Re: The case for FreeBSD

And what about linux 2.6 vs FreeBSD ?

On Sun, 2005-02-06 at 03:37 -0700, Scott Long wrote:
> All,
> 
> There has been a lot of recent talk and advocacy for NetBSD 2.0 from the
> NetBSD team.  Most recently there were a series of articles posted my
> Chritos Zoulas describing why NetBSD is relevant and why it's a better
> choice than either FreeBSD or OpenBSD.  While I strongly applaud the
> accomplishments of the NetBSD team and happily agree that NetBSD 2.0 is
> a strong step forward for them, I take a bit of exception to many of
> their claims and much of their criticisms of FreeBSD.
> 
> First of all, the last decade has been ripe with cooperation between all
> three of the major BSD projects.  Each projects gives and takes from the
> others, and there are a number of developers that have commit
> privileges to multiple BSD projects.  Drivers, infrastructure,
> bug fixes, and features readily flow between projects.  This benefits
> everyone, especially since it allows each group to focus on unique
> aspects of the system without having to be bogged down with other
> aspects.  As the old saying goes, FreeBSD is about performance, NetBSD
> is about platform portability, and OpenBSD is about security.
> 
> So is that still the case?  The NetBSD advocates are quick to claim that
> NetBSD 2.0 now beats FreeBSD in both performance and features.
> Fortunately, that just is not true.  There is a very long list of
> reasons why FreeBSD is an excellent operating system and an ideal choice
> for the enterprise and the desktop.  Briefly:
> 
> - Netgraph provides unparalleled flexibility to build complex network
> environments.  Netgraph modules are available for packet filtering,
> tunneling, redirection, inspection, and injection at any point in the
> network stack in a transparent and quick fashion.  Modules can be
> stacked together like bricks to meet just about any need.  Developing
> custom modules is also easy and very well documented.  There simply is
> not anything else in any other OS that is as flexible, easy to use, and
> full-featured as netgraph.
> 
> - GEOM provides to the storage stack what netgraph provides to the 
> network stack.  Transformations like mirroring, striping, spanning, and 
> encryption can be configured for any storage object from the filesystem 
> on up.  The vinum volume manager was recently converted to use GEOM and 
> now provides high-availability and high-reliability redundancy to any 
> storage object.  While NetBSD recently imported Vinum, it took the 
> older, less stable and less functional version that has since been 
> deprecated by its author in FreeBSD in favor of GEOM-Vinum.
> 
> - Advanced network features and protocols such as SACK, NFSv4,
> SYN-cache/SYN-cookies, compressed TIME_WAIT, and accept filters allow
> for fast, secure, and scalable network operations in an ever-increasing
> hostile and busy Internet.  Packet filters like IPFW and PF provide
> advanced filtering, shaping, and NAT sharing.  FreeBSD continues to run
> some of the busiest and most important network sites in the world with
> these technologies.
> 
> - Outstanding desktop and laptop support is provided by a number of
> technologies.  Nvidia develops and distributes native 3D drivers for its
> graphics cards for FreeBSD.  A team of FreeBSD developers works closely
> with engineers at Intel to provide the best ACPI power management
> support available in an open source operating system.  The Gnome and KDE
> desktop environments work flawlessly under FreeBSD thanks to another
> team of volunteers that work closely with those projects.
> 
> - The "Ports" collection provides one-step support for over 11,000 3rd
> party application.  Compile-time and run-time dependencies between
> applications and libraries are tracked and handled automatically,
> eliminating conflicts and incompatibilities.  Pre-compiled binaries are
> available for nearly every supported package for quick and easy
> installation.  This system continues to be one of the crown jewels of
> FreeBSD and has been copied by other OSes due to its overwhelming
> popularity.
> 
> - Many commercial vendors also support FreeBSD.  Companies like Intel,
> AMD, LSI, Adaptec, and 3Ware, just to name a few, provide development
> staffing, direct developer resources, and end-user support for many of
> their products.  The result is high quality drivers, applications, and
> platform support for a wide range of modern hardware.
> 
> - Continuous testing and QA is performed by a number of teams within the
> FreeBSD community.  Tests are runs every day that range from simple
> full-tree compile runs to intensive network, I/O, and computational
> stress tests.  Developers receive status emails and bug reports to help
> identify, track, and resolve defects.  While no amount of testing is
> perfect and bugs do slip through, the testing that exists vastly exceeds
> the efforts of most other open source projects and contributes towards
> every FreeBSD release being high quality.
> 
> NetBSD 2.0 is a significant step forward for NetBSD, but the large 
> amount of stagnation cannot be overlooked.  Their claim at high 
> portability should have been leveraged years ago to make them the leader 
> in embedded OSes.  It's great that NetBSD is committed to supporting 
> legacy architectures, but how does the effort to do so benefit modern 
> architectures or encourage wider use and more adoption of NetBSD?
> 
> And while NetBSD now supports SMP, it uses the same low-efficiency model 
> that FreeBSD used previously.  Scalability is significantly limited 
> because only one CPU at a time can access kernel services or drive 
> hardware devices.  The whole point of the 'SMPng' project for FreeBSD
> 5.x is to eliminate this problem and provide fine-grained parallelism in
> the kernel.  Converting the traditional BSD design to this model is not 
> trivial, but the work on this is very much alive, and each FreeBSD 5.x
> release is faster, more scalable, and more stable than the previous release.
> 
> All of the open source BSD's have a place, whether it's OpenBSD, NetBSD,
> or FreeBSD.  Each continues to excel at what they've shown to be good
> at, and I expect the sharing and goodwill between them to continue.  And
> in that vein, FreeBSD is still the 'silent workhorse' that runs
> corporate networks and powers advanced appliances.  However, it's time
> to drop the 'silent' part and start loudly advocating it.  FreeBSD is an
> outstanding OS, and developers and users should be proud of it.
> 
> Scott
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-current_at_freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-current-unsubscribe_at_freebsd.org"
-- 
Artūras Lapienė