Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 17:33:44 +0100 From: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> To: "Wayne Pascoe" <freebsd@molemanarmy.com> Cc: <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: freebsd as a desktop ? Message-ID: <000401c1782a$730a29d0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> References: <006201c17815$d8960040$fd6e34c6@mlevy><86667vm1gd.fsf@pan.ehsrealtime.com><00da01c1781b$9b9f4100$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <86667vkk98.fsf@pan.ehsrealtime.com>
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Your overall impressions of FreeBSD vs. Linux match mine, even though I have not bothered with Linux. Linux has been the target of enormous marketing and media hype, but even a casual glance at the OS from a technical standpoint makes one wonder why anyone would choose it over the other free versions of UNIX that are available. The hype is the one and only reason for the success of the OS, IMO, and I wonder whether it will survive over the long term. > I manage a farm of somewhere around 20 servers :) > We used to use Linux for all of them but we moved > to FreeBSD. And what was the reason for the original choice of Linux? > Many of the cost savings, I detailed in my speech > A Business Case for FreeBSD at BSDCon 2001. You > can download the slides from http://www.molemanarmy.com/bsdcon/ Unfortunately, it does not seem to be in a format that I can open. PDF would be nice. > Mainly it comes down to maturity. FreeBSD works > for me in the production world. We had _A LOT_ of > problems with Linux systems from 2.2.15 onwards > due to broken VM subsystems. The 2.4 kernel had > been very problematic for us due to things like > software raid problems in 2.4.0. This confirms my own intuition with respect to Linux. > On the whole, Linux still strikes me as more of > a hobbyist OS. That has been exactly my impression since the beginning. It's ideal for people who like to tinker with the OS without ever doing any productive work, and certainly without ever having a need for high-uptime production use. It also appeals to people who had never heard the word "UNIX" prior to encountering some of the hype around Linux. Since I don't like to tinker with an OS (particularly just to get it to work), and since I knew what UNIX was several decades ago, Linux seems to me like a useless toy that appeals to the clueless. > FreeBSD seems to be more aimed at 'Make it solid'. I agree. My production Web site has been running on FreeBSD for several years with no problems. When I decided to set up my own UNIX server at home, FreeBSD seemed like a logical choice, because (1) it was clearly aimed at serious production users, not hobbyists or tinkerers or newbies; and (2) it provides essentially a complete UNIX operating system except for the name (which is trademarked); and (3) it was free (or almost free--I paid about $20 for a boxed set of CDs), which is a refreshing change from proprietary software. Having the source readily available is nice, too--when you run critical systems with proprietary operating systems, you are at the mercy of the vendor, particularly if he wants to force you to "upgrade" (i.e., spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours to achieve less than parity with the system you already have). > Oh, and just in case anyone thinks I'm biased, > I attained my RHCE as an exam only candidate. Certifications are just a gravy train for vendors, IMO and IMX. It seems particularly odd to award certifications on an operating system that doesn't seem to be stable for more than a few days at a time. > But I'm too lazy to work as hard as I needed to, > to keep Linux behaving. It's not laziness to be unwilling to compensate for the defects in a software product. If Linux can't behave right out of the box, use a different OS. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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