Page 2 - The Holy War

as far as im aware & have seen on multiple web sites, the bsd's are some of the slowest performace wise, but one of the most stable, is this true? (the slow bit!) i got the impression that it was better in "nearly" every sense than linux. i say nearly because some like it as a server and not as a desktop.
linux and windows are meant to be the fastest.


1benchmark

i know it was a network app test but net apps aren't totally alien to normal apps when it comes to assigning, dealing with and running them.... + the fact that BSD seems to get its popularity as a server seems to stress the fact more that networking should be 1 of its stronger areas......
but the point im making is that BSD only has stability and its ports collections. is there any super patches or tweaks that can be applied to it that makes it kick ***?

LMAO

that flash animation was just freakin fantastic... is that yours? man, that was just wonderful.

It depends on the task that you need. Even on the benchmarks on the site you linked to, FreeBSD still outperformed Linux on file read/write (which for many of my uses is what I need and I can't afford Solaris)

I generally deploy high use apps, such as online broswer-based games in my case, on FreeBSD because of its memory handling and stablity. If you look at the netcraft uptime reports, an overwhelming number are running some form of BSD. Although you have to call into question what are the servers doing. Certainly one hosting a few static webpages are going to be more stable than that of one that runs a dyamic site with an average of 500 users online at any one time.

My biggest complaint with Linux is the community can't seem to make up their mind if Linux is a Desktop OS or Server OS. Right now it servers both okay, but neither one is great. FreeBSD on the otherhand is designed as a server OS and is best suited to that task. Another small linux complaint is that the lack of standardization of the distros causes a few annoying problems. They may all use more or less the same kernal, but one example is that some place PERL in /usr/bin/perl and others /usr/bin/local/perl. Its those minor things that really annoy me. I know, one can reinstall or link PERL, but that is just one more annoying task that costs time and money.

I have to admit that we have actully stopped running Linux except for the two Sun Cobalt RAQ servers we have (great machines I might add). .

As for running as a desktop OS, FreeBSD can do that too, but its called Mac OS X> I will admit performance in Graphics apps took a nose dive from OS9 to X. Why is hard to say. It could be crappy programing on Adobe's and Newtek's part, OSX still is not as finely tuned as Apple would like (I have heard that 10.3 will addressing some these speed issues), or it could mean that the Apple needs a new chip under the hood (the next series of processors will hopefully be faster).

With that said, our apps still crash about 3x's less than previously on Windows Boxes, which is critical when doing large rendering projects in LightWave(imagine an animation that takes 20 hours to render and the machine crashing in the middle of it), and I can go three to four weeks without rebooting my Powerbook and the only time I reboot my G4 tower is after installing updates once a week.

This is an off-topic question :-) forgive me: do you prefer FreeBSD or RH Linux for a home web server? (or any better os)

For a home based server, I use SuSE. I never could get FreeBSD to run on the bastardized hardware set up I have on my old tower and 60% of the hardware didn't have drivers. SuSE Linux packages their distro with an insane amount of drivers and their GUI install process makes it easy for those new to Linux.

I am in the middle of setting up my own server at home (compiling PHP as i write this) and find that FreeBSD is an awesome OS. I used to have DeadRat (aka RedHat) running on the box but now have switched to FreeBSD 4.7. I think the system is cleaner and runs quite a bit faster in booting and general usage than DeadRat.

Oh and my server is an old IBM 300GL Desktop machine. Pentium 200 MMX system with 32mb ram, runs quite smooth. The onboard network card is a Crystal Lan and FreeBSD has support for it no worries.

a.koepke: is yours an application server or a web server ?

It will be hosting a website with my CV and portfolio on it. It will also be handling all of my email that i receive.

Thanks for all the information and opinions. It's always good to see others' point of view when you are asking yourself the same questions.

I run several FreeBSD web/mysql servers on the internet, and they have been very stable and secure for about 2 years now (FreeBSD4.3 is the oldest of them).

I tend to agree with most of the comments in this thread; I love the "cleanness" and stability of FreeBSD. I have one machine in my office whose uptime is 357 days (and counting). My company recently joined the linux feeding frenzy by supporting SuSE. Now, don't get me wrong, I really like suse linux. As I write this, though, I am trying FreeBSD 4.8 on my laptop 'cause I wasn't thrilled with the performance of suse on it, and I am determined to move away from M$ even if it kills me.

I guess the best comment I read was, "Choose the best OS for the situation." Like others have said, if I want a stable, reliable server, I will use FreeBSD every time.

I prefer FreeBSD. Having used FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, as well as several Linux distros, I make sure that my network is running FreeBSD. Why, you ask? Because it's eay to use, easy to install and administer, and I don't have to do a whole lot to get it nice and secure. My biggest problem with Linux (RedHat in particular) is that it's got security issues up the wazzoo straight out of the box. The BSDs have a good 1/10 of the issues that you have to deal with on Linux. As for the GUI, I couldn't care less. I use X and twm to give me graphical internet browsing and multiple terminals at once, other than that I don't use GUIs.

So in summary, I go for stability and security over snazzy interfaces and bleeding edge updates. FreeBSD turns me on more than the other Unixes, so there.

Hrmmmmmmmzzzzzzz

This bewilders me. I cannot understand why I always hear that FreeBSD is not a desktop OS - just use it as a srever. I work for a medium sized business (around 100 employee's most of the time) and a person who is know as Talon came along and installed FreeBSD servers to handle our mail, content filtering, firewall and a gateway for our office network. I owe that man for life. I have begun the crossover from Windows to FreeBSD, not only has it saved us literally thousands in software (in need of a firewall when Talon came along), but I became very interested and set myself up a workstation out of parts I scrounged from the bin. Best damn machine in the office. I have LAN browsing across our windows network, Open Office 1.1 opens MS docs of all kinds happilly (including office xp) I log into the Windows server, and can perform alomost any function that any other employee can (mostly I have a bunch of programs that make my windows collegues jealous). I say almost because I have not been able to cover Autocad YET. All this set up by someone new to BSD and thought that unix lived in harems. If a newbie can set it up, and I have some really unproductive eye candy on this desktop with complete functionallity, what's so hard about it, and why doesn't it make a great desktop ? - one more major point, community support is fantastic, everyone WANTS to help!
I do not wish to start a war or anything, just can't understand what is so hard about a FreeBSD desktop/workstation/home machine. I have found that
FREEBSD ROX MY SOX (Bye Bill)

u should look into RAT, apparently it runs X apps from the console, and allows u to change consoles using the F keys are normal

Just thought I would post an update.

Running FreeBSD 5.1 now on a AMD K6/2 400

Have just finished installing PHP 4.3.4RC1. So easy to upgrade and keep the machine up-to-date.