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What advantages FreeBSD offers over Linux so that for the next installation on EC2 one would consider running it instead of Linux? (question is not rhetorical)

• cperciva 15y ago
  I don't think there's anything specific to EC2; so your question just reduces to "why FreeBSD rather than Linux?" There's a lot of differences which are more matters of taste than anything else: FreeBSD's ports system, the rc.d startup system, the fact that the kernel and userland are developed in tandem rather than independently, the presence of a central SVN repository, et cetera. I like all of these, but I know there are Linux people who prefer the "Linux approach" for each of these. Some things which I've heard even hardened Linuxites saying make them tempted to try FreeBSD, however: ZFS, DTrace, LLVM/clang (now building the entire FreeBSD base system), virtualized networking, Capsicum. Also new in 9.0, but not getting much attention yet, is journaled soft-updates -- essentially the "best of both worlds", using soft-updates for the 99% of operations which soft-updates can handle quickly and safely, and journaling the remaining 1% to ensure that a dirty fsck is fast.
  • clarkevans 15y ago
    Colin, Thank you so much for your wonderful work. I'd add that "jails" are a very cool, under appreciated feature of FreeBSD. It is especially useful for packaging up and delivering applications as a single unit. While it may seem that they are in competition to virtual machines, I think of them as being a complement.
  • antirez 15y ago
    Thank you, ZFS, DTrace, LLVM/clang, ... are the kind of stuff I was looking for to understand the non subjective advantages.
• buster 15y ago
  From what i was told, it's often considered to be more stable, more secure and faster as Linux as server OS. Slightly on topic: http://blog.whatsapp.com/index.php/2011/09/one-million/ http://blog.whatsapp.com/index.php/2011/09/one-million/ 1 Mio established TCP connections on a single machine is pretty good.