The Old Way Was Better

[Michel Talon]

 > Incorrect.  This was not just a desktop.  It is a web server.

In my case it is a squid server plus a caching name server running 
bind9. It runs 24h/day since the release of FreeBSD 5.1 and has not 
crashed a single time. Hence i conclude that FreeBSD 5.1 works well
at least on some common hardware (i have an Abit KT7 mobo, with an
Athlon). This machine previously runned FreeBSD 4, and was slightly
faster then, but the difference is not enormous, and as i said, it
is perfectly stable.
On another machine (more powerful) i have Debian Linux running. It did
not crash a single time either, but i can say that the VM system
clearly runs more erratically on the Linux box that on the FreeBSD 5.1
box. Hence i have no objective reason to be particularly unhappy
with this release. As i said also, i am very unhappy with FreeBSD 4.8
running on my laptop.
My conclusion: FreeBSD 5.1 is a perfectly fine release, but may be 
disfunctional on some hardware, particularly due to the ACPI system.
Each user has to test it on his own hardware to see if it works or not.
If it does not work correctly, he may be happier with FreeBSD-4.8.
Everybody wanting absolute stability is perfectly welcome to try
NetBSD, OpenBSD and why not Linux, and discover by himself if he doesn't 
need to awake at 3 A.M. with one of these systems.