I've used each extensively, and I strongly prefer *BSD (particularly FreeBSD) on the server side. There are a few things that really stand out from a sysadmin standpoint:
1. Installation is easy and obvious. Ubuntu mostly fixed this issue on the Linux side. 2. Upgrading is somewhat of a joy. This was always a Debian strength, too. 3. BSD has the feel of a system that was created by and for sysadmins. 4. My favorite: there is a very clear delineation between the "base system" and everything else. All the other crap ends up in /usr/local. This comes in really handy for ezjail. But it also makes administration easier, as /etc/ doesn't get crowded. 5. Building your own system and kernel is actually easy, although I rarely do it nowadays. Updating from cvs is easy and building the system is easy. 6. Jails are still one of the best virtualization strategies that I've found. Very lightweight and rock solid. In FreeBSD, the base system is really tight, especially since they moved Perl out of it. There's a feel that there's nothing there that you don't need. Another aspect is the port system, which allows you better control over package building and dependencies. So you can install a pared down version of a package and not have to install 100 other things that it thinks it might need but in reality won't. With Debian and Ubuntu, Linux has really come a long way in making installation and upgrading easy. I understand that RH finally joined that parade a few years ago, too, but I quit using it many years ago. In a lot of ways, Linux feels like it's been pieced together from a lot of sources, which is exactly the reality of it. The BSDs have a coherency about them that Linux will likely never have. Having left the "hardware hosting" business, I no longer use FreeBSD at this point, but I hope I can again someday soon. I'm 100% Ubuntu on my servers now. I still keep a vm in parallels on my laptop running FreeBSD... Michael -- Michael Darrin Chaney, Sr. [email protected] http://www.michaelchaney.com/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
