Why FreeBSD is good

[Tim Clewlow]

Hi,

I am a fairly novice user, I have only been using
FreeBSD for 2 and a bit years. I currently use it as a
firewall/gateway for a lan, on which exist servers and
desktop systems - all FreeBSD.

It is this wide range of capabilities that make
FreeBSD so good, ie it will quite happily be a
firewall/gateway, a server, or a desktop.

Unfortunately, this wide range of capabilities can
also be a bit of a frustration. The reason is that in
order for FreeBSD to be so versatile, there must also
be a large number of possible config options to allow
that versatility, and, in order to use these options
the person doing admin has to first learn those
options, or at least know they exist.

The same can be said for both kernel and userland, ie
to use an application, the user is most likely going
to have to learn a few options for each program they
run.

If you are not used to this, ie if you come from an
operating system that simply picks the bare minimum
set of config options on the users behalf, and then
hopes for the best, then you may be frustrated at
having to learn a few new things.

But after a while, you will learn (hopefully) like me,
that the existance of all these config options for
everything actually means that you can make your
computer do a lot more than just the bare minimum.

So, while there will be a bit of new learning for most
people coming to FreeBSD, once you have done that
learning, you will have an extremely versatile and
hence powerful operating system available to you.

Lastly, if you ever really do get stuck, you can
always ask someone on one of these mailing lists for
some help.

Regards, Tim.

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