Farewell FreeBSD!

matoatlantis said:
I consider high end storage to be HP P9500 and arrays similar to this one, not the custom built storage.

So I guess storage is to be shared most likely via NFS then ?
Click to expand...

It's been accessed only via Internet (VPN in most cases) via ssh. It is only purpose is to receive differential snapshots. In some cases the data are move manually via a USB "cartridge" service.
 
gkontos said:
And YES for those who still wonder, I am not leaving FreeBSD.
Click to expand...

Well, I since this thread suddenly became the mockery of the topic "Farewell FreeBSD" :e I'll go one step further, and use it to hail FreeBSD with praise.

I am a physics student, I use my computer for numerical simulations that can put my system under a lot of pressure. On Linux, I hated that (on most distributions) the system was configured so that it took up so much of the precious RAM. Gentoo, IMO the most similar to FreeBSD philosophy, is making the most simple tasks complicated for no particular reason (because f*** you, that's why), from installation to keeping ports up to date. Sabayon is too easy and isn't a challenge. Slackware is fun, but then after a while lack of automation becomes an every day annoyance.

You can build FreeBSD from scratch to suit your needs, but it's not trying to overcomplicate unnecessary things. Also it's so clear and transparent what's going on in the system. For example /etc/ttys and /rc.conf have so far sufficed for most boot-time options. In Linux you are getting lost in the sea of configure files.

Another important fact is that FreeBSD has superb documentation -- the FreeBSD Handbook is plainly amazing. Not to mention the friendly and welcoming community on forums and mailing lists alike.

With FreeBSD you're free to hack it and fine tune it for yourself. Source code and everything is there with simple # make fetch. You can fine-tune your system as you want it and it will never let you down. With various Linux distributions it's not the same, each is quite different.

I love the fact that the base system and ports are separate. Some people hate it, but I must say I love it, because with this I can use ports as a playground, learn, discover ... So far these first months have truly been an addicting experience.

And now to return to my original topic -- numerical simulations. I managed to make a minimal system, which is blazingly fast and uses only ~60MB when idle with Xorg & co. To set it up was quite easy. For the first time in my life I truly feel in control of my computer and its resources and not the other way around.

There are some minuses to FreeBSD too, but I don't really care about them right now.
 
Should of have used Oracle Linux.


gkontos said:
I suppose that the title speaks for itself.

During the past last moth I have been involved in a major operation dealing with ~40 CentOS boxes that had to be moved to 12. Being a FreeBSD addict, junky, gave me the opportunity to take the job and complete it. Yes, the strong foundations are there. Yes, if you manage many FreeBSD boxes you can deal with anything.

Seriously, I became involved with something that I had abandoned 10 years ago. I became so involved that I could not believe how much this had evolved. It made me wonder though..

How can I deploy so fast and so easy so many CentOS boxes and have them also get their packages centrally updated all within hours?

I will not even mention the word "virtualization". I think it is a foreign word in the BSD world.
Click to expand...
 
jozze said:
Another important fact is that FreeBSD has superb documentation -- the FreeBSD Handbook is plainly amazing. Not to mention the friendly and welcoming community on forums and mailing lists alike.
Click to expand...

It's good, but there are analogues. The freely available Redhat documentation is similarly excellent, and the Arch Linux wiki remains the documentation standard for a complex OS, in my opinion. It's simply superb.

FreeBSD's great strength is it achieves what many Linux distributions set out to - KISS. I'm in two worlds; I support a small number of [size=-1][Free?][/size]BSD servers at work, have [size=-1][Free?][/size]BSD on this laptop (boy, was that a lot of work) but I'm mainly a RHEL admin, and run Arch on most of my home computers.

It's about strengths and weaknesses.

I would add that I am not entirely sure where Linux is going at the moment, and I like the methodical, calm approach of [size=-1][Free?][/size]BSD. I'd like to see better hardware support ([size=-1][Free?][/size]BSD on the desktop always gives me deja vu about Debian circa 2005) but [size=-1][Free?][/size]BSD has always been about process rather than outcome, for me. I don't mind the slightly plodding pace.
 
sulman said:
The freely available Redhat documentation is similarly excellent, and the Arch Linux wiki remains the documentation standard for a complex OS, in my opinion.
Click to expand...
And Redhat is different from Arch which is different from Ubuntu which is different from...
sulman said:
I would add that I am not entirely sure where Linux is going at the moment, and I like the methodical, calm approach of [size=-1][Free?][/size]BSD.
Click to expand...
And THAT is why FreeBSD will continue to be superior in every way.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top