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FreeBSD has a very stable core distribution with an up-tp-date rolling release "ports" system for additional software. It's great for these purposes. It also ha

by enduser 13y ago

FreeBSD has a very stable core distribution with an up-tp-date rolling release "ports" system for additional software. It's great for these purposes. It also has excellent documentation, stable native ZFS, and compatibility with Linux binaries.

olgeni 13y ago
Also, customized packages sets with poudriere/tinderbox. No way I'm going to hunt around for 3rd party "repos" because Debian ships with rabbitmq 1.8.1 or Erlang R14A (note the "A").
SwellJoe 13y ago
I've found FreeBSD to be extremely fragile, with regard to updates. It can easily become unusable if you initially install from binary packages and then move some things to ports builds (library dependencies aren't handled appropriately, as far as I can tell). System upgrades (from 8 to 9, for instance) are also scarier and more prone to failure than any Linux distro I've used. While I have a lot of respect for FreeBSD's developers, I'd be unwilling to deploy it for production on servers; this is at least partially my own inexperience with the system...but I'm simply afraid to trust a system that makes it so easy for me to shoot myself in the foot. Even with my own very limited use, I've never had a FreeBSD system that didn't end up utterly trashed eventually (in such a state that I chose to reinstall rather than try to fix it, because I had no idea where to start on fixing it; I'm sure a more experienced FreeBSD user would have been more capable of getting the system working again). I can't imagine what would happen if I were using it heavily, without first spending months or years learning how to avoid the pitfalls I run into so readily. I had a similar level of experience with Debian (which is to say, not much), but never had a problem keeping it running. My experience is much higher on Red Hat based distros (I've managed CentOS and RHEL servers, and before that Red Hat Linux servers, for almost two decades), so I can't really compare it to FreeBSD, but I know our customers rarely run into OS issues on RHEL or CentOS, and we have a lot of them. CentOS represents more than half of our user base.
- rgbrenner 13y ago
  I used fbsd for 15+ years, 10+ years in production... and found it to be very stable. I never experienced the problem you mentioned with packages... but packages are frozen at release.. so they're never updated... so you end up having to use ports for everything anyway. I always disliked having to compile every single package from source. If you have a large number of systems, it's worth setting up a build server and creating your own packages. Major upgrades ARE scarier than on Linux. They have a fairly new binary upgrade tool that I never used.. upgrades using build world generally work ok.. just update your source tree, wait a few days for anyone to report bugs on the mailing list, and then run build world. You can't do this over ssh though.. you need concole access. Again, if you have a large number of machines, setting up a build server is worth it. With that said though... FBSD has been slowly losing out in my company. 10 years ago, I used it everywhere... then fbsd neglected the desktop (not enough resources in the project), and Linux got so far ahead, that I was pretty much forced to switch to Linux on every workstation. Then a few years ago, found fbsd wasn't stable when virtualized.. ran a custom build on Xen for a while.. but eventually moved to Debian.. so it's now about 90% Linux.

by enduser 13y ago

olgeni 13y ago

Also, customized packages sets with poudriere/tinderbox. No way I'm going to hunt around for 3rd party "repos" because Debian ships with rabbitmq 1.8.1 or Erlang R14A (note the "A").

SwellJoe 13y ago

I've found FreeBSD to be extremely fragile, with regard to updates. It can easily become unusable if you initially install from binary packages and then move some things to ports builds (library dependencies aren't handled appropriately, as far as I can tell). System upgrades (from 8 to 9, for instance) are also scarier and more prone to failure than any Linux distro I've used. While I have a lot of respect for FreeBSD's developers, I'd be unwilling to deploy it for production on servers; this is at least partially my own inexperience with the system...but I'm simply afraid to trust a system that makes it so easy for me to shoot myself in the foot. Even with my own very limited use, I've never had a FreeBSD system that didn't end up utterly trashed eventually (in such a state that I chose to reinstall rather than try to fix it, because I had no idea where to start on fixing it; I'm sure a more experienced FreeBSD user would have been more capable of getting the system working again). I can't imagine what would happen if I were using it heavily, without first spending months or years learning how to avoid the pitfalls I run into so readily. I had a similar level of experience with Debian (which is to say, not much), but never had a problem keeping it running. My experience is much higher on Red Hat based distros (I've managed CentOS and RHEL servers, and before that Red Hat Linux servers, for almost two decades), so I can't really compare it to FreeBSD, but I know our customers rarely run into OS issues on RHEL or CentOS, and we have a lot of them. CentOS represents more than half of our user base.

rgbrenner 13y ago
I used fbsd for 15+ years, 10+ years in production... and found it to be very stable. I never experienced the problem you mentioned with packages... but packages are frozen at release.. so they're never updated... so you end up having to use ports for everything anyway. I always disliked having to compile every single package from source. If you have a large number of systems, it's worth setting up a build server and creating your own packages. Major upgrades ARE scarier than on Linux. They have a fairly new binary upgrade tool that I never used.. upgrades using build world generally work ok.. just update your source tree, wait a few days for anyone to report bugs on the mailing list, and then run build world. You can't do this over ssh though.. you need concole access. Again, if you have a large number of machines, setting up a build server is worth it. With that said though... FBSD has been slowly losing out in my company. 10 years ago, I used it everywhere... then fbsd neglected the desktop (not enough resources in the project), and Linux got so far ahead, that I was pretty much forced to switch to Linux on every workstation. Then a few years ago, found fbsd wasn't stable when virtualized.. ran a custom build on Xen for a while.. but eventually moved to Debian.. so it's now about 90% Linux.