Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2011 13:00:08 -0600 From: Chad Perrin <perrin@apotheon.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: A quality operating system Message-ID: <20110820190008.GA21367@guilt.hydra> In-Reply-To: <CA754F69.68E1F%dave-sa@pooserville.com> References: <86wre8inmi.fsf@gmail.com> <CA754F69.68E1F%dave-sa@pooserville.com>
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--FL5UXtIhxfXey3p5 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 12:12:00PM -0500, Dave Pooser wrote: >=20 > 1) I really don't see the Handbook as all that great. It's great that a > volunteer team put it together, but when I compare it to > <https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/docs/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/>; or > <http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E19963-01/index.html>, I don't think > the FreeBSD handbook compares well. I disagree. >=20 > 2) Lack of geek-on-the-street support. If I'm looking for an experienced > Linux administrator, I'll get thousands of applications; for a Solaris > administrator, I'll get hundreds. For a BSD admin? Maybe half a dozen? Try hiring a Linux guy with at least a little FreeBSD familiarity instead, and get him to self-educate. Too often, people try to hire people with thirty years of experience in ten year old technologies, and what they end up with is a bunch of barely competent liars on their staffs. Get someone with technical talent who is at least marginally familiar and expect the person to *learn*. Anyone you hire is going to need to learn about your particular business needs anyway, so that the majority of past experience will not be directly applicable. Trying to pretend otherwise just results in getting mediocre choices where you could have had someone that would be truly excellent when given half a chance. People who want to learn, and are good at learning, are far more valuable than people think. Having a resume with all the "right" bullet points is almost worthless by comparison, when what you really want is an effective employee. >=20 > 3) Updates are a mess. It's cool that I *can* compile a new kernel, but > that I *have* to is ridiculous. Updating a server should not be more > difficult than "yum update" -- full stop. Define "have to". >=20 > 4) Poor support from running FreeBSD under virtualization. When I start to > think about deploying a new server, I'll generally spin up a new VM on my > workstation or on an ESXi host. If I have trouble with that VM, my first > response is not going to be to try again with the same OS, it's going to > be to fall back to a configuration I know works. There is, unfortunately, not as much support for running FreeBSD in virtualization environments (ignoring jails for the moment) as for other OSes. That's not really a problem with FreeBSD, though. I can see it being a reason to choose a different OS for cases where you need a particular set of veritualization requirements met, but I do not see it being a reason to tell everyone that FreeBSD sucks. >=20 > There are some things I liked a lot about FreeBSD -- its support for > DTrace and ZFS was the reason I looked into it in the first place. But > from where I sit, technologies like that are just duct-taped on to the > base system rather than integrated. (For example, why isn't there > something like the [Open]Solaris beadm, where the system creates a ZFS > snapshot automatically before any major updates to let you revert to not > just an earlier kernel but an earlier world?) Maybe that has something to do with the fact that ZFS was designed for OpenSolaris, while FreeBSD developers are working hard at integrating it for users without (much?) help from the ZFS developers at Oracle (who would really rather that nobody used FreeBSD anyway, for the most part). Of course, FreeBSD is leagues ahead of both MS Windows and any Linux distribution in the ZFS support department. I don't know much about DTrace, but I suspect there are similar factors involved there. >=20 > Cat-Herder-in-Chief, Pooserville.com Funny -- that's a Mac site. It seems like you shouldn't be considering MS Windows, Linux-based systems, Solaris, or FreeBSD anyway. You should take the "eat your own dogfood" approach, and use Mac servers and desktops. I guess you really *are* just trolling. --=20 Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] --FL5UXtIhxfXey3p5 Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.14 (FreeBSD) iEYEARECAAYFAk5QBDgACgkQ9mn/Pj01uKXMMACfWcHU4bAs7LQL+fQbAYR/EAPh +EoAn0UkB1Gp+i4ioBvL4a0NReBaWd9J =SPIi -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --FL5UXtIhxfXey3p5--
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