[nycbug-talk] *BSD compairson

[lists]

On 25 Jan 2006 14:03:55 -0500, George Georgalis wrote:
> Why did you choose yourBSD?

I started with OpenBSD because its focus was much like my own, and it is
still my favorite *BSD. The first business environment I applied it in
was a very small office, and they needed basic server functionality
(web, mail, name, ftp). I brought in OpenBSD quite quickly to replace
the existing firewall/gateway (running NT at the time), and then
migrated the mail (front door, at least), web, ftp, and name servers
from NT to OpenBSD as well. Needless to say, OpenBSD was rock solid and
the improvements to the company's infrastructure quite noticeable
(always a plus!). To this day, I use OpenBSD as much as I can and it is
virtually always the front door to a network. From a VPN gateway to a
firewall, it is quite beautiful, especially with the (somewhat recent)
growth in its load balancing/redundancy aspects.

Eventually, I stumbled into using FreeBSD, initially from a desktop
perspective rather than a server perspective. OpenBSD was not an ideal
desktop platform, as its hardware support was somewhat limited and its
focus did not bend to what I expected from a desktop in terms of
functionality. (I think knowing Debian was more useful than knowing
OpenBSD when I was first getting to know FreeBSD.) As I worked with
FreeBSD, I came to like it and tried it in server environments where I
had more robust usage requirements, such as the latest and greatest
software packages or less common/newer hardware. Not to mention, as
performance requirements started to kick in, FreeBSD was often a better
match than OpenBSD, at least with a bare minimum tuning. So, now, I use
FreeBSD for most backend servers and virtually all (*BSD) end user
machines (desktops, laptops - wireless was an important growth area in
FreeBSD 6, etc.).

-Andrew