Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 00:35:13 -0400 From: "Andy Harrison" <aharrison@gmail.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: What's so compelling about FreeBSD? Message-ID: <a22ff2940610152135y574f7935kc2ff14300653df5@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <af8b40ce0610151526h6aba1785mb77eb2a76e69fdfa@mail.gmail.com> References: <af8b40ce0610151526h6aba1785mb77eb2a76e69fdfa@mail.gmail.com>
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On 10/15/06, William Tracy <afishionado@gmail.com> wrote: > > > So, basically, I'm asking you guys to wow me. :-) Show me how FreeBSD > can outdo Linux. Make me never want to go back. There's already been plenty of answers with which I agree. The bulk of my professional life was with Solaris, with some linux and BSD/OS in the mix. Then I changed jobs and needed to be a FreeBSD guy. It was so easy to run and manage, I felt like I was cheating. Where was the struggling to satisfy every dependency? Where was the need to hunt down the latest version of a binary package or rpm? Where were the unresolved symbol errors while upgrading kernels? Eventually I became adept at making my own rpm's, so less waiting for updated rpm's while still retaining the maintainability of package installs. And then there was FreeBSD. A new version of apache comes out, someone tweaked a couple of files in the ports tree, my scheduled cvsup picks it up automatically anyway, so I'm left with nothing more than running 'portupgrade'. Or (far less frequently) a new version of something comes out, but it's less popular so the port maintainer hasn't gotten around to tweaking the ports fast enough for me. I just tweak the files myself because the process is far simpler than creating custom rpm's, then let it rip. I like how files are very consistently found in logical places, like /usr/local/etc for config files, /usr/local/var for stuff like databases, /usr/local/www for web stuff, /usr/local/bin for binaries. It's not a constant quest wondering where stuff got installed and what data files are where, and not having to type paths to run programs in curious locations. that sort of thing used to become especially annoying with programs that like to install into a directory where the name included the version number, /usr/local/foo-1.1.1/ or something. Like I said before, running FreeBSD is so easy it's almost like cheating. -- Andy Harrison
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