Page 2 - Differences in the *BSDs

Well, what can I say, I'm just 24 and have been working with Linux / freebsd / hp-ux and solaris and until now on the server side freebsd has been working best (even though I just cvsupped, my server for the first time, hehe shame on me).

A few nice examples, we had a dns server running about 100.000 zone files (yes one server), on linux (redhat or suse) it took about an hour to reload the new config , we installed a new machine with freebsd and took out everything we didn't need and it only took about three to four minutes.

Another webserver running slackware running about 6000 sites we had to HUP apache every 10 minutes because the machine just didn't cut it. The same machine with freebsd just kept running without any problem whatsoever and could take the load easily.

Freebsd rules !!!!

Sadly enough I don't have enough machines at home to play around, I tried to install netbsd some while ago and it crashed bigtime when compiling the new kernel.....the machine wasn't all to good I must mention. I reallly want to test an play around with netbsd more.

I run my desktop (notebook) machine with Suse linux 7.2 and almost all servers with freebsd 4.3-release # which are now being cvsupped to 4.4 stable. My home firewall is running Mandrake single network firewall but that kinda sucks so I want to change it to Net / Freebsd, first find out how to connect to my adsl connection with Net / Freebsd.

All in all, I find both Linux and Freebsd great systems, but on the server side and especially in large environments, Freebsd blows linux away in stabililty and speed.

Marc van Duivenvoorde

>> I tried to install netbsd some while ago and it crashed bigtime when compiling the new kernel

Start a new thread on this if you want.

as a network engineer i speed hrs. and hrs. in data centers. i have seen too many data centers in my yrs. not really i love computers.... anyway , it would suprise you how many high profile , high bandwidth and high security sites use openbsd for all sorts of things. i have found it to be the most stable, reliable and securist OS. the only thing open does not have is smp but with a server farm and load distribution there are no worries.

I just surfed into this relatively old thread here from another one.

I have to echo the thoughts of all the great things about BSD. I am a brand newbie and just installed it the other day and the first thing I noticed was how "clean" it was. You can tell this is a finely tuned, powerful OS. I am only 26 but have had experience with most UNIXs, Windows, Linux. I don't know what it is, this OS has some sort of positive Chi or something, it just "feels" right, even better than most UNIX.

It is like this. When you drive a car with fuel injection, you step on the gas and then there is a pause before the engine accelerates. With BSD I feel like a car without the fuel injection, I step on the gas and that engine responds with no wait!!! And I don't have to worry about replacing that damn fuel injection computer chip that costs $800!!!

With Linux I get the sense that it is unfinished and inefficient.
I have to spend much time to uncheck all the default installation options, and getting around in the directories can be challenging, there is so much stuff there! Last time I installed Red Hat, my hard drive kept spinning every minute, due to some background daemon that I did not want.

There is a list of the top 50 longest running websites out there, I can't remember where it is now, but almost every site was running FreeBSD. I think there were 8 that were not running BSD, and some of those 8 had some kind of BSD I've never heard of before. Interestingly, every single site on there was running Apache, except for one, which was using the Oracle weblistener, on FreeBSD.

Great thread guys, thanks for sharing.

You mean http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html?

That's the ticket!

And then...There are those who do not agree.

"OpenBSD believes in strong security. Our aspiration is to be NUMBER ONE in the industry for security (if we are not already there). Our open software development model permits us to take a more uncompromising view towards increased security than Sun, SGI, IBM, HP, or other vendors are able to. We can make changes the vendors would not make. Also, since OpenBSD is exported with cryptography, we are able to take cryptographic approaches towards fixing security problems."

Its not that I belive everything I read. But I don't ignore it either. Simply put.....OpenBSD does, does, does, and still does continuously concentrate on security. It is not misleading you or anyone else. I'm a fan, what can I say. Those guys work real hard on security issues. They impress me.

You won't in Debian either, or in any other GNU/Linux distribution which tries to comply with standards, such as Slackware.

The main problem is the users, not the distributors. It's in the Linux world that there are so many inexperienced users writing bad howtos and misguide other newbies. If you read the config.layout file of Apache for Redhat you would see that the distributor didn't do anything wrong.

freebsd,

You stated that OpenBSD isn't as stable or reliable as FreeBSD. I just want to know some examples or situations on how you came to decide this, just for personal knowledge. What server functions or situations did OpenBSD not perform that FreeBSD did? Also, how is a system considered stable or reliable, along with the integrity of it's data, if it's security is compromised? Thanks.

mrGarretson

I feel so much the same way. I don't know why but NetBSD just seems the right operating system for me :P I'm actually quite a noob to Unix but I'm learning quickly and I start to hate M$ even more (naah.. I'm not one of those hate-everything-about-bill-gates dudes..).

Anyway, thanks for this great thread, enlightened me a lot!

I've used FreeBSD for about 4 years now and Linux for about 3 years for a desktop development until I switched to OSX.

Anyway, there are few features in OBSD that makes it more desirable. One is its a Candian based project, meaning they get around the US export controls. I have now deployed my first sites now used OBSD 3.3 with DJBDNS and Qmail just to anty up the security.

Now I am deploying this on some online game servers where hacking/cracking have been issues in the past, so we wanted that extra anal security and the ablity to use more encryption schemes, especially on our boxes outside the United States. I have found that the boxes need to be rebooted more often than FreeBSD in the past, about every 20 days or so however they seem to be working fine in day-to-day operations.

The no SMP thing kinda stinks, but we are running FreeBSD 4.4 for Alpha on a quad 533 Alpha system as our database server quite happily with an uptime of 243 days currently and it is not connected to the Internet, only to the LAN so that no traffic gets to the box.

thanks guys for this precious thread...i think it's time for me to switch to BSD and leave RedHat
only one question...do you know if the major 3d and 2d apps can run on BSD?

Blender runs quite nicely under FreeBSD in either Linux emulation or native. You can find it @ www.blender3d.org/downloads/

In theory, it shouldn't be that hard to port the OSX version of Newtek's Lightwave 3d to work under FreeBSd since FreeBSD forms the core of OSX. At least the rendering engine to use on a render farm in background mode. I have heard before they have done such ports for larger studios with large Linux render farms. However this was discussed several years ago and since we deal with Autocad and 3D Studio Max we have to run NT I never followed up.

Maya also has a version for Red Hat. FreeBSD can run most RH programs at about 90%+ effeciency. I am not sure if it will work, but you wish to inquire at their forums.