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FreeBSD September-October 2002 Development Status

Posted by timothy on from the behind-the-scenes dept.

mbadolato writes "A new status report documenting the latest goings on in FreeBSD has been published. There's some good information n there about the features for the upcoming 5.0 release. BTW, there happens to be a lot of stuff going in there for something that is, according to the trolls, dead! ;-)"

3 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Are there still hardcore BSD-ers? by Anonymous+Cowrad · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah, there are a few of us.

    I won't run anything but FreeBSD/OpenBSD on my servers, and I won't run anything but OS X on my desktops. I've never found a task that I couldn't get done elegantly with those operating systems.

    I don't think of the Linux people as bleeding edge maniacs, I completely understand their motives for choosing Linux. It's a neat OS, and if I were going to build a pc-based desktop, I might look into it, too.

    What it comes down to for me is that BSD works for me. Linux might be equally capable of meeting my server needs, but I've yet to see a compelling reason to switch. If anyone has any good reasons, I'd love to hear them. Is there a Linux version of Apple's "Switch" campaign? :P

    I'm in no position to evaluate current Linux distributions as I haven't tinkered with one in a couple years.

    --

    --
    pants ahoy
  2. Re:Are there still hardcore BSD-ers? by zulux · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I use, delpoy and love OpenBSD and FreeBSD both. I view both *BSD's (and NetBSD) as slightly more reliable than Linux. But increasingly enough, I'm starting to find the diferences between the free Unix varients almost irelevent - it's the user-space applications that I care most about:

    Example: If FreeBSD dropped off the face of the eart and I could only use Linux - i'd just shrug. But if PostgreSQL or Samba died, then I'd really be pissed.

    Even more weird, increasingly, I'm finding the diferences between Windows and Unix almost becoming moot - If they both have Mozilla, Emacs and can run OpenOffice then, increasingly, Windows is becoming irrelevent to any of my needs. It's just another OS.

    --

    Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.

  3. Re:Are there still hardcore BSD-ers? by mrneutron · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've run linux since Slackware & the beta kernel days. That era ended (professionally) when I had to support production internet servers (Squid http proxy, sendmail gateways, and apache web servers) running the Linux 2.4 kernel (AKA the 'kernel of pain').

    Lots of unstability, phantom escalating tcp timeouts, and high-traffic production boxes would crash or become unstable after 1-3 weeks of use, requiring a reboot. I upgraded the 2.4 kernel multiple times, but never resolved all problems.

    I'm still a fan, but Linux really stumbled with the 2.4 kernel. There's always a balance between features and stability, and 2.4 got that balance wrong. Very wrong.

    I switched all production servers to FreeBSD. One of the best decisions of my career. 10 months later: 100% uptime. Literally. Same hardware, same applications, same network, more users, heavier usage. Rock !@#$-ing solid.