From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Oct 8 08:22:57 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id IAA02097 for hackers-outgoing; Tue, 8 Oct 1996 08:22:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from night.xinside.com (patrick@night.xinside.com [199.164.187.35]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id IAA02089 for ; Tue, 8 Oct 1996 08:22:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from patrick@localhost) by night.xinside.com (8.6.12/8.6.9) id JAA16711; Tue, 8 Oct 1996 09:21:50 -0600 Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1996 09:21:50 -0600 From: Patrick Giagnocavo Message-Id: <199610081521.JAA16711@night.xinside.com> To: kuku@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de CC: freebsd-hackers@freefall.freebsd.org In-reply-to: <199610081357.OAA17428@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de> (message from Christoph Kukulies on Tue, 8 Oct 1996 14:57:40 +0100) Subject: Re: apache under FreeBSD better than under Linux? Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Hello Chris, Just off the top of my head, here are a few that come to mind: 1: Better out of the box security, including emails to root that will show you whether anything is setuid/gid etc. Very nice easy to scan when you come in in the morning. 2: Buffer overflows: Linux has historically had problems with this, where security could be compromised in one sense or another by overflowing a buffer (similar to the problems seen with NCSA httpd v1.3 if I recall correctly). FreeBSD (to my knowledge) has not had these problems. More buffer overflow problems have been discovered recently on Linux, which would seem to indicate that there are probably other, undiscovered ones still lurking about in the OS. Could make a person a little squeamish if running a machine connected to the Net. 3: Better stability - under heavy load. Important if the WWW server gets hit a lot, or if he wants to do additional things with the machine, like Samba/netatalk. 4: Better stability - in regards to libc et al. Under linux there are multiple libc's each with their own peculiar behavior. For instance, libc 5.2.18 seems best for Netscape 3.0; but, if you want to run Xemacs you need to have 5.3.something (or else recompile). You KNOW that under a particular version of FBSD that a particular libc is going to be there. thus 'works with 2.1' means it. Very nice to know when trying to track down an 'unexpected behavior' :-) in a program. 5: Better networking code = better WWW server performance. Perhaps with the newer Linux networking stuff this is no longer the case. 6: Controlled release cycle a real advantage when you go to upgrade. Look at the pain going from a.out to ELF on Linux; see the note on libc's above. Which OS is easier to upgrade, and more likely to be stable after an upgrade? Yes, go ahead, use some FUD ;-) Please don't get me wrong, I still like Linux, but the above are I think valid reasons. Cordially, --Patrick (speaking for myself only)