FreeBSD 5.4: Is it generally unstable?

[David Hogan]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matthias Buelow [mailto:mkb at incubus.de]
> Sent: Wednesday, 8 June 2005 8:26 PM

> If that Trustix works for you now well, you'd be careless to migrate
> now. If it works, why change it?
> My experience with the 5.x tree so far is that it's ok for a SOHO or
> private environment but I wouldn't trust it if my money (or job)
> depended on it. Maybe in a year, or two but not now.

I have a few reasons for considering a move away from Trustix and linux.

Main reason:

I deployed a couple of boxes about 12 months ago when there was no clear
version of TSL to use - the 1.5 release was dated and winding up support
wise, and the 2.1 release was an interim release with a shorter than normal
support lifespan (ending end of this month, 6 months after the 2.2 release).
There is a 2.1 -> 2.2 upgrade procedure, but it's not supported and thus
risky to do remotely on the more important of these machines. 2.1 has proven
rock solid for me, but since security updates wont be released after the end
of the month, I have to do something one way or another.

Other reasons:

I found that jails are much more powerful than the linux chroot() call - and
I love that the installer lets you install in an arbitrary dir on the
filesystem.

Many seasoned unix people have spoken to me about how much more stable
FreeBSD is, although at the risk of starting a flame war I'm not convinced
that this is still the case, at least not for the 5 series vs Trustix. (vs
most linux distributions - sure :D )

Ports are cool. Trustix doesn't provide an exim package, so I'm forever
updating that myself.

Filesystem snapshots ..

UnionFS.

--

I'd like to thank everyone for sharing their thoughts on this matter. I have
decided to stick with Trustix on our servers for now, and maybe start
playing with FreeBSD on some real boxes and maybe try running a FreeBSD
desktop. I am attracted to the FreeBSD way of doing things, but given that
I'm not yet an experienced FreeBSD user I might be taking a bit of a risk by
migrating at this stage.

Cheers,
David Hogan