Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 08:54:46 -0400 (EDT) From: Glen Foster <gfoster@gfoster.com> To: coventry@io.org Cc: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: feature list Message-ID: <199606051254.IAA00308@ptavv.nsta.org> In-Reply-To: <199606051141.HAA01264@io.org> (coventry@io.org)
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Caveat: My experience with Solaris has been mostly on Sparcs, not on Intel. I have about six years of experience with Sparcs (SunOs and Solaris) and aboiut four with Unix on Intel (SCO, UnixWare, Solaris, FreeBSD, BSD/OS, and others). I am not an ISP but I do Unix consulting for several ISPs in the Washington DC area and their customers. These ISPs typically use BSD/OS, Solaris, and FreeBSD in about that order of popularity. The ones who are using FreeBSD have the fewest recurring problems and spend the least amount of time fussing with their internal systems, Solaris is the worst of the three for reliability. WRT the specific applications you list below, both OS's run them fine and they all build "out of the box." However, Solaris is wedded to NIS. If you choose not to run NIS, once in a while a host lookup non-event will catch you by surprise (e.g. a `who` will not return a hostname but an IP address instead). Nothing fatal but it can be annoying. Also, Solaris is not as complete as FreeBSD (e.g. FreeBSD allows you to see what each sendmail process is doing when you run the ps(1) command, Solaris doesn't). FreeBSD is significantly less memory hungry and faster on the same hardware. This is especially noticeable in X windows. OTOH, there are lots of commercial apps for Solaris and very few for FreeBSD. One other factor that may be of importance, the FreeBSD core team has made it easy to have all upgrades and patches be applied to your system over the net (see the CTM and sup docs). This is in stark contrast to Sun whose OS patch system is painful. WRT installation, I have done both over-the-net and cdrom installs. Both work fine but I prefer the cdrom especially on a slow net connection. If I was installing on a system without a cdrom, I would use the net rather than install a cdrom drive, it is really easy and almost bullet-proof. Buy the cdrom, you will sleep better at nights knowing that you can reinstall part or all of your system without needing net resources. >Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 07:41:54 -0400 >From: coventry@io.org (graydon hoare) > >Hi y'all. I know there is an official FAQ feature list, but I am >attempting to gather information to present an accurate comparison >between FreeBSD and Solaris/x86 as ISP OSs'... > >Was wondering if anyone could confirm for sure the day-to-day operation of the >following services under FreeBSD and possibly comment on their ease-of-build >and reliability, either alone or in comparison to Solaris/x86 if you have >experience with it: > >BIND/NAMED >GATED/ROUTED >Usenet/INN/UUCP >Sendmail/SMTP >Apache/HTTPD >Ftp/TFTPD/FTPD > >Also: has anyone loaded their OS from the network or have you found the >CDROM from walnut creek to be a better route?
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