FreeBSD 6.2 review

[Valour]

It's been a long road to recovery, but after years of mediocre releases, and months of delays in the development process, FreeBSD is finally back on its feet with 6.2-RELEASE. Though it is an excellent operating system, even this latest version offers few or no competitive advantages over Solaris or the other BSDs in a server role, and can never hope to compete with commercial GNU/Linux distributions for desktop computers. FreeBSD 6.2 is what FreeBSD 5.0 needed to be, and for those who have already switched to other operating systems, there are few or no compelling reasons to go back.

FreeBSD 6.2 review

[beranger]

Jem, do you have any opinion of PC-BSD?

I usually don't favor derivatives over the original, however PC-BSD has some nice parts.

[Valour]

Originally Posted by beranger

Jem, do you have any opinion of PC-BSD?

I usually don't favor derivatives over the original, however PC-BSD has some nice parts.

I started to test PC-BSD last week, but ran into the same keyboard problems I had with FreeBSD. I didn't figure out how to solve that until I had already set it aside to concentrate on other things (like finishing the FreeBSD review!). I'm going to pick it up again this week and review it, now knowing how to work around the keyboard issue.

[DrkShdw]

Jem,

I recently read your "FreeBSD 6.2 REVIEW" article, and thought I'd offer some insight into the inner workings and mentality of FreeBSD. I'll address various points of contention in your article below:

#1) Keyboards not being addressed. I've never had a standard 101-key keyboard fail to be properly recognized. I suspect here that you have a non-standard keyboard, or possibly need a non-standard character set. Being that neither is hard to "fix" in a simple install, I seriously doubt this is a noteworthy point. And definitely not worth "knocking" an OS for.

#2) You seem to think the geometry warning is a bug, when in fact it is by design. It is telling you that your BIOS is reporting your geometry to be one thing, when it is in fact another. Again, this is by design, and typically gives you more useable disk space from the same hardware. FreeBSD is one of the few OS's that doesn't take BIOS at it's word, and probes the hardware directly. Usually to your benefit.

#3) You seem to have had difficulty configuring your wifi. Sadly, the truth is that no matter what OS you choose, knowing how to configure the wireless is paramount to actually using it. Every OS I've ever installed, has required configuring the wireless adapter because such things as ssid, wep key, channel, etc aren't "automatic" (at least, on a decently secured wireless setup) Again, this doesn't seem like a reason to knock an OS. The handbook goes into quite a detailed explanation of how to setup wireless, and as you noticed, you can read the ifconfig manpage for off line reading if you depend on your wireless as your sole source of networking.

#4) You seem to consider the FreeBSD configuration "unusually labor-intensive" when the reality is: this is a large difference between the linux and BSD mentalities. Not to say one is right or wrong; just different. Most linux employ a "install everything for convenience" mentality. BSD typically employs an "install only the essentials, and add what you need" mentality. While your personal preference might lean towards one of the philosophies, it is certainly no reason to dismiss an operating system. In an even poll, between linux and bsd users, you'll probably find the mentality is split fairly evenly.

#5) You want the kernel to have more flavors than just "GENERIC". While this is of course your right, it is by no means accurate to say the default kernel options are suitable for nothing more than FreeBSD development. As a long time FreeBSD user, I assure you I cannot remember the last time I was forced to recompile a kernel to have a usable system. In fact, the only times I've ever had to recompile a kernel, was to include support for some ancient (and probably rare) piece of hardware. Of course, new cutting edge hardware may need a recompile if you tend to backport drivers; but given the nontechnical scope of this article, I doubt that needs to be mentioned.

#6) Your entire article seems as though you are unfamiliar with FreeBSD as an OS, and the BSD mentality in general. While there is nothing wrong with ignorance about a particular subject; there is a problem of accountability and credibility. Your article is misinformed, and inaccurate. It smells of FUD. In my opinion, no journalist should publish something where he has no firsthand experience, without a technical review from peers who are competent and capable in the subject.

#7) With regards to your personal opinions about the ports tree. Surely as someone who claims to be familiar with the concept of open source and community collaboration, you can appreciate the fact that the ports tree is divided up into categories that the community in general finds suitable. If you disagree, that is again your choice. But realize you are more than welcome to submit your thoughts to the community, and try to foster support for a change.

#8) Finally we come to the JDK/JRE licensing issue. Do you actually think that a licensing restriction from a 3rd party vendor should reflect on the suitability of an OS for a particular operation? I mean lets face it. FreeBSD has no control over what licensing restrictions Sun wants to put over java. If you have complaints about those licensing restrictions, why not put those complaints directly to Sun, where it belongs?

All in all, I've got to say that I've read a couple of your articles, and have never felt the kind of hostility and ignorance portrayed in this particular article. You let personal opinions and irrelevant points cloud the final decision. Even worse, you published the article as if it were an authoritative review, when it is nothing more than misinformed FUD from an inexperienced user. It is akin to someone writing a review of a video card, but the only basis for his tests being a scrolling windows marquee screensaver. (and about as accurate)

[DrkShdw]

Valour,

I see you moved my response to the Hall of Shame thread (http://www.tjrforum.com/showthread.p...1363#post21363) and am curious as to why.

I feel I was very calm and collected in that reply, and took the time to explain things. I'm even willing to remove whatever part you consider to be "flaming" (and hence deeming it appropriate for hall of shame) if you'll move it back to this thread where it is appropriate. I feel you have done the BSD community in general a disservice with the review, and implore you to move my post back into it's deserving thread. I've reread my post, and I don't see any flames, nor personal attacks.. so I don't see any reason for it to have been moved. Again, if you feel otherwise, tell me specifically what parts are flames, and I'll remove them if you'll bring it back to this thread.

Thanks,

Drk


Edit: I see what you may have thought was a flame. the part about being ignorant. rest assured I didn't mean it in a derogatory sense. I'm ignorant of a lot of things. I simply meant it in the "doesn't have a full understanding" aspect. not the "you are a fool" meaning.

Edit2: Thanks for moving it back!

[Valour]

Originally Posted by DrkShdw

Valour,

I see you moved my response to the Hall of Shame thread (http://www.tjrforum.com/showthread.p...1363#post21363) and am curious as to why.

I feel I was very calm and collected in that reply, and took the time to explain things. I'm even willing to remove whatever part you consider to be "flaming" (and hence deeming it appropriate for hall of shame) if you'll move it back to this thread where it is appropriate. I feel you have done the BSD community in general a disservice with the review, and implore you to move my post back into it's deserving thread. I've reread my post, and I don't see any flames, nor personal attacks.. so I don't see any reason for it to have been moved. Again, if you feel otherwise, tell me specifically what parts are flames, and I'll remove them if you'll bring it back to this thread.

Thanks,

Drk

I want this forum to remain an at least mostly polite place where people can feel safe asking technical questions. It can't be that way if people insult one another when they should be addressing specific points or issues. Flamewars make people feel unsafe in a community, and they derail the discussion so that others can't participate. Please keep this in mind in future posts here. You are never forbidden to disagree, but if you come here calling me names and assaulting my credibility, then I can't abide that.

[Valour]

Originally Posted by DrkShdw

Jem,

I recently read your "FreeBSD 6.2 REVIEW" article, and thought I'd offer some insight into the inner workings and mentality of FreeBSD. I'll address various points of contention in your article below:

#1) Keyboards not being addressed. I've never had a standard 101-key keyboard fail to be properly recognized. I suspect here that you have a non-standard keyboard, or possibly need a non-standard character set. Being that neither is hard to "fix" in a simple install, I seriously doubt this is a noteworthy point. And definitely not worth "knocking" an OS for.

The keyboard is a Microsoft Wireless Laser Desktop 6000:

http://www.hardwareinreview.com/cms/content/view/42/

It works with every other OS I have tested, which at this point is dozens. It works with OpenBSD and NetBSD, myriad Linux distros, Solaris 10, and Windows. FreeBSD (and PC-BSD) is the only operating system that can't use it. That to me is the most embarrassing kind of bug. If the developers working on keyboard drivers need help from me to determine the cause, I'm more than willing to help.

#2) You seem to think the geometry warning is a bug, when in fact it is by design. It is telling you that your BIOS is reporting your geometry to be one thing, when it is in fact another. Again, this is by design, and typically gives you more useable disk space from the same hardware. FreeBSD is one of the few OS's that doesn't take BIOS at it's word, and probes the hardware directly. Usually to your benefit.

I was distantly aware of this fact when I wrote the review, but didn't mention it because I'd forgotten about it. In some FreeBSD releases, the wrong drive geometry was detected at this stage, and you had to put in dummy settings in order to get it to redetect properly. From a user perspective, the OS is telling me that it can't detect my drive parameters properly, prompting me to go searching for them. I do remember the bad old days of putting drive parameters into the BIOS manually; this reminds me of it. Since no other OS has this error message, it makes me think of it as a bug rather than a problem with the BIOS.

Approaching this error message with the attitude that it is "not my problem," is part of the problem. Users (sysadmins, hobbyists, BSD enthusaists, etc.) do not care who is causing the problem -- all they know is, FreeBSD has trouble with the drive geometry. Users do not want to hear reasons or excuses for why things aren't working properly; they just want it to work.

#3) You seem to have had difficulty configuring your wifi. Sadly, the truth is that no matter what OS you choose, knowing how to configure the wireless is paramount to actually using it. Every OS I've ever installed, has required configuring the wireless adapter because such things as ssid, wep key, channel, etc aren't "automatic" (at least, on a decently secured wireless setup) Again, this doesn't seem like a reason to knock an OS. The handbook goes into quite a detailed explanation of how to setup wireless, and as you noticed, you can read the ifconfig manpage for off line reading if you depend on your wireless as your sole source of networking.

The only difficulty I had was not knowing what the proper ifconfig parameters were off the top of my head. It probably would have helped to have the man page accessible at that time, but it wasn't that big an issue because I could resolve it later, after installation. I don't see how what I wrote at all attacks FreeBSD, but if you look at it from the perspective of a lot of other Unix-like OSes, it seems unnecessarily difficult to connect to a non-open access point during sysinstall. The Handbook is a decent resource, but it isn't available during sysinstall. You have to think in terms of what is available to you at the time of the difficulty, not at an earlier or later time, especially if you have to go to a Web site to find the information.

#4) You seem to consider the FreeBSD configuration "unusually labor-intensive" when the reality is: this is a large difference between the linux and BSD mentalities. Not to say one is right or wrong; just different. Most linux employ a "install everything for convenience" mentality. BSD typically employs an "install only the essentials, and add what you need" mentality. While your personal preference might lean towards one of the philosophies, it is certainly no reason to dismiss an operating system. In an even poll, between linux and bsd users, you'll probably find the mentality is split fairly evenly.

One thing I didn't mention in the review was that I am looking for a new server OS, and considering going back to FreeBSD. I used to run my desktop/workstation and server on FreeBSD a while ago. The way I am looking at it, it will take longer to recover a FreeBSD-based server from catastrophic failure because it takes too long to configure initially. OpenBSD, for instance, takes me less time because the documentation is a little better and more of what I need is included in the base system. I'm still considering FreeBSD, but I have to take that "catastrophic failure" scenario seriously. This assumes perfect backups of my data, which I am usually very good about maintaining. I want my config files to be there for me, and if enabling the services they control is a matter of security, I want to see them commented out with instructions on how to modify them for my situation. FreeBSD does not always do this, especially with important files like rc.conf.

I did not, at any time during this review, dismiss FreeBSD as irrelevant. The only OS I can recall doing that with is Fedora Core, and I firmly stand behind my claims of its irrelevance as a desktop OS.

#5) You want the kernel to have more flavors than just "GENERIC". While this is of course your right, it is by no means accurate to say the default kernel options are suitable for nothing more than FreeBSD development. As a long time FreeBSD user, I assure you I cannot remember the last time I was forced to recompile a kernel to have a usable system. In fact, the only times I've ever had to recompile a kernel, was to include support for some ancient (and probably rare) piece of hardware. Of course, new cutting edge hardware may need a recompile if you tend to backport drivers; but given the nontechnical scope of this article, I doubt that needs to be mentioned.

You have to modify the kernel (or load modules, which is somewhat less secure) to improve performance for MySQL, to add IPFW support and options, and to load drivers for desktop hardware -- that's all I can think of off the top of my head. Besides that, GENERIC includes a lot of built-in drivers for things that I don't have and can't use. While I might think it's fun to try to streamline my kernel config on my desktop system, I never ever want to have to screw with it on my server. I shouldn't have to make modifications to improve MySQL performance. If there were separate kernels tuned for specific OS uses, that would save me (and others) a lot of time.

#6) Your entire article seems as though you are unfamiliar with FreeBSD as an OS, and the BSD mentality in general. While there is nothing wrong with ignorance about a particular subject; there is a problem of accountability and credibility. Your article is misinformed, and inaccurate. It smells of FUD. In my opinion, no journalist should publish something where he has no firsthand experience, without a technical review from peers who are competent and capable in the subject.

I started with FreeBSD 5.0, and when 5.1 came out, I switched to it as my primary desktop OS. On my server at the time was FreeBSD 4.8. Life was good. Then FreeBSD 5.2 screwed a lot of things up that were not sufficiently fixed until 6.0, and I had to abandon it with 5.3. On my server, I had hosting problems not related to the OS and had to switch hosts, eventually getting a business cable connection with a static IP and hosting from my home, which is what I do now. Anyway, I have written about and used FreeBSD for several years. I secretly still consider myself a BSD guy even though I now use Linux on both my server and workstation.

I think you are taking the wrong approach to reading my review. I want FreeBSD to improve, to be a great operating system that perhaps I can return to someday after being forcibly exiled by the horrible 5.x series. I use, test, and write about a lot of operating systems, and would say that I am very aware of what the market currently offers. When you view FreeBSD from a global perspective, it is just catching up with its competitors in many respects. If it is to grow as an operating environment, it needs to define itself somehow. NetBSD is portable. OpenBSD is secure. FreeBSD is.... the Linux of the BSD world? It kind of does everything, as long as you know how to configure it. That's too vague for the current market. First the problems need to be fixed, then FreeBSD can establish itself as the elite Unix-derived operating system, or a superior Web or database server, or whatever else.

#7) With regards to your personal opinions about the ports tree. Surely as someone who claims to be familiar with the concept of open source and community collaboration, you can appreciate the fact that the ports tree is divided up into categories that the community in general finds suitable. If you disagree, that is again your choice. But realize you are more than welcome to submit your thoughts to the community, and try to foster support for a change.

I don't think the community finds the organization of the Ports tree maximally useful. On some displays, an ls of the /usr/ports directory does not fit on one screen. Since you can't scroll up in the default shell, you can't see the top line of programs. This is several problems in one -- the shell, the shell settings, the size of the Ports tree.

As the Ports tree grows, it is going to need to find a way to reorganize. It's already past the point at which somebody needs to look at it with a fresh perspective and question whether or not it has scaled as intended. I don't think the people who originally designed the Ports tree intended it to scale to 16,000 applications, and it shows.

Writing the review *IS* me submitting my thoughts to the community.

#8) Finally we come to the JDK/JRE licensing issue. Do you actually think that a licensing restriction from a 3rd party vendor should reflect on the suitability of an OS for a particular operation? I mean lets face it. FreeBSD has no control over what licensing restrictions Sun wants to put over java. If you have complaints about those licensing restrictions, why not put those complaints directly to Sun, where it belongs?

I guess I was misled as to what the FreeBSD Foundation's deal with Sun was over distribution of the JRE and JDK binaries. From a user perspective, it's only slightly easier to install these packages than it was before. I have been told that Java 6 is already licensed appropriately for redistribution, so this isn't much of an issue. There is a reason why this was last in the list of suggestions; it needed to be mentioned, though, becuase I am sure that more people than just me were convinced that this hassle had been removed by the FreeBSD Foundation's deal.

All in all, I've got to say that I've read a couple of your articles, and have never felt the kind of hostility and ignorance portrayed in this particular article. You let personal opinions and irrelevant points cloud the final decision. Even worse, you published the article as if it were an authoritative review, when it is nothing more than misinformed FUD from an inexperienced user. It is akin to someone writing a review of a video card, but the only basis for his tests being a scrolling windows marquee screensaver. (and about as accurate)

Any hostility is entirely imagined. I challenge you to point out one hostile remark in the article. A review *IS* a personal opinion of a product or service; it is not supposed to be objective. The objective part is under the "introduction to" heading in my reviews. The rest of it is what I find as a system administrator and user, and what I would like to see changed in the future. There is no "final decision," as you imply. You incorrectly assume that people will be put off by this review. What you don't realize is, the only people who will not be encouraged to try FreeBSD because of this review are those who would have found the same faults with it that I did -- think about it.

I have never written anything designed to foster fear, uncertainty, and doubt. There is no reason to fear FreeBSD; if anyone is uncertain as to its capabilites, they are free to download and try it themselves -- I've already told them that it's a capable OS; and the only doubt I raised was with regard to whether FreeBSD is a better or more appropriate choice than its competitors. At this time, I do not think that under most circumstances FreeBSD is better as a network server than a modern server-oriented Linux distro, or OpenBSD, or even Solaris in some cases. Instead of leaving it at that, I do what I always do in my reviews -- I laid out in very specific language what I feel is keeping the operating system from success. That is really all I can do.

[DrkShdw]

The keyboard is a Microsoft Wireless Laser Desktop 6000:

Ok, as I said. it's not a standard 101-keyboard. Additionally you apparently are using the USB to PS/2 adapter for some reason. You stated there is a problem with it being recognized in PS2 mode, but it works if plugged in as USB. Sadly, you never state what the actual problem is, so at this point I don't feel this is a prudent topic for debate. I can't discuss something when I'm only handed a part of the facts.

I was distantly aware of this fact when I wrote the review, but didn't mention it because I'd forgotten about it. In some FreeBSD releases, the wrong drive geometry was detected at this stage, and you had to put in dummy settings in order to get it to redetect properly. From a user perspective, the OS is telling me that it can't detect my drive parameters properly, prompting me to go searching for them. I do remember the bad old days of putting drive parameters into the BIOS manually; this reminds me of it. Since no other OS has this error message, it makes me think of it as a bug rather than a problem with the BIOS.

Approaching this error message with the attitude that it is "not my problem," is part of the problem. Users (sysadmins, hobbyists, BSD enthusaists, etc.) do not care who is causing the problem -- all they know is, FreeBSD has trouble with the drive geometry. Users do not want to hear reasons or excuses for why things aren't working properly; they just want it to work.

Ahh, you don't like this feature, so therefore it is a bug. I'm not sure I can agree with that. What would you suggest? Get rid of it altogether and not inform the user of the problem? Not use the correct geometry? Use the correct geometry and not disclose the relevant information? I don't see any of these as viable options. It's one informational screen when you install the OS. Some of us actually respect the fact that our OS lets us know what is going on, without just blindly doing it for us.

The only difficulty I had was not knowing what the proper ifconfig parameters were off the top of my head. It probably would have helped to have the man page accessible at that time, but it wasn't that big an issue because I could resolve it later, after installation. I don't see how what I wrote at all attacks FreeBSD, but if you look at it from the perspective of a lot of other Unix-like OSes, it seems unnecessarily difficult to connect to a non-open access point during sysinstall. The Handbook is a decent resource, but it isn't available during sysinstall. You have to think in terms of what is available to you at the time of the difficulty, not at an earlier or later time, especially if you have to go to a Web site to find the information.

This could be a good point, if it weren't true in *every OS on the planet* No matter what OS you use, you have to know *how* to configure the wifi in order to *use* the wifi. We finally agree on something, the handbook is a great resource (a point you didn't make in your article: FreeBSD has probably some of the best documentation available in the opensource OS community. In my opinion, a good reason to choose FreeBSD.) However, as I stated in my rebuttal above, the ifconfig manpage is available if you happen to be offline during the configuration.

One thing I didn't mention in the review was that I am looking for a new server OS, and considering going back to FreeBSD. I used to run my desktop/workstation and server on FreeBSD a while ago. The way I am looking at it, it will take longer to recover a FreeBSD-based server from catastrophic failure because it takes too long to configure initially. OpenBSD, for instance, takes me less time because the documentation is a little better and more of what I need is included in the base system. I'm still considering FreeBSD, but I have to take that "catastrophic failure" scenario seriously. This assumes perfect backups of my data, which I am usually very good about maintaining. I want my config files to be there for me, and if enabling the services they control is a matter of security, I want to see them commented out with instructions on how to modify them for my situation. FreeBSD does not always do this, especially with important files like rc.conf.

Again, you could make a decent case with this argument, if it were accurate. But there seems to be a reoccurig theme: It's not. In the event of a catastrophic failure (as in, your raid didn't work for some reason, the machine was caught in a flood/fire/earthquake, etc) then the config files that you are complaining about should be *part of your backups* You bring the new server up, restore your backups (including the custom configs) and reboot. Voila. you have a working machine (just like every other OS on the planet) But see, again, you miss a wonderful tool (and possibly another reason to choose FreeBSD) the geom-based software raid utilities! using such tools as gmirror, gstripe, and friends. The likelyhood of a "catastrophic" failure drops exponentially, even on low cost desktop machines. you get full raid1 (or whatever raid level you prefer) functionailty at a much lower total cost of ownership. Also, coming in 7.0: gjournal.

You have to modify the kernel (or load modules, which is somewhat less secure) to improve performance for MySQL, to add IPFW support and options, and to load drivers for desktop hardware -- that's all I can think of off the top of my head. Besides that, GENERIC includes a lot of built-in drivers for things that I don't have and can't use. While I might think it's fun to try to streamline my kernel config on my desktop system, I never ever want to have to screw with it on my server. I shouldn't have to make modifications to improve MySQL performance. If there were separate kernels tuned for specific OS uses, that would save me (and others) a lot of time.

Please tell me you typed this in the heat of the moment, and don't actually believe this is a valid point? To put ANY database server into production without tweaking and optimizing both the database server AND the underlying operating system (ANY operating system) is not only laughable, but again goes to show that your complaints with FreeBSD aren't really with FreeBSD so much as it is with your lack of experience. There isn't an OS available *anywhere* that is suitable out of the box for use as a high performance database server. Period.

I think you are taking the wrong approach to reading my review. I want FreeBSD to improve, to be a great operating system that perhaps I can return to someday after being forcibly exiled by the horrible 5.x series. I use, test, and write about a lot of operating systems, and would say that I am very aware of what the market currently offers. When you view FreeBSD from a global perspective, it is just catching up with its competitors in many respects. If it is to grow as an operating environment, it needs to define itself somehow. NetBSD is portable. OpenBSD is secure. FreeBSD is.... the Linux of the BSD world? It kind of does everything, as long as you know how to configure it. That's too vague for the current market. First the problems need to be fixed, then FreeBSD can establish itself as the elite Unix-derived operating system, or a superior Web or database server, or whatever else.

I almost don't know where to begin here. The logic side of my brain is yelling at me to hold back, because this is pure rubbish. The creative side of my brain is coming up with all kinds of crazy and wonderful remarks that would probably color this entire discussion in a bad light. Suffice it to say: I successfully ran an ISP throughout the entire 2.2.x, 3.x, 4.x, 5.x, and now the 6.x branches, all without this so-called horrible brokeness of the 5.x series. You know why? The same reason you'd be able to do it with *any OS on the planet* (I sure hope you notice a theme here..) Before you upgrade, you test. If the tests aren't favorable, you decide on another course of action. In a production environment (yes, even your desktop) upgrading just to upgrade is asking for trouble. There should be a purpose in upgrading; be it new functionality, bugs being fixed, whatever.. but first and formost: you test the upgrade. Again, naivety is gleaming through this entire "journalistic" piece.

Writing the review *IS* me submitting my thoughts to the community.

I certainly hope you don't take this the wrong way. Take it as it is meant. counstructive criticism, and NOT a flamefest. The community is going to read such a review, and chalk it up to exactly what it is. An inexperienced newcomer to the OS complaining about that which he does not understand. It will be viewed with about as much weight as the new user posting to the freebsd-questions@freebsd.org list complaining that he can't get N program to work the same way it works in Y operating system. My basic point here is: You need to have a fair amount of experience in something, before you can write a halfway acceptable "review" of it. At least, if you want to call yourself a real journalist. Again, not meant as a flame. Take it for what it's worth.

I guess I was misled as to what the FreeBSD Foundation's deal with Sun was over distribution of the JRE and JDK binaries. From a user perspective, it's only slightly easier to install these packages than it was before. I have been told that Java 6 is already licensed appropriately for redistribution, so this isn't much of an issue. There is a reason why this was last in the list of suggestions; it needed to be mentioned, though, becuase I am sure that more people than just me were convinced that this hassle had been removed by the FreeBSD Foundation's deal.

You being misinformed does not equate to a problem or flaw in the OS you are reviewing. It seems as though I have to point out that every OS on the planet has to take an extra step to accept the license before installing java. Java is not easy to install on ANY OS. And not to get off-topic, Sun went for lawsuits against one OS vendor who tried to include it with the operating system. In light of such actions, I think it's not only prudent, but necessary for other OS vendors to make sure that licensing is accepted by the enduser prior to installation. Again, your complaints should be with Sun. Not an OS vendor.

A review *IS* a personal opinion of a product or service; it is not supposed to be objective.

While on the outside, I agree with this statement; it needs to be taken into context. A review *IS* a personal opinion of a product formed by an experienced, knowledgable, and capable individual. I would not make the decision to purchase a new vehicle, based on the review of a car stereo manufacturer. It's apples and oranges. I would however, probably let a clear, knowledgable, and *fair* review from "Car & Driver" influence me. Just because you have "used" FreeBSD, does not mean you *know* or even *understand* FreeBSD. Sadly, in this review it's quite clear you don't. Not meant to be offensive, but it is the truth. I can't stress this enough: You NEED to have a basic working knowledge of a product before you sound clueful in writing a review.

At this time, I do not think that under most circumstances FreeBSD is better as a network server than a modern server-oriented Linux distro, or OpenBSD, or even Solaris in some cases.

I'll leave most of my thoughts here to the "my OS is better than your OS" zealots. Suffice it to say, it's obvious you haven't looked at the networking stacks between BSD and Linux, or Linux wouldn't have been included in the above statement. OpenBSD is a very capable OS, but you have to wonder how much benefit you are actually getting by using crypto to such an extent. To the extent it negatively impacts performance benchmarks of various services. While your statement above is extremely vague, I can think of a number of scenarios where OpenBSD would not be as efficient, or even recommended for use (especially over FreeBSD) Solaris on the other hand, is probably the only OS mentioned above *worth* mentioning, considering your only example throughout this discussion was for a database server.

Ultimately, it is your right and your perogative if you want to spread misinformation. In the past, you seem to actually try to write articles that at least resemble reality. I'm not sure what slipped here. I'm only asking you to take a step back and reconsider your "points" during the review. Some of the points you make, are inaccurate at the least; Outright wrong at the most. I have no problem if you want to write a scathing review and have some technical merit and reasons as to why. However, basing an OS over things like the shell, color output, terminal settings, and etc only shows the reader how inexperienced the writer is. FreeBSD employs a "minimal" install. You add on what you need. if csh isn't decent in your opinion, please! choose any of the other 10,000 shells and variants available. Why? Because that is what FreeBSD is about. "Free" is not only a pricetag, it's a mindset. It's a lack of restrictions and constraints within which the user has to operate. Submerse yourself in such a mindset, and then come back in six months. Reread this review. Your mind will grow from it's current infancy to full maturity. Without bounds, without restriction, without the stranglehold of the "everything and the kitchen sink" mindset of certain other OS's! Only then, will you come to understand and appreciate the minimalistic approach.

- Drk

[Valour]

I think perhaps you have not been properly educated in the practice of reading reviews. I will refer you to this guide that I wrote on the matter: http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/290/

[DrkShdw]

Originally Posted by Valour

I will refer you to this guide that I wrote on the matter: http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/290/

I'm not sure if you directed me to that link because you have nothing to debunk my comments above, or if it's because you've had people in the past rebute your methodology with justifciation.

perhaps you have not been properly educated

Holy, pot calling the kettle black much? Regardless, I'll make this my last post as I feel I'm wasting my time. I'm reminded of the "arguing on the internet" quip that became popular a little while back.

- Drk