM is essential for developing & testing the provisioning and deploy scripts.”
endorse · personal · inopinatus · 2018-12-12 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using FreeBSD on my desktop and notebook for the past 3 years and I have nothing to complain!”
endorse · personal · 3 yr · napsterbr · 2018-12-11 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I have been using FreeBSD since 3.x in 1999 and have only been bitten by source updates when I failed to follow procedure”
endorse · personal · 19 yr · siffland · 2018-12-11 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Windows and MacOS both give me more problems then a FreeBSD or Linux box ever has.”
endorse · personal · 2trill2spill · 2017-11-28 · source ↗ · wrong label?“our latest PHP deployments are back on FreeBSD.”
endorse · production · ComputerGuru · 2017-08-15 · source ↗ · wrong label?“This is how I run my home fileserver. It is also how I/we run all of rsync.net - ZFS filesystems on top of plain old FreeBSD.”
endorse · production · rsync · 2017-07-26 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We've had pretty good luck with upgrades not causing major issues, but we did have some trouble with mrsas drivers”
mixed · production · toast0 · 2017-07-26 · source ↗ · wrong label?“There were some differences in the CARP implementation in FreeBSD that made some features of CARP we relied on with OpenBSD unavailable in FreeBSD”
regret · production · kbenson · 2017-02-10 · source ↗ · wrong label?“FreeBSD: my father. with i3 and a couple of scripts, he's able to boot up into a single-use environment”
endorse · personal · imode · 2016-12-07 · source ↗ · wrong label?“for larger Embedded systems we use FreeBSD + nanobsd wich solves a lot of the above mentioned problems.”
endorse · production · peerst · 2016-12-07 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I ran FreeBSD for years as a desktop... after ~6 years on a linux desktop, I'm back to FreeBSD.”
endorse · personal · drewg123 · 2016-12-06 · source ↗ · wrong label?“my happy sea of happy freebsd has gained two unavoidable ubuntu”
endorse · production · VLM · 2016-08-09 · source ↗ · wrong label?“After 18 years of running FreeBSD on my servers, my $0.02: ... FreeBSD only is fun when one has a higher level of expertise”
mixed · production · 18 yr · jlg23 · 2016-08-01 · source ↗ · wrong label?“all the other servers where I work are FreeBSD, why would we run something else for www? It works fine, but Linux is probably ok too.”
mixed · production · toast0 · 2016-05-31 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We moved to it (a couple years back) and it's been a breath of fresh air.”
endorse · production · 2 yr · themartorana · 2016-05-29 · source ↗ · wrong label?“for my main computer, there's just too much missing on the BSDs for me.”
mixed · personal · jkelsey · 2015-11-30 · source ↗ · wrong label?“FreeBSD, on the other hand - never a major problem with upgrades in 18 years of running it.”
endorse · personal · 18 yr · mhandley · 2015-11-29 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Before my switch to freebsd... My prior post wasn't written as a statement of exclusivity, simply that I prefer the way freebsd does it.”
endorse · personal · woodman · 2015-01-14 · source ↗ · wrong label?“been using bsd and linux for servers for the past 10 years, love both of them for different reasons.”
endorse · production · 10 yr · macns · 2014-11-22 · source ↗ · wrong label?“My first experience was with FreeBSD 2.0 ... So it is modern, reliable UNIX for servers.”
endorse · personal · dschiptsov · 2014-11-22 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Since FreeBSD lost more and more ground to linux when it came to supporting the kind of hardware that PCs (desktops) ship with I ended up standardizing on Linux.”
regret · personal · jacquesm · 2014-11-12 · source ↗ · wrong label?“the revelation that FreeBSD hadn't actually poked me in the eye once in the last decade had turned my hand finally.”
endorse · personal · 10 yr · larp · 2014-11-05 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've seen FreeBSD in production(ish), and it was indeed a more pleasent experience. Paths, configuration, the package system, the documentation (!) all felt nicer.”
endorse · production · pestaa · 2014-09-24 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I just gave up and moved to FreeBSD. Not a single regret so far.”
endorse · personal · ultramancool · 2014-09-23 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I loved building VMs with BSD jails”
endorse · personal · lifeisstillgood · 2014-09-15 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We still have a few Open and Free BSD servers running, as they are basically rock solid”
endorse · production · like_do_i_care · 2014-08-29 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We run into weird FreeBSD edge cases pretty often where there are few people, if anyone, who can answer our questions. Thankfully 9.2-RELEASE has been pretty good to us.”
mixed · production · 10 yr · moot · 2013-12-02 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Sometimes (read: often) it sucks to be a FreeBSD user.”
mixed · production · moot · 2013-12-02 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I regret installing it on my notebook before trying it on my desktop or on a virtual machine.”
regret · personal · mvanotti · 2013-09-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I also regret not giving FreeBSD a try sooner.”
endorse · personal · D9u · 2013-09-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been perfectly content for years using FreeBSD as my primary server and desktop OS. IMO it works better than Linux too.”
endorse · personal · GalacticDomin8r · 2013-07-19 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I consider FreeBSD/EC2 production ready -- and I'm using it in production”
endorse · production · cperciva · 2012-11-23 · source ↗ · wrong label?“even as late as 2004 or so when we ditched the platform, days for FreeBSD even when performed by our resident FreeBSD advocate.”
regret · production · acdha · 2012-10-12 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We have almost the exact same setup except we use FreeBSD instead of Ubuntu -- mostly because when I setup this server”
endorse · personal · filmgirlcw · 2012-06-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“You can absolutely model the risk of data in a UFS filesystem running on FreeBSD”
endorse · production · kozubik · 2012-04-28 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using a FreeBSD since '96 and love how easy it is to build, distribute, and maintain NanoBSD images in any number of places”
endorse · production · 14 yr · bconway · 2010-11-01 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I can personally vouch for the stability of ZFS and FreeBSD 8.x. The only thing I don't like about running FreeBSD is that the Java support is a bit lacking.”
mixed · production · sgt · 2010-10-27 · source ↗ · wrong label?“No more FreeBSD / no more only a handful of OS processes per node”
neutral · production · toast0 · 2026-09-14 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I have been using daemontools for managing my services on FreeBSD servers that have run 24/7 for almost a quarter of century”
neutral · production · 24 yr · adrian_b · 2025-12-14 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using the same dotfiles git repo for 16 years across Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD.”
neutral · personal · jitl · 2024-12-22 · source ↗ · wrong label?“the fleet consists of freebsd rhel7 xnu win10 openbsd netbsd pi silicon”
neutral · production · jart · 2023-11-01 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we run our own private "distro" on the CDN at Netflix, which is basically upstream FreeBSD + some kernel patches”
neutral · production · drewg123 · 2023-07-31 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We use multitude of OS versions ranging from CentOS, to Debian including FreeBSD and Solaris so what do you want?”
neutral · production · doublerabbit · 2022-12-16 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we run our postgres database on a massive bare-metal dedicated server running FreeBSD”
neutral · production · rubyist5eva · 2022-08-06 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Started right with the first version included in FreeBSD in production use”
neutral · production · Datagenerator · 2021-11-27 · source ↗ · wrong label?“No vendor support, FreeBSD with send/receive pairs to another 7PB location monitoring with Grafana”
neutral · production · Datagenerator · 2021-11-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We ran a pretty vanilla FreeBSD. IIRC, we disabled locales, and had 5-10 patches”
neutral · production · toast0 · 2021-09-15 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've run FreeBSD ZFS for about a decade”
neutral · personal · 10 yr · anotherhue · 2021-07-29 · source ↗ · wrong label?“the route collector was built on FreeBSD (3.0 I think) and Zebra”
neutral · production · teh_klev · 2021-04-21 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I used lots of code from Musl, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD.”
neutral · personal · jart · 2021-02-04 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we migrated back to FreeBSD and ZFS shortly after that experience.”
neutral · production · Volundr · 2020-12-23 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I use ZFS on Freebsd where the same is true”
neutral · personal · benlivengood · 2020-11-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“code editing is done on FreeBSD host machine, code is synced inside Alpine VM”
neutral · personal · mtasic · 2020-11-09 · source ↗ · wrong label?“years of running i3 (and before that xmonad, ratpoison and others) on linux and freebsd.”
neutral · personal · gimboland · 2020-06-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I administrate multiple systemd-based linux distros, FreeBSD servers and buildroot-based embedded systems”
neutral · production · simias · 2020-05-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“aside from FreeBSD which I do use.”
neutral · personal · codetrotter · 2019-12-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I use 1Password via the CLI on Linux (well -- FreeBSD) Desktop all the time.”
neutral · personal · dcreemer · 2018-12-21 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've used FreeBSD before, but have far more experience using Linux in production”
neutral · personal · tomxor · 2018-12-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using every major os (but mostly GNU/Linux and FreeBSD as my main desktop systems since 2007)”
neutral · personal · 11 yr · qalmakka · 2018-12-13 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We run a modified FreeBSD on our CDN nodes.”
neutral · production · drewg123 · 2018-11-29 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I recently built a FreeBSD/ZFS based server and chose a cheaper CPU and a lot of faster RAM”
neutral · production · reacharavindh · 2018-10-03 · source ↗ · wrong label?“for various reasons (http://www.bsdnow.tv/episodes/2018_04_11-bowling_in_the_lime...) we run FreeBSD.”
neutral · production · kev009 · 2018-07-09 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I have also used extensibly: archlinux, gentoo, openbsd, freebsd, alpine and slackware-current.”
neutral · personal · pecg · 2017-12-28 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We run fbsd HEAD for main product line”
neutral · production · kev009 · 2017-09-30 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we needed a from scratch new USB driver which needed us to upgrade the FreeBSD network stack to the most current”
neutral · production · peerst · 2016-12-07 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I can confirm we run FreeBSD on our CDN servers.”
neutral · production · drewg123 · 2015-11-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Prior to that I used ion3 in FreeBSD.”
neutral · personal · rsync · 2015-07-05 · source ↗ · wrong label?“At work, we run stud in a freebsd jail to handle SSL termination.”
neutral · production · toast0 · 2015-03-14 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using unices for over 20 years now (first was ultrix, then truos, sunos, solaris, hpux, aix, linux, netbsd, freebsd, osx)”
neutral · production · 20 yr · GFK_of_xmaspast · 2014-11-29 · source ↗ · wrong label?“The only reason I use ports nowadays is when I need to set custom build options on a package.”
neutral · personal · Wilya · 2014-11-22 · source ↗ · wrong label?“For tools that won't work on SmartOS for a technical reason, I'm using FreeBSD more.”
neutral · personal · insaneirish · 2013-11-19 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I'd been running Slackware and FreeBSD for a few years”
neutral · personal · laumars · 2013-11-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“with our company running their servers on FreeBSD”
neutral · production · tete · 2013-11-09 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we run these on various versions of RHEL, Debian , Ubuntu and FreeBSD”
neutral · production · noselasd · 2013-03-04 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I have been using E17 on FreeBSD for a couple of years now”
neutral · personal · 2 yr · klibertp · 2012-12-22 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Prior to Ubuntu I generally went with Slackware or FreeBSD.”
neutral · personal · Skywing · 2012-12-11 · source ↗ · wrong label?“After almost 20 years of running Linux, FreeBSD (and even NextStep!) on x86 bare metal”
neutral · personal · 20 yr · rcb · 2012-11-11 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Our software builds everyday on FreeBSD, Linux and Windows on servers that are identical.”
neutral · production · shin_lao · 2011-12-19 · source ↗ · wrong label?“settled on PGSQL (on FBSD), with the help of the said dev”
neutral · production · zobzu · 2011-12-11 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using OpenBSD or FreeBSD or Linux as my primary desktop OS since about 1996..”
neutral · personal · 15 yr · ishbits · 2011-11-29 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I have not been using a bsd system for a long long time, but from what I recall at least freebsd had the same kind of virtual FSs”
neutral · personal · riffraff · 2010-11-26 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We run a modified version of FreeBSD, which includes both changes that are only appropriate for our own use”
neutral · production · lolname · 2010-10-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I used to use FreeBSD and switched later to Mac OS X”
neutral · personal · kxs · 2010-07-13 · source ↗ · wrong label?“on FreeBSD I'd say that buffer overflows are responsible for at most 10% of the security issues we run into.”
neutral · production · cperciva · 2010-05-02 · source ↗ · wrong label?