Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 01:40:38 -0700 From: sean-freebsd-hackers@chittenden.org To: Andrew Hesford <ajh3@chmod.ath.cx> Cc: Jason Victor <sloppyj123@yahoo.com>, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: A novel idea.... Message-ID: <20010405014037.O8827@rand.tgd.net> In-Reply-To: <20010404160203.B17093@cec.wustl.edu>; from "ajh3@chmod.ath.cx" on Wed, Apr 04, 2001 at = 04:02:03PM References: <20010404121602.29670.qmail@web4304.mail.yahoo.com> <20010404160203.B17093@cec.wustl.edu>
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--CpBQqYjq/d0HQTAP Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Read #1, but skip the rest, it's opinion. BSD license, right? Without disagreeing with any of the previous points, let me step into evangelism mode here and borrow/add my own comments. Please take replies to the evangelism list, however (maybe post a variant of this on FreeBSD.org someplace). > In short, these are the reasons I prefer FreeBSD: 1) The file system is so much better than any Linux file system, ReiserFS included. Question: Is UFS a balanced btree? I don't think so, but I could be wrong. In either case, UFS is by far and away superior to ext[\d]. Check out soft-updates if you really want to be impressed. 2) The system isn't made by idiots. This is opinion. There are some bright people in the Linux crowd, but there are also some "hackers" that hack kludges instead of elegantly solving the problem. I've found, in my experience, that the FreeBSD development team seems to search out the elegant/correct solution as opposed to the quick solution. Idiots may be going a bit far and the start of a flame war (please avoid this, or let me know if you want a list for flames and I'll set one up, but please not here!). 3) The system's development is controlled, and the system is consistent because of that. This is one of the great benefits of a central development model/system. 4) FreeBSD never trashed my data. I 2nd this. I've lost many a GB of data to ext2 or other Linux FS's. UFS has been a rock for many years and many many many many servers, and a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I think I heard a rumor of lost data... but that was the HD spindle coming loose and shredding the platter (ie, not something the file system could do much about). 7) I hate RMS with a passion (remember, he's the Communist hypocrite who claims his software is Free). I shouldn't comment, so I won't. ::grin:: 8) For a firewall, ipfw blows the doors off of Linux's iptables/ipchains/ipmasq/whatever. If you want a stateful firewall, look at ipf (also very very very very very nice!!!) I'm waiting for ipf to get bridging support in the kernel, then you'd have a firewall that would surpass any of your wildest dreams (no MAC addresses on the Ethernet cards, while retaining ipf stateful filtering). 9) I prefer the file system hierarchy. Designed extremely well... try an upgrade with cvsup, make world, and mergemaster: you'll never want to administer anything else ever again (except possibly AIX, but that maybe hardware envy on my part). 10) Bug fixes and development happen much quicker. See tonight and the ntpd bug. The patch was submitted before, or less than one hour after it hit bugtraq. 11) None of those shitty SVR4 bootscripts and symlinks; no abundance of pointless runlevels. rc scripts are centralized and convenient, but this is largely SA opinion. RC scripts are extremely easy to update, tweak, IMHO. 13) The FreeBSD base system behaves better than any Linux base system (e.g., the stuff in /usr/bin and /bin). Agreed, and it runs very well on old klunker systems are great w/ FreeBSD (P100's make great bridge firewalls). A new Linux install, on the other hand, is typically a monolithic beast that's rather large (disk and ram). 15) Development is more conservative (e.g., I don't see a bunch of EXPERIMENTAL warnings in /sys/i386/conf/LINT, like I do in Linux kernels). If you want bleeding, on the other hand, check out -CURRENT, which gets messages every now and then that run along the lines of "I'm going to break such and such for a few hours while I apply some patches, hold on." At the same time... I have yet to have a problem with a morning compile of -CURRENT (I know, I'm lucky). 16) FreeBSD is lighter than Linux. I'll leave this in. See #13. 18) Ports. 'ya can't forget them. 19) Kernel configs are cake 20) Multi-staged booting. You don't need to change your MBR when you install a new kernel (or want to roll back to a different kernel). I think I've only been stuck high and dry w/o a bootable system twice in four years and well over 400+ servers. Just my ramblings. I don't evangelize much, but it strikes me as odd that some of this info isn't on the homepage of FreeBSD. FWIW -sc --=20 Sean Chittenden --CpBQqYjq/d0HQTAP Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Comment: Sean Chittenden <sean@chittenden.org> iEYEARECAAYFAjrML4UACgkQn09c7x7d+q2DYgCgx1+AkMdJQFQ4V3+6DVV+ah+a GDAAn1kdt+R82iKwZwUFqI/IIdz1anL2 =QOB2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --CpBQqYjq/d0HQTAP-- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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