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FreeBSD, Stealthy Open Source Project

Posted by michael on from the can't-get-no-respect dept.

zam4ever writes "Sean Michael Kerner has written an article on how FreeBSD has become a Stealth-Growth Open Source Project with various reasons outlined for FreeBSD's growth over the last years."

6 of 291 comments (clear)

  1. High load: Linux/BSD? by LaserLyte · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Quandt also contends that FreeBSD is not currently on the same level as Linux when it comes to supporting heavy enterprise workloads...

    I was almost certain this paragraph was going to end praising FreeBSD over Linux, and I was slightly suprised to see this was not the case. FreeBSD's ability to cope with extremely high workloads is often cited as one of the reasons to use it over Linux in such environments.

    However, I don't remember ever seeing any evidence of this, except that FreeBSD has proven itself time and time again on some of the largest, busiest internet sites. It'd be interesting to see how the two compared side-by-side in a real production environment. Perhaps someone can convince Yahoo to switch to Linux for a day :)

    </ BSD advocacy >

    1. Re:High load: Linux/BSD? by geminidomino · · Score: 5, Interesting

      However, I don't remember ever seeing any evidence of this, except that FreeBSD has proven itself time and time again on some of the largest, busiest internet sites.

      It's purely anecdotal, but back in 2002, the webhosting company I was admining for had two boxes dedicated to slashcode sites. They were brand new with the latest updates for FreeBSD 4-STABLE(I think) on one and RedHat on the other. We hosted some high-profile sites, and these poor servers took a MASSIVE beating. The RedHat box went casters-up when the system load hit somewhere around 7. FreeBSD stayed up (admittedly, slow as hell) even when the load peaked at 22. I switched sides then and have been a loyal Daemon worshipper ever since. ;)

    2. Re:High load: Linux/BSD? by Alioth · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I host a site for a pilot's union. Around bid time they all hammer a heavily DB oriented application with many, many reloads.

      The load average on the system regularly gets over 50 during the last hour or so of the bid period.

      It runs RedHat Enterprise Server. It's not fallen over once.

      --
      Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
  2. Odd... by dotslashconfig · · Score: 4, Interesting

    FreeBSD is used on over 95 of the top 100 servers (greatest average uptime). FreeBSD is tested and true on the server-side in a way few linux distrobutions can claim. The closest any distro has come to actually matching reliability with FreeBSD is Debian. But even then, FreeBSD is still light-years ahead. I'm not really sure what inspired this article, but a simple google search reveals that BSD is the route most major corporations are taking with servers. So while I do appreciate GNU/GPL support, try to be less blatant. ;)

    1. Re:Odd... by molarmass192 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Your Google search is wrong. I have never seen or dealt with a FreeBSD box at use at any of the Global 500 corp data centers I've visited / worked with. The breakdown is more like there's a whole lot of Solaris, a whole lot of Win2K (groans), a fair amount of AIX and HP-UX, and occasionally Linux (mostly RHEL) in use at major corporations. Understand that this isn't a reflection of how good FreeBSD is, it's simply that major corporations appear to be more interested in support contracts super human uptime guarantees than the quality of the OS in place. Granted, I haven't been to every data center on the planet, nor been told what every box is running (some of these places football field size) , but I've been to A LOT throughout North America and Europe over the years I've been doing this gig. The types of places I'd expect to find FreeBSD are the smaller, less bureaucratic data centers and ISPs where there are a handful of guys with free reign of the place.

      --

      Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
  3. It's FreeBSD's biggest advantage by swb · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I was a big RedHat/Linux user until about 5 or so years ago. I got sick of:

    * The constantly changing startup environment and filesystem layout. I started typing "evolving", but that implies it was small changes for the better, not wholesale changes which weren't always for the worse.

    * Kernel upgrades became a big nuisance, requiring me to track down a whole bunch of userland applications that needed updating for the kernel. to be usable (psutils, for one). Why the kernel and key kernel applications aren't packaged together is beyond me.

    * The installer became more and more piggish, adding X11 elements even when I specifically told it not to. The portions were hard to remove, since they almost always were snared in RPM dependencies.

    * RPM itself wasn't bad, but what DID drive me nuts about binary packages was the total absence of build documentation. So many UNIX applications have significant build-time options which are never documented in RPM. SRPM helped, but it was still an annoyance.

    FreeBSD just seems how it *should* be. The filesystem and startup environment isn't static, but doesn't make wholesale changes. The entire system is rebuildable from source, applications are transparently and easily buildable from source thanks to ports.

    FreeBSD's installer could be improved, though. sysinstall needs to be reinvented and perhaps have picobsd merged into it. I'd love to be able to install a variable-sized FreeBSD for firewall or appliance-type installs.