When Unix Stops Being Fun

[Glenn Sieb]

bsdfsse said the following on 10/3/2004 3:12 AM:

> Ironically, I'm switching to FreeBSD because I'm already tired.  My 
> bones are aching from years of abuse.  I'm tired of..

<MuchSnippage>

Hear Hear!!

> ..of Linux distributions with fatal flaws.  I went on a giant search 
> to pick the perfect Linux distro, and I ended up selecting FreeBSD.  
> Every single distro had some aspect I didn't like.

I started with FreeBSD in the Fall of 2000, when I started at Lumeta. I 
loved it so much that when I built my personal server, I used it (and 
Wing's now running on 4.10-STABLE, and when 5.3 is out of BETA I'll most 
likely upgrade it...). I had played with RedHat (3 or 4.. I still have 
the CDs somewhere!), I had used Unix System V (on a Unix PC (AT&T PC 
7300) no less!) in the early 90's, but had ended up working with Windows 
mostly at my jobs, and thus, at home. Every time there was a new version 
of Windows, there were new idiosyncracies and more bullshit to cram into 
my head. When I started at Lumeta, I found those old Unix skills 
creeping back out of my memory--and they STILL WORKED! *gasp* ;)

Things that attracted me to FBSD:

1) The ease of the Ports collection. No messy rpm commands to have to 
memorize or read man pages on--just cd /usr/ports/tree/package && make 
install clean  -- Wow. How much easier can it get? Oh I know... when you 
don't want the port anymore? cd /usr/ports/tree/package && make deinstall ;)

2) The support in the community--I've never lacked at being able to find 
help. Granted, this is more Unix-oriented than FBSD-oriented.. But I 
have to admit that the mailing lists have been a *HUGE* help when I've 
needed it.

3) Finding that O'Reilly hosted articles about *BSD (Like Dru Lavigne's 
many articles discussing the ports tree and other nifty things in 
FreeBSD, and how to maintain & keep them in tip-top shape)!

4) Finding that I could actually *run* more than, say, 2 or 3 services 
on a particular server! (The first FBSD server I helped configure at 
Lumeta served as our: general development, Samba-shared, user home, 
network print server, DNS, DHCP, Apache, RT, email server--I was amazed 
you could run all that on one box without it crashing daily, like 
Windows would at the time!)

5) The ease with which I was able to take an existing port 
(misc/instant-workstation) and make a Lumeta package which would run 
over the course of a weekend, hands-free, and build a developer's 
workstation to our specs! For free! I didn't need to learn any weird 
packaging script language (read: InstallShield), nor did I have to worry 
incessantly about "how many licenses do we have left for ..." like I had 
to with our Windows boxen.

(There are others, of course, but these are what come to mind 
immediately...)

> ..of proprietary formats.  All the emails I lost over the years that 
> were in some kind of Outlook format that at the time I was either too 
> lazy or too ignorant, to make a back up of.

Yeah--early on I switched from Outcrack to Eudora, which, though better, 
still wasn't perfect--but at least it was in a Unix-like format! :)

> My point is, the knowledge you gain about UNIX is your's forever.  The 
> freedom is forever.  The control is forever.
>
> If want to be a sysadmin, you don't have to be master of everything. 
> You just need to be on the path - and you are.

It's not all about what you have memorized. It's knowing where to look 
for the information. I have *no* qualms telling people in interviews, 
when they ask me a question I don't know the answer to off the top of my 
head, that I could easily find that information via man <command> or a 
Google search. In general, I have found that if the person interviewing 
you Has Clueage, that's better to them than someone sitting there 
scratching their head going "Um.. let me think... um... " for a few 
minutes.

Myself, I am preparing to migrate my home PC from WinXP to FreeBSD 5.x 
soon. Mostly because I'm sick of the stupid driver conflicts, 
spontaneous reboots where M$ blames my NVidia drivers, and software that 
ceases to work because of SP2 (my screensavers, no less. And--do they 
cease to work gracefully? Noooooo--that'd be too polite--it just locks 
the PC with a black screen and a mouse pointer which is the only thing 
that responds to anything, forcing a reboot. Nice eh?). I'm already 
using Firefox, Thunderbird, and OO.o, so the switch shouldn't be too bad :)

Best,
Glenn

-- 
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary 
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." 
          ~Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759