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I've used FreeBSD continuously (as a server, no GUI) since 1995, with some Linux use here and there, and I find myself leaning toward Linux lately, mainly becau
by fjarlq 16y ago
I've used FreeBSD continuously (as a server, no GUI) since 1995, with some Linux use here and there, and I find myself leaning toward Linux lately, mainly because Ubuntu has done a lot of great work recently to support Amazon EC2. FreeBSD has fallen behind on Amazon EC2 support for some reason.
I was initially attracted to FreeBSD because I had first learned Unix on a BSD system in the late 80s, and the more restrictive licensing terms of Linux made it difficult for my company to use it.
So unless you have a specific need like ZFS or liberal licensing terms, I can't think of a reason for a long-time user of Linux to switch to FreeBSD. Similarly, unless you have a specific need like Amazon EC2, I can't think of a compelling reason for a long-time FreeBSD user to switch to Linux. Both are good, solid systems with some minor individual strengths and weaknesses.
- danielrhodes 16y agoI think FreeBSD boxes are generally used as perimeter boxes by most sys admins because of their reliability, therefore compatibility with virtualized environments is not a priority.
- sophacles 16y agoWe once had some sort of explosion regarding mail-servers at a company I worked for. I have no idea, what the actual problem was, other than too much incoming mail combined with some settings goof. The mail server software ended up eating memory and cpu cycles like crazy. This was on a FreeBSD box. I remember the sysadmin saying "You know, linux would have just OOM-killed it at this point, but its a BSD box so it's doing the right damn thing". Ever since then I've carried around this idea that BSD is stable to a fault :)
- carson 16y agoNow that EC2 has support for PV-Grub you can almost run FreeBSD there. It would seem the insistence of FreeBSD to be booted from the loader is going to make it hard to run there.