Freebsd vs. linux

[Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC]

I made the choice of FreeBSD in 1996 for my fledgling hosting business. 
  I considered Linux and FreeBSD.  At the time, FreeBSD was considered 
to have a much better VM system under load, and similar sorts of 
stability characteristics.  I chose FreeBSD then and am glad I did so.  
I do not know what the Linux VM system is like now, 8.5 years later.  
However, I read some recent remarks by people I would consider 
competent who say that the FreeBSD VM system is still superior.

One of the biggest differences between Linux and the BSD derived 
systems is the license.  If you agree with RMS (Richard Stallman of the 
FSF) you should probably go with Linux.  If you prefer a more free 
market oriented license that is truly free, then a BSD system is 
probably more in line with your needs.

There are LOTS of technical differences of course, but from a user or 
admin level, they are both similar, as they are both unix-derived 
environments.

I do have a single gentoo system for some special java processing.  At 
the time it was installed, the FreeBSD java was not at the same level 
as the Linux one was.  Now the differences in the java systems are 
minor and if I could, I would migrate this machine over to FreeBSD.  
However, it is in production and such a move would take too much time.

best
Chad