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Seeking Commerical Telephone Support for FreeBSD?

Posted by Cliff on from the looking-for-critical-assistance dept.

Dave H3 asks: " Does anyone know of any U.S. based firms that provide up to 24/7 telephone support for FreeBSD? I've been tasked with submitting a business proposal to list at least three potential, established, vendors. Other than Windriver I've not had much luck. I've checked several FreeBSD sites, including FreeBSD.org, to no avail."

23 comments

  1. http://www.freebsd.org/commercial/consulting.html by akharon · · Score: 4, Informative

    Did you look here? I'd find it hard to believe that there aren't three there that would be willing to draft up something for phone support, especially that many of them consult network/server installations.

  2. Depends by mjoconnor81 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How much are you talking? I'm sure that alot of us would for the right price.

    --
    Pseudocode is code to demonstrate a concept, not designed to be run. Like certain M$ software.
  3. the manual says it all by JDizzy · · Score: 5, Informative

    To ask for support, you must have to do something up-and beyond most situations? Typically the manual is the best source.... read it like its your new bible, as it really does touch most mainline issues. I even use the manual to teach linux newbies how to do their typical tasks, rather than wishing them luck searching for a good linux-howto style article.

    Secondly, the phone support bussiness is not very profitable at this point in time due to the economic situation in the USA. The people qualified to handle the support phones cost more than your average tech support people do, as they need special experience, and trainning.

    The best solution for you would be to read the manual, and if you have something really freakish, then you should get a consultant under contract. Typically you can setup phone support service for a fee, however, I duno if your gonna get 24x7. I guess it depends on how much your willing to spend. =)

    Take a look here at the freebsd website. There are freebsd consultants floating around, you might say...... you might consider advertising in the mailling lsits for some of the more choice people willing to do the work... you never know.

    good luck

    --
    It isn't a lie if you belive it.
  4. Can one make a good living as a FreeBSD guy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What's it take to be able to earn one's living as a FreeBSD person? How much experience? What kind of money do the jobs or positions pay?

    What kind of work would likely fill one's day?

    REALLY want to know. I'm learning FreeBSD with that in mind.

    Thanks!!

    1. Re:Can one make a good living as a FreeBSD guy? by akharon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There aren't that many jobs out there where you can learn one thing and say you can earn a living off of it. Not NT, not Cisco, not anything. Of course, there are exceptions, but you really need to learn half a dozen things to be a well-rounded admin, and that's what's truely valuable to a company, because then you can adapt to changes in technology much easier.

    2. Re:Can one make a good living as a FreeBSD guy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ok,

      So what are the half dozen (or however many) things one would have to learn to be employable?

      Thanks!

    3. Re:Can one make a good living as a FreeBSD guy? by rycamor · · Score: 4, Informative

      Well, what do most companies that use FreeBSD do with it?

      Most of them are ISP's, since FreeBSD is, if anything, even a better bet than Linux for stable, cheap hosting. Many of the rest will probably be in some related field, such as web application development and rental, or large-scale web services. (Yahoo uses FreeBSD extensively)

      Other popular uses for FreeBSD include firewalling and network storage.

      So, learn (in this order):

      1. Unix admin chores; how to install, customize, re-compile FreeBSD, and how to maintain it daily, weekly, monthly
      2. Networking; TCP/IP, DNS, NAT Firewalling, NFS, FTP, Samba (for windows network storage)
      3. Web server install/admin; how to set up Apache, usually with Perl/CGI or mod_perl, and often with PHP/MySQL/PostgreSQL. How to do virtual domain hosting.
      4. Shell scripting, in at least Bash and Perl, cron jobs, to automate administrative tasks
      5. Webserver scripting; Perl and PHP both are best, Java/JSP is not as popular
      6. Open source database setup (MySQL at least, Postgres a plus), SQL design and administration goes hand-in-hand with sebserver scripting
      7. At least some HTML, so you can handle the output of webserver scripting tasks.

      There is a LOT more that can be done with FreeBSD (I haven't even mentioned serious programming, clustering, data warehousing, etc...), but this seems to be the bulk of it. If you can handle at least a couple rows on that list, you can get a job. If you are good at more than 50% of that list, you should be in demand, and if you are profficient in 90% and more, you should be turning down employers, and worth at least $55,000 and UP.

      Of course, most of this is not specific to FreeBSD, and can apply to Linux as well.

  5. *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    Netcraft Confirms: *BSD is dying

    Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when last month IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in th recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    *BSD is dying

    1. Re:*BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know if this post is a joke, flame bait or serious and on target.

      For the sake on folks thinking of choosing FreeBSD and OpenBSD to learn *nix, PLEASE REPLY with your thoughts on the future of FreeBSD. Is *BSD dying? Am I wasting my time to learn it if I want a job or to run a home server or to develop software for some companies server "back end"?

      Please, honest and sincere replies. I'm a newbie and don't know enough to judge for myself. I'm a programmer getting into *nix -- but not sure which one. Please help. Thank you!!

    2. Re:*BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This 'bsd is dying' troll has been going on for 2 years.

      But read WHAT the poster says about 'the latest netcraft' and then read netcraft....and find out the 'latest netcraft' is actually almost a year ago.

      If the troll can't post factual info, then why should you believe the troll?

      Personally, don't bother getting involved with BSD's and stick with windows. Leaves more work for me is all.

    3. Re:*BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hell no! Especially FreeBSD and OpenBSD! FreeBSD 5.0 is really gonna turn some heads. Linux is more of a toy OS, and everyone's in it for the money from making distro's. Just the BSD license in of itself has sooo much more potential to make $$$! Think about it!

    4. Re:*BSD is dying by Noxxus · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last [sysadminmag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

      Erm, yeah. Since you're so fond of Netcraft's stats maybe you should take a look at Netcraft's Top 50 Uptimes and see which OS is heavily represented! :P

    5. Re:*BSD is dying by akharon · · Score: 1

      Please don't feed the trolls. :)

    6. Re:*BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why not? It's not like they don't compromise 75% of the posts on the BSD threads.

      It's not BSD wich is dying; it's BSD *POSTERS* wich are dying...at an alarming rate.

    7. Re:*BSD is dying by Carlos+Laviola · · Score: 1

      Yeah, like Debian is in it for the money.

    8. Re:*BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why do the trolls find it so amusing to write BSD is dying posts under every BSD story? If you're going to do that, at least come up with some new "material" instead of just recycling previous BSD is dying posts.

    9. Re:*BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      haha.. you can tell this guy is just spouting with accurate facts and intelligence... just by the fact that he can't even come up with anything *NEW*. All he can do is keep cutting and pasting the same message in over and over in replies to the BSD posts.

      A real genius, I'll tell ya. Cut and Paste... whats that, something most kids can do by 3rd Grade these days? Shows *his* mental capabilities.

    10. Re:*BSD is dying by poiuyt23 · · Score: 1

      BSD is on the verge of becoming the largest installed base of *nix on the planet with the adoption of it by Apple for the base of OS X. Beyond that, as a self professed newbie, even if BSD were to disappear 2 months from now, the skills you will learn from BSD should be easily transferable.

    11. Re:*BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They're not after money. They're just idiots.

    12. Re:*BSD is dying by Arandir · · Score: 3, Insightful

      For the sake on folks thinking of choosing FreeBSD and OpenBSD to learn *nix, PLEASE REPLY with your thoughts on the future of FreeBSD.

      What systems are going to be popular five, ten, twenty years from now? Nobody knows. So don't learn a specific system. Learn the general concepts and skills that WILL be useful in five, ten or twenty years.

      My opinion is that as long as there are Unix and unix-like operating systems, there will be a BSD.

      Am I wasting my time to learn it if I want a job or to run a home server or to develop software for some companies server "back end"?

      If I had to hire one systems administrator and there were two applicants, one who knew only Linux and the other who know both Linux and FreeBSD, I would choose the second one every time. The last kind of person I would want to hire is someone who only knew one way of doing things.

      So learn both systems. They're free. In the process you will discover which one you prefer. Make that one your primary system. But keep the other around on another partition. Having immediate access to more than one operating system is invaluable when it comes to software development. As for myself, I'm using both Slackware and FreeBSD, and after two years I still can't decide between the two.

      I'm a programmer getting into *nix -- but not sure which one.

      So don't get into "one" *nix, get into *nix itself. Generalists always have an advantage over specialists in times of change. And as history teaches, change is constant :-)

      --
      A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
  6. Why would you want to run BSD on your telephone? by duffbeer703 · · Score: 2

    At my office we have a Nortel Meridian system, and it works just fine with it's proprietary system. Why would I want to install BSD on it 24/7??

    --
    Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
  7. Linuxcare supports FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    According to Greg Lehey, Linuxcare also provides FreeBSD support.

  8. Penis time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    PLEASE?
    SUCK
    8======D
    onto
    my
    PENIS?

    ...I'll give you lots of money.