> That was back when hardware support, both in Linux and in FreeBSD (and in most other free operating systems) was very flaky, and FreeBSD was the only one that

> That was back when hardware support, both in Linux and in FreeBSD (and in most other free operating systems) was very flaky, and FreeBSD was the only one that I could get my network card and RAID controller to reliably work on. Same here. I was a student working as a part-time employee in a IT-department and whenever machines were deemed too expensive to fix, I would harvest the parts which still seemed to be good... which I eventually managed to assembly into a full working server. And on a student-economy, a free server like that was a big deal. There was only one catch: I couldn't get it to boot. Neither Linux nor Windows. So the department Unix-guru asked me why I didn't try FreeBSD, something he was somewhat fond of. "It's like Linux, but different" he said. I was a bit confused, but thought it was worth a shot, and what do you know? FreeBSD not only booted the machine, but kept it running nicely for over half a decade. In effect, FreeBSD gave me a free server when I could afford hardware the least. That's not something you forget :) I later learned that the mainboard had a serious chipset-failure (which was probably caused Linux and Windows to fail), but FreeBSD seemingly managed to work around that and just kept on running. As far as I can recall, this most has been the most stable server I've ever run. These days I have a hard time letting go of the impression that FreeBSD is made of better stuff than other OSes, and has been engineered from the core and up to be more reliable. Despite that I almost exclusively use Linux now (because it's more plug'n'play but IMO more flaky). I still have fond feelings for FreeBSD in my heart though. I wish I had time to setup a working FreeBSD laptop, but with small 2 kids and a wife... Those times seems long gone. Anyhow: Hopefully FreeBSD will still be around when I have time for that. Here's to another 25 years!