On Mon, 12 Mar 2001, Dennis Eberl wrote:
> I would like to hear you opinions. I have finished installing Apache, PHP4,
>
> Dennis Eberl
In short, FreeBSD is awesome. It's probably the fastest x86 OS I've
used. The Ports Collection makes installing 3rd party software an
administator's heaven, no more tinkering with a bazillion required
packages to install just one thing, and you can customize your compiles
easily. The BSD style init/configuration I prefer over the SYSV style
(although the SYSV style is more "scalable"). Seems like FreeBSD hardware
support is almost as good as Linux's, and in some case better (FreeBSD had
sane USB support first). Also, for the nostalgic, FreeBSD is a real UNIX,
based off of the 4.4BSD-lite distro, although you'll occasionally see it
referred to as "UNIX-like" for legal reasons.
At work, I'm currently migrating our Solaris/SPARC servers over to nice
new rackmount BSDi boxes running FreeBSD, and they run like a champ. More
speed for a lot less (not everyone can afford an E10K). These are dual
P3 1ghz boxes with 1gb ram plus, RAID 1 and RAID 5 (depending on the
machine).
Downfalls to FreeBSD? Well, there's not much I don't like. About the only
thing is I wish FreeBSD had a journaling FS, they need one desperately, to
enter into certain server markets. FS-level ACLs would be cool, too, but I
havent seen this implemented in a manner i like on UNIX systems. I guess
one other thing that mildly concerns me is what happens when needs outgrow
the 4.4BSD specs, but I think this is a non-issue as FreeBSD has grown
with the market thus far.
Please realize that OpenBSD and NetBSD are fairly different than
FreeBSD. They share the same original codebase, but a lot of chnages have
taken place since then. I find FreeBSD to be much faster than OBSD or
NBSD, but this fits into the ideologies of each of the BSD groups:
FreeBSD: fast, x86, alpha support
OpenBSD: correctness, and thus security
NetBSD: portability
jakob
