[OpenSER-Devel] GNU/kFreeBSD support

[Norman Brandinger]

Hi,

One guys real world example:

I used to use FreeBSD exclusively for all the servers at my ISP.  They 
were very solid and uptime's of 3 or 4 or more years is not uncommon.  
When tuned properly they are also very fast.  One comment is that their 
"packaged" software repositories are not "bleeding edge".  This isn't a 
problem for a production system that doesn't need to have the latest 
software apps.

The problems I encountered as I started building my VoIP service was 
that much of the software is "leading edge" and most developers use 
Linux as a base rather than FreeBSD.  This caused me to spend more time 
to "tweak" the software for FreeBSD than I liked.  As a result, I moved 
the VoIP systems over to Linux (Debian) from FreeBSD.

Years ago, Linux distro's were very insecure "out of the box" and needed 
to be locked down before even connecting them to the Net.  One evening I 
installed a Linux distro and left it connected to the Net (with zero 
local changes other than IP address).  The next morning, a rootkit had 
already been installed...that was a few years ago, and thankfully things 
have changed.

We still have a couple of FreeBSD production servers, that are many 
years old.  When the need arises to make any substantial changes to them 
we will convert them over to Linux.  Now, how to ditch the m$ boxes !!!

Regards,
Norm


Julien BLACHE wrote:
> Klaus Darilion <klaus.mailinglists at pernau.at> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
>   
>> I've never touched other unix system than Linux before. What could be
>> a reason to use a FreeBsd instead of the Linux kernel?
>>     
>
> OpenSource is all about choice and diversity, isn't it ? :)
>
> I have no strong opinion for or against non-Linux kernels, but Linux
> is my kernel of choice, just like you it seems. So I'm probably not
> the best person to answer this question. (not to mention the last
> thing I want is starting a Linux vs. BSD troll here)
>
> My primary interest in GNU/kFreeBSD years ago was curiosity, getting
> my packages to build there to help bootstrap the port and raise the
> number of Debian packages built for this new port. Now that I have
> some more time again, I'm slowly going back to a number of projects
> including this one ;)
>
> It's an interesting project, it raises a lot of interesting technical
> challenges, and as far as portability is concerned it's a very good
> thing.
>
> JB.
>
>