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[Kent Stewart]

On Tuesday 11 May 2004 12:04 pm, Jason Stewart wrote:
> On 11/05/04 11:52 -0400, wendy wrote:
>
> > the installation actually is very difficult and so this
> > "Superior" OS is not for 99.9% computer users
>
> The installation is difficult compared to what? A desktop OS? FreeBSD
> shines as a server OS, and while it does a fine job on the desktop,
> try installing and administrating other server OSes, and you'll see
> just how easy FreeBSD is. You'll definitely worry much less about the
> latest worm taking out your servers.
>
> Comparing this OS to the one that "99.9%" people use us an apples to
> oranges comparison.
>

One of the features that I really find to be valuable is the upgrade 
capabilities. For example, have an old motherboard with a P-II 400 die 
and then try to upgrade the system with Windows. You have a number of 
hoops that you have to jump through before it will run. You may even 
have to reinstall and lose your setup. You also stand a chance that you 
will have to get a new key before XP will run. Telephone calls to 
Microsoft have never been immediate from my experience.

With FreeBSD, you move your periphrials such as floppies, CD-ROM, and 
HDs into a system with a new mobo and cpu and it will boot and run like 
nothing had happened. The only time I had a problem was when a SMP 
system died and I went to a single cpu environment. The SMP hardware 
wasn't there and it paniced but no big deal, I booted to the GENERIC 
kernel, changed my kernel config to a single cpu, built and installed 
it and rebooted. Within minutes I was back to running my specialized 
kernel. Changing from a single processor to a SMP system is relatively 
easy on both system. With Windows NT/XP you have to find your CDs to 
make the change and by the time you do that, I have been running 
FreeBSD for minutes :).

I have seen a bug on FreeBSD and sent an email to the maintainer. They 
got rid of the bug and the fix was available to the world on the next 
on the hour updates of the public mirrors. The last time I submitted a 
bug to Microsoft, I had to wait for 98se to come out. The response time 
comparisons were months different.

Kent

-- 
Kent Stewart
Richland, WA

http://users.owt.com/kstewart/index.html