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FreeBSD 8.2 Released
meta coder writes with word of the release of FreeBSD 8.2: "This is the third release from the 8-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 8.1 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights includes improvements in Xen support and various bugfixes."
Version 15 of ZFS seems to have a better support for quotas and other accounting stuff: http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Community+Group+zfs/15
Where does Linux fail where BSD succeeds?
For some people it's the licensing (BSD vs GPL). For others it is the coherence of the system (how many places hide an IP address in Red Hat?). For others, it is a question of style (BSD vs AT&T type Unix). For some, its functionality (I always liked the way the BSD _______ command worked). From some, it's the simple Joy of BSD, or the McKusick - take your pick. For some, it could be the approach taken to a particular problem taken by one of the BSDs, such as the continuous OpenBSD code audits. For some it might be a particular platform maintained as part of the main distribution. For some, it may be the continuing BSD innovations. For some it might be the counter-culture aspect BSD in the Linux world. Plenty more reasons that people could have, including: Linux - 5 letters, BSD - 3 letters. Do the math.
You could say that the only truly popular Unix desktop is Apple's Macintosh running OS X.
Mac OS X: What is BSD?
What's The Greatest Software Ever Written?
OpenBSD FreeBSD NetBSD PC BSD
FreeBSD Mall BSD Magazine
To each his own.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I'll bite. ZFS was designed with a different train of thought when it came to the file system and storing files. ZFS lets one do everything from just formatting a single drive with one partition to doing a RAID array with three parity stripes, file system compression, file system encryption, block level deduplication, with file cloning and/or snapshotting to another server with ZFS. The ability to setup an array, selectively apply features (encryption, compression, dedup, etc.) to different directories, mount directories elsewhere in the OS hierarchy, clone, do snapshots, etc. is so easy and only needs a handful of commands.
I use to be a fanboy when it came to hardware RAID with a dedicated RISC processor and RAM. The risk with hardware RAID is if the controller fails, one will probably be in a world of hurt. I didn't like software RAID due to CPU overhead and the damn thing not always working. ZFS has changed that for me. Not only do I not notice CPU overhead, recovery is so easy. I can install an OS on a HDD and then configure three new drives with RAID-Z (ZFS' RAID5 implementation). From there I can replace the OS HDD and start with a fresh OS install; a couple of commands that don't include the paths to the RAIDed HDDs and any backed up config file and my array is back online. All I need are the drives and nothing else. I could even loose a drive and still be fine.
The other beauty is not needing exactly the same drives. Say I have three 1.5TB drives in a RAID-Z and one of the drives fails. Perhaps I can't buy another 1.5TB drive or the 2TB model is cheaper. I can replace the drive with a 2TB unit and ZFS will rebuild the lost 1.5TB. I can either use that 0.5TB for something else or expand the array when the other two drives are replaced with larger drives.
Sure booting from ZFS in FreeBSD isn't perfect, but I don't see a real need for my OS to reside on a drive with ZFS. However when it comes to my storage arrays, ZFS is invaluable.
There's so much to ZFS that considering it just another file system like EXT or UFS is an ignorant assessment. I recommend doing a some research before bashing something you don't understand.