From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Oct 3 10:56:47 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D28B916A4CE for ; Sun, 3 Oct 2004 10:56:47 +0000 (GMT) Received: from wingfoot.org (caduceus.wingfoot.org [64.32.179.50]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6B47643D2D for ; Sun, 3 Oct 2004 10:56:47 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from ges@wingfoot.org) Received: from localhost (localhost.wingfoot.org [127.0.0.1]) by wingfoot.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B9ABA1F4498; Sun, 3 Oct 2004 06:56:46 -0400 (EDT) Received: from wingfoot.org ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (caduceus.wingfoot.org [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 21858-03; Sun, 3 Oct 2004 06:56:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from [127.0.0.1] (unknown [64.32.179.50]) by wingfoot.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7F3691F4496; Sun, 3 Oct 2004 06:56:45 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <415FDAED.8060307@wingfoot.org> Date: Sun, 03 Oct 2004 06:56:45 -0400 From: Glenn Sieb User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Thunderbird/0.8 Mnenhy/0.6.0.104 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <20041002225028.05205e9a.metaridley@mchsi.com> <415FA64E.8010708@optonline.net> In-Reply-To: <415FA64E.8010708@optonline.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new at wingfoot.org cc: bsdfsse cc: metaridley@mchsi.com Subject: Re: When Unix Stops Being Fun X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 03 Oct 2004 10:56:47 -0000 bsdfsse said the following on 10/3/2004 3:12 AM: > Ironically, I'm switching to FreeBSD because I'm already tired. My > bones are aching from years of abuse. I'm tired of.. Hear Hear!! > ..of Linux distributions with fatal flaws. I went on a giant search > to pick the perfect Linux distro, and I ended up selecting FreeBSD. > Every single distro had some aspect I didn't like. I started with FreeBSD in the Fall of 2000, when I started at Lumeta. I loved it so much that when I built my personal server, I used it (and Wing's now running on 4.10-STABLE, and when 5.3 is out of BETA I'll most likely upgrade it...). I had played with RedHat (3 or 4.. I still have the CDs somewhere!), I had used Unix System V (on a Unix PC (AT&T PC 7300) no less!) in the early 90's, but had ended up working with Windows mostly at my jobs, and thus, at home. Every time there was a new version of Windows, there were new idiosyncracies and more bullshit to cram into my head. When I started at Lumeta, I found those old Unix skills creeping back out of my memory--and they STILL WORKED! *gasp* ;) Things that attracted me to FBSD: 1) The ease of the Ports collection. No messy rpm commands to have to memorize or read man pages on--just cd /usr/ports/tree/package && make install clean -- Wow. How much easier can it get? Oh I know... when you don't want the port anymore? cd /usr/ports/tree/package && make deinstall ;) 2) The support in the community--I've never lacked at being able to find help. Granted, this is more Unix-oriented than FBSD-oriented.. But I have to admit that the mailing lists have been a *HUGE* help when I've needed it. 3) Finding that O'Reilly hosted articles about *BSD (Like Dru Lavigne's many articles discussing the ports tree and other nifty things in FreeBSD, and how to maintain & keep them in tip-top shape)! 4) Finding that I could actually *run* more than, say, 2 or 3 services on a particular server! (The first FBSD server I helped configure at Lumeta served as our: general development, Samba-shared, user home, network print server, DNS, DHCP, Apache, RT, email server--I was amazed you could run all that on one box without it crashing daily, like Windows would at the time!) 5) The ease with which I was able to take an existing port (misc/instant-workstation) and make a Lumeta package which would run over the course of a weekend, hands-free, and build a developer's workstation to our specs! For free! I didn't need to learn any weird packaging script language (read: InstallShield), nor did I have to worry incessantly about "how many licenses do we have left for ..." like I had to with our Windows boxen. (There are others, of course, but these are what come to mind immediately...) > ..of proprietary formats. All the emails I lost over the years that > were in some kind of Outlook format that at the time I was either too > lazy or too ignorant, to make a back up of. Yeah--early on I switched from Outcrack to Eudora, which, though better, still wasn't perfect--but at least it was in a Unix-like format! :) > My point is, the knowledge you gain about UNIX is your's forever. The > freedom is forever. The control is forever. > > If want to be a sysadmin, you don't have to be master of everything. > You just need to be on the path - and you are. It's not all about what you have memorized. It's knowing where to look for the information. I have *no* qualms telling people in interviews, when they ask me a question I don't know the answer to off the top of my head, that I could easily find that information via man or a Google search. In general, I have found that if the person interviewing you Has Clueage, that's better to them than someone sitting there scratching their head going "Um.. let me think... um... " for a few minutes. Myself, I am preparing to migrate my home PC from WinXP to FreeBSD 5.x soon. Mostly because I'm sick of the stupid driver conflicts, spontaneous reboots where M$ blames my NVidia drivers, and software that ceases to work because of SP2 (my screensavers, no less. And--do they cease to work gracefully? Noooooo--that'd be too polite--it just locks the PC with a black screen and a mouse pointer which is the only thing that responds to anything, forcing a reboot. Nice eh?). I'm already using Firefox, Thunderbird, and OO.o, so the switch shouldn't be too bad :) Best, Glenn -- "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759