From owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jul 15 18:52:57 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5CBC116A4CE for ; Thu, 15 Jul 2004 18:52:57 +0000 (GMT) Received: from tisys.org (thunderbridge.de [69.28.244.166]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 36E7343D1D for ; Thu, 15 Jul 2004 18:52:57 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from nils@tisys.org) Received: from wunder.tisys.org (dialin-pool2-215.wobline.de [62.176.227.215]) by tisys.org (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id i6FIqrx07201; Thu, 15 Jul 2004 11:52:53 -0700 Received: from wunder.tisys.org (wunder.tisys.org [192.168.0.1]) by wunder.tisys.org (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id i6FIqhhr001074; Thu, 15 Jul 2004 20:52:45 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from nils@tisys.org) From: Nils Holland Organization: Ti Systems To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 20:52:22 +0200 User-Agent: KMail/1.6.2 References: <4C88DC099E9AF945A6DA4D6FFA1865D17D742C@cdsx06.cder.fda.gov> In-Reply-To: <4C88DC099E9AF945A6DA4D6FFA1865D17D742C@cdsx06.cder.fda.gov> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-Id: <200407152052.22655.nils@tisys.org> cc: "Drews, Jonathan*" Subject: Re: FreeBSD Goals X-BeenThere: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: FreeBSD Evangelism List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 18:52:57 -0000 On Thursday 15 July 2004 19:09, Drews, Jonathan* wrote: > 1) A robust way to make PPP connections through userland-ppp. I think > FreeBSD's userland-ppp is better than what exists in Linux. I have used > userland ppp with serial, USB and PCMCIA modems. In all three cases it > worked very well. Well, although this might be a slight bit off-topic to the OP's question, l= et=20 me add that FreeBSD's user-ppp is one of the neatest things I've ever seen.= =20 I remember years back in some 6.x release of SuSE Linux when I was trying t= o=20 get my ppp connection working. If I remember correctly SuSE used wvdial bac= k=20 then, and I sat for hours in front of my box getting it do do dial-on-deman= d=20 as well as NAT the way I wanted it to. After some time I gave up on this=20 wvdial thing and turned to pppd directly, trying to get the stuff done "the= =20 old way". Something similiar happened when I tried to get a PPP connection= =20 working in SuSE Linux 8.0 - it just didn't want to work the way *I* wanted = it=20 to. Now, when first gave FreeBSD a spin in 2000 (actually, I installed my first= =20 =46reeBSD on January 1st 2000 - really ;-)), I was highly amazed that after= my=20 first attempt to customize /etc/ppp/ppp.conf to suit my needs, a ppp -nat=20 =2Dauto worked right away just the way I wanted. No problems= at=20 all. Why am I telling that? Well, before I came to FreeBSD, I assumed that stuff= =20 would be way more complicated there than it is on Linux. However, four and = a=20 half years later I absolutely cannot say that this is the case. I was=20 positively impressed how well and easy everything actually works. Additionally, I really wouldn't want to miss the occasional cvsupping, make= =20 {build,install}world and portupgrade procedure. I've never been able to=20 figure out a sane way to keep a SuSE system (for example) up-to-date withou= t=20 having stuff totally messed up after a year or so. With FreeBSD ... well,=20 keeping it up-to-date is another thing that works really great. I guess the= =20 version I'm running on this machine here was installed more than two years= =20 back and I've recently brought it to 4-STABLE (after the 4.10 release) and= =20 updated my KDE to 3.2.3 without much aford and trouble... =46rom the software side, I think it doesn't take long until one really=20 appreciates the "FreeBSD way" of doing things. The only thing that in my=20 opinion might be a strong point for Linux is hardware compatibility. After= =20 all, we must admit that Linux happens to support some stuff that FreeBSD=20 currently doesn't. This, however, is more of a point when you have to insta= ll=20 it on existing machines. If you know up front that you'll want to use=20 =46reeBSD, you will of course base your hardware buying decisions on that f= act.=20 And then, there shouldn't really be any problems... Just my $ .02. ;-) Greetings, Nils =2D-=20 eMail: nils@tisys.org Mobile / SMS: ++49-176-26179892 or ++49-176-26152833 Website: http://www.tisys.org