Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 20:52:22 +0200 From: Nils Holland <nils@tisys.org> To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Cc: "Drews, Jonathan*" <DrewsJ@cder.fda.gov> Subject: Re: FreeBSD Goals Message-ID: <200407152052.22655.nils@tisys.org> In-Reply-To: <4C88DC099E9AF945A6DA4D6FFA1865D17D742C@cdsx06.cder.fda.gov> References: <4C88DC099E9AF945A6DA4D6FFA1865D17D742C@cdsx06.cder.fda.gov>
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On Thursday 15 July 2004 19:09, Drews, Jonathan* wrote:
> 1) A robust way to make PPP connections through userland-ppp. I think
> FreeBSD's userland-ppp is better than what exists in Linux. I have used
> userland ppp with serial, USB and PCMCIA modems. In all three cases it
> worked very well.
Well, although this might be a slight bit off-topic to the OP's question, l=
et=20
me add that FreeBSD's user-ppp is one of the neatest things I've ever seen.=
=20
I remember years back in some 6.x release of SuSE Linux when I was trying t=
o=20
get my ppp connection working. If I remember correctly SuSE used wvdial bac=
k=20
then, and I sat for hours in front of my box getting it do do dial-on-deman=
d=20
as well as NAT the way I wanted it to. After some time I gave up on this=20
wvdial thing and turned to pppd directly, trying to get the stuff done "the=
=20
old way". Something similiar happened when I tried to get a PPP connection=
=20
working in SuSE Linux 8.0 - it just didn't want to work the way *I* wanted =
it=20
to.
Now, when first gave FreeBSD a spin in 2000 (actually, I installed my first=
=20
=46reeBSD on January 1st 2000 - really ;-)), I was highly amazed that after=
my=20
first attempt to customize /etc/ppp/ppp.conf to suit my needs, a ppp -nat=20
=2Dauto <profile_name> worked right away just the way I wanted. No problems=
at=20
all.
Why am I telling that? Well, before I came to FreeBSD, I assumed that stuff=
=20
would be way more complicated there than it is on Linux. However, four and =
a=20
half years later I absolutely cannot say that this is the case. I was=20
positively impressed how well and easy everything actually works.
Additionally, I really wouldn't want to miss the occasional cvsupping, make=
=20
{build,install}world and portupgrade procedure. I've never been able to=20
figure out a sane way to keep a SuSE system (for example) up-to-date withou=
t=20
having stuff totally messed up after a year or so. With FreeBSD ... well,=20
keeping it up-to-date is another thing that works really great. I guess the=
=20
version I'm running on this machine here was installed more than two years=
=20
back and I've recently brought it to 4-STABLE (after the 4.10 release) and=
=20
updated my KDE to 3.2.3 without much aford and trouble...
=46rom the software side, I think it doesn't take long until one really=20
appreciates the "FreeBSD way" of doing things. The only thing that in my=20
opinion might be a strong point for Linux is hardware compatibility. After=
=20
all, we must admit that Linux happens to support some stuff that FreeBSD=20
currently doesn't. This, however, is more of a point when you have to insta=
ll=20
it on existing machines. If you know up front that you'll want to use=20
=46reeBSD, you will of course base your hardware buying decisions on that f=
act.=20
And then, there shouldn't really be any problems...
Just my $ .02. ;-)
Greetings,
Nils
=2D-=20
eMail: nils@tisys.org
Mobile / SMS: ++49-176-26179892 or ++49-176-26152833
Website: http://www.tisys.org
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