Debian vs FreeBSD (was Re: Re: [buug] cockroaches and kernel build)

[Aaron T Porter]

On Wed, Aug 07, 2002 at 05:05:04PM -0700, Patrick Soltani wrote:
> I work with Solaris, Linux, Ultrix, and any other flavor of the OS out
> there, however, when I go home, my only solace is that my FreeBSD box
> will up and running and never ever complains even when I tell it to do
> stupid things. Ok..ok, sometimes it does!

	FreeBSD is a perfectly good choice, and I definately recomend
trying it on for style. I've had a ton of stability issues under very high
load on FreeBSD in the past (4.1) that have hopefully been resolved in
recent kernels (won't know for sure until the christmas rush). Most of the
claims of FreeBSD's superior stability seem to be quite dated. I've got a
few Linux boxen that are among the busiest on our network with 400+ day
uptimes -- hard to beat with any OS.
 
> I am sure there is a lot of room for improvement, however, just remember
> that any flavor of tcp/ip stack you see out there, in one way or the
> other is borrowed, copied, or taken from BSD.

	Not really accurate for Linux, but it is definately worth noting
that BSD was the original tcp/ip platform, and may well be the best
debugged network stack out there.
 
> ports tree alone is worth the hassle of setting it up and going thru the
> learning curve; that's just my $0.02, I may be biased ;-)

	Ports is nice, but man does it ever pale in comparison to apt. The
cvsup/make world setup is nice and all, but a buildworld on a p3/500 still
takes over an hour. Building stuff from ports seems simple, but you hit
the same dependancy issues you see with binary packages, except now you're
compiling it all from source. Using pkg_* as an alternative is crude, to
say the least. Installing FreeBSD is definately a good nostalgia trip
though... your install/config tools and package management are at about
the same level as Slackware in 1994.
	On top of that, the Linux user culture is a hell of a lot nicer to
work with -- the anti-linux/anti-gnu bent of the BSD community is even
more confusing when you realize just how much GNU software you need to get
a useable BSD box -- and the fact that the "default" X web browser is
Netscape running in Linux compat mode... just strange.
	Of course, at the end of the day I've still got a stack of FreeBSD
boxen, a few OpenBSD and a few Solaris just for good measure. Run what
fits.