Why We Use FreeBSD Over Linux: A CTO’s Perspective

At E-Card, an online gaming company, we’ve been using the open-source FreeBSD operating system all the way back to our company’s inception in 2000. As the CTO, I’ve witnessed the evolution of both FreeBSD and the broader technology landscape. Much has changed, but FreeBSD remains our open-source operating system of choice, despite the widespread use of Linux throughout the tech community. 

Here’s why the open-source project has been so important to us for the past quarter-century.

Stability and Scalability

Our operations involve handling especially large volumes of simultaneous users and transactions — often with significant and unpredictable spikes. We require an operating system that can handle thousands of queries and transactions per second without compromising performance or stability. FreeBSD provides just that.

Our infrastructure, consisting of high-performance "Monster" servers with up to dozens of CPU cores, many terabytes of RAM, and more than hundreds of TBs of ZFS storage, can handle up to 100,000 queries and 20,000 transactions per second during peak times. FreeBSD’s ZFS file system has been a game-changer for us, offering data integrity, compression, and efficient data handling. We began using ZFS more recently, and its seamless integration with FreeBSD allowed us to replicate storage across our database clusters, ensuring high availability and even better performance.

Linux may offer a wider range of distributions, but the level of stability and performance we’ve experienced with FreeBSD has been unmatched. We operate in a highly regulated industry that requires the retention of vast amounts of data for several years. FreeBSD’s reliability has ensured compliance with these regulations while allowing us to scale as needed.

Simplicity in Design

One of the primary reasons we continue to prefer FreeBSD over Linux is simplicity. With FreeBSD, you get an entire operating system — kernel and userland — designed and developed together. This integrated approach ensures that all components work harmoniously. This is unlike Linux, where the kernel and userland often come from different sources, which can lead to compatibility issues.

Within FreeBSD, configuring and managing system components is straightforward. The consistency of system locations and configurations allows us to know exactly where to make changes. For instance, if we need to adjust a network interface, we know the exact configuration file to edit. In contrast, Linux distributions often vary wildly in how and where configurations are stored, which can make system management unnecessarily complex. The migration from ifconfig to ip commands in Linux is a prime example of unnecessary complexity — one that we’ve been able to avoid by sticking with FreeBSD.

Another key advantage of FreeBSD is its clear separation of third-party software from the base system. All third-party packages are installed in /usr/local, keeping the core system clean and organized. In Linux, third-party applications can sometimes be spread across various directories, making it difficult to track and manage them effectively.

ZFS and Performance Optimization

FreeBSD’s native support for ZFS is another factor that sets it apart from Linux. While Linux users can install ZFS, it’s not a native part of the system — and the integration is not as seamless. We’ve been using ZFS for a few years now, and its advanced features like compression, fast snapshots, and cloning have been invaluable to our operations.

Our databases are massive, often exceeding terabytes of data. FreeBSD’s ZFS, combined with Galera Cluster for MariaDB, has allowed us to efficiently manage database replication and high availability. The ability to take snapshots without performance degradation has also been a crucial feature for us, especially when dealing with large-scale data.

We’ve encountered our share of challenges, particularly around NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) scalability, but FreeBSD’s architecture and community support have helped us overcome these obstacles. For example, when our servers — which handle terabytes of data — experienced memory allocation issues, FreeBSD’s debugging tools and active community helped us identify and mitigate the problem.

Security and Open-Source

FreeBSD’s security model is another reason we are committed to growing with FreeBSD. The entire operating system, including the kernel and userland, is developed and maintained by a single team, which ensures a high level of consistency and security. In contrast, Linux distributions often involve contributions from multiple teams, which can lead to fragmented security patches and updates.

The simplicity of FreeBSD’s architecture makes it more secure. The clear separation of system components and the consistency in their locations means we can quickly apply security measures and identify potential vulnerabilities. FreeBSD’s open-source nature allows us to audit the code and make modifications as needed. When needed, we report bugs and participate in discussions that help improve FreeBSD for everyone.

Containerization and Jails

Containerization continues to be the future, and FreeBSD’s native support for jails has been another significant advantage for us. We use jails extensively to isolate different applications and services, allowing us to manage multiple projects within the same infrastructure without fear of conflicts. Unlike Docker, which can introduce unnecessary complexity, FreeBSD jails are simple, efficient, and built into the operating system.

With jails, we can create lightweight, secure containers for each of our applications, ensuring that issues in one project don’t affect the others. This has been particularly useful as we’ve expanded to international markets and needed to deploy multiple versions of our platform in different regions.

Looking Forward

As we continue to grow and scale, FreeBSD will remain at the core of our infrastructure. We’re excited about upcoming innovations in the FreeBSD ecosystem, such as new container management tools like Podman, which promise to make managing jails even more efficient. FreeBSD’s combination of stability, performance, simplicity, and security makes it the ideal operating system for our needs, and we have no plans to switch.

The long-running open-source operating system quietly delivers everything we need to operate a high-performance, scalable, and secure online gaming platform. That’s why it has been the backbone of our success for over two decades.