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Date:      Fri, 14 Feb 2020 20:36:35 +0100
From:      Tomasz Rola <rtomek@ceti.pl>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Cc:        Steven Malone <quantafac@ubiquitous.ninja>
Subject:   Re: Technological advantages over Linux
Message-ID:  <20200214193634.GA20932@tau1.ceti.pl>
In-Reply-To: <e39d97dd-5d6b-6b4e-90d7-ae312a690dc0@ubiquitous.ninja>
References:  <20200214121620.GA80657@admin.sibptus.ru> <e39d97dd-5d6b-6b4e-90d7-ae312a690dc0@ubiquitous.ninja>

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On Fri, Feb 14, 2020 at 09:19:50AM -0600, Steven Malone wrote:
> Victor,
> 
> While this may not be a technical response, I have had immensely better
> experiences managing a FreeBSD server than a Linux one. The primary
> difference in my experience has been around system upgrades. When
> updating Linux I have had all sorts of applications start failing after
> the a simple package update. I do not have this problem when updating
> FreeBSD, it has been much more reliable for me. I have also seen similar
> results from system upgrades, Linux upgrades have broken my system
> countless times. I have never had a FreeBSD system completely tank after
> an upgrade.

I think when depicting flaws of Linux (innumerable, as with anything
made by humans) you guys should be a bit more specific. There are few
so called "flavours" of it, and the quality differs somehow between
them. I have heard such things as above happened to somebody using
Ubuntu in the past. And Ubuntu is derived from Debian. On the other
hand, I spent time since 1997 using Debian exclusively and I do not
recall having a catastrophic mess after upgrade. Usually, there was a
difference between a process called update (say, 6.5->6.6, bugs
repelled, programs stay in their old versions and behaviours) and
upgrade (6.6->7.0, major version change, everything jumps forward in
time to be mostly same programs that the rest of the world uses). The
mess usually happened after upgrade, but the system always booted and
I could iron out dark corners of old config files, which usually was
enough to have it all going again. Nevertheless, I have learnt to have
a bootable copy of unupgraded system on spare partition, just in case
before I start doing upgrade - and indeed, sometimes I spent a week or
two booting from one to the other. Not very often and the problems
were multimedia related.

However, I am not current with Debian experience anymore. When systemd
moved in I decided to move out and stopped doing upgrades (I rely on
manual upgrades right now, quite a fun). The final jump to alternative
non Linux system has got huge delays, unfortunately. But I have
already had bad thoughts even before this, when after one upgrade I
had to spend a day hunting down strange, misbehaving daemons and
nailing them in their coffins [1]. So systemd was just a straw that broke
horse's back, not something ugly enough to make me run (but still
ugly). I know there are plenty of people who consider s-d to be a huge
step forward for humanity, so why not let them have it? I also know
there are still some Linux flavours which do not use s-d but I expect
them to disappear (I wish them good luck but the glacier cannot be
disputed with).

Anyway, you can now argue there are people who would rather use old
Linux and slowly go into *BSD than use new Linux (which most probably
is just fine, and I simply show signs of getting old and prejudiced
against all those new kids who know better and want to "throw away
Unix way", except that I expect to read yet another "systemd blowed
me" kind of article in a future).

Oh, and let's hope this post is not read as a flame bait :)

[1] I can be called nuts, but there are just few things that drive me
up the wall. One such thing is when bloody-something keeps writing to
the disc every five seconds, and another when a bloody web browser is
supposed to be idle but instead keeps cpu at 100% and keeps writing to
the disc. I get literally crazy and obsessed upon seeing such case.

-- 
Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola@bigfoot.com             **



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