I’ve been a FreeBSD user since the late 90s. From 2002 to 2010, I was a ports committer working on the GNOME and Multimedia teams. I have always felt more “at home” with FreeBSD. There is a logic and cohesiveness to the Base System + Ports approach that just clicks for me in a way Linux distros often don’t. But the world changed. The OCI (Docker) container workflow took over, and for good reason: immutable infrastructure and easy updates are incredible for sanity. ...
I have owned ahze.net for a very long time. For most of that time, this domain has been a quiet corner of the internet—mostly used for internal lab services, mail, or just sitting idle. I’ve rarely had anything public-facing or inviting for the outside world to see. I’m changing that today. I’ve decided to start documenting my projects, my experiments with FreeBSD, and the growth of the Daemonless ecosystem here. This site is currently running inside a Daemonless Hugo container on my own infrastructure, which feels like the right way to kick things off. ...
My homelab has evolved significantly over the years. Currently, it’s a mix of heavy iron and efficient ARM devices, all orchestrated with Ansible. The Fleet WAN │ [OPNsense] │ ┌────┴─────┐ │ │ [Saturn] [Jupiter] (CI/CD) (Media) │ │ └────┬─────┘ │ [Mars] (Storage) Mars (TrueNAS): The primary storage engine. Bulk ZFS datasets, backups, and media library. Saturn (FreeBSD 15): The CI/CD Core. Runs Gitea, Woodpecker, and DNS. Jupiter (FreeBSD 15): The heavy lifter. Runs local storage and media services. OPNsense: The perimeter. Handling the network, firewall rules, and VLANs. Pluto (FreeBSD 14): My dedicated test box. Sunshine (Synology DS418): Secondary backup server to Mars. Venus (Linux/Fedora): For the few things that absolutely refuse to run on FreeBSD (yet). PiAware: ADS-B flight tracker (built following this guide). Pibox (Linux/ARM64): My low-power, always-on utility box. Everything is managed via Ansible stored in a private Gitea repo. Secrets are vaulted. Deployment is a single playbook run.
I use both. I like both. But they feel very different. Linux feels like a bazaar. You grab a kernel here, a package manager there, a init system from over there (usually systemd these days), and stitch it together. It’s powerful, chaotic, and moves fast. FreeBSD feels like a cathedral (to borrow the classic metaphor). The OS is a complete, cohesive unit. The kernel and userland are developed together. ifconfig works the same way it did 20 years ago. ZFS is a first-class citizen, not an external module. ...