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> -----Original Message-----
> From: listmaster@xenitec.on.ca [mailto:listmaster@xenitec.on.ca]On
> Behalf Of Bill Vermillion
> Sent: Friday, November 14, 2003 10:35 AM
> To: distribution@xenitec.on.ca
> Subject: Re: Best Linux version to port from OpenServer 5.0.5/6
>
>
> In article <bp2sed$47g$1@news.tdl.com>,
> Justin Robbs <justin_robbsNO@SPAMhotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >"Bill Vermillion" <bv@wjv.comREMOVE> wrote in message
> >news:HoBGxE.1Jq7@wjv.com...
>
> [Lucretia Deletia wields her axe and hacks away most of the
> message ...]
>
>
> >> ....
> >> >I would like to know which distro would be the easiest port
> >...
> >> >
> >> >the most stable ...
> >> >
> >> >the best driver support ...
> >> >
> >> >the best long term survival chances ...
> >> >
> >> >the fastest with the smallest footprint ...
> >>
> >> Every one of those is subject to change on a weekly basis.
>
> >Yeah, I figure that the answers to those questions are fairly
> >dynamic, I mostly am curious about what people have experienced
> >to be the best in these categories and the market niche the
> >companies are currently pursuing. I am doing my own research as
> >well, but it is nice to get the opinion of people who have been
> >down this path.
>
> One the above. The best driver support won't mean anything
> if they don't have the one driver you need.

If you want stable and small footprint, I suggest FreeBSD. I've found it
very easy to install/use and it has good driver support. Another bonus is
that it actually is free!

Just a suggestion,
Fabio

>
> If you want stable and small footprint, I suggest FreeBSD.
I've found it
> very easy to install/use and it has good driver support.
Another bonus is
> that it actually is free!
>
> Just a suggestion,
> Fabio
>
>

I hadn't thought a whole lot about BSD. I don't know much about
it other than it is pretty similar to Unix, it was developed at
Berkeley, and it is considered to be the most secure OS out of
the box (ie. without patches and security tweaks). Does anyone
have any suggestions about BSD vs. Linux?

Thanks,
Justin

In article <001101c3aad2$625fb780$6700000a@venmar.com>,
Fabio Giannotti <fabiog@venmar.com> wrote:
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: listmaster@xenitec.on.ca [mailto:listmaster@xenitec.on.ca]On
>> Behalf Of Bill Vermillion
>> Sent: Friday, November 14, 2003 10:35 AM
>> To: distribution@xenitec.on.ca
>> Subject: Re: Best Linux version to port from OpenServer 5.0.5/6
>>
>>
>> In article <bp2sed$47g$1@news.tdl.com>,
>> Justin Robbs <justin_robbsNO@SPAMhotmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >"Bill Vermillion" <bv@wjv.comREMOVE> wrote in message
>> >news:HoBGxE.1Jq7@wjv.com...
>>
>> [Lucretia Deletia wields her axe and hacks away most of the
>> message ...]
>>
>>
>> >> ....
>> >> >I would like to know which distro would be the easiest port
>> >...
>> >> >
>> >> >the most stable ...
>> >> >
>> >> >the best driver support ...
>> >> >
>> >> >the best long term survival chances ...
>> >> >
>> >> >the fastest with the smallest footprint ...
>> >>
>> >> Every one of those is subject to change on a weekly basis.
>>
>> >Yeah, I figure that the answers to those questions are fairly
>> >dynamic, I mostly am curious about what people have experienced
>> >to be the best in these categories and the market niche the
>> >companies are currently pursuing. I am doing my own research as
>> >well, but it is nice to get the opinion of people who have been
>> >down this path.

>> One the above. The best driver support won't mean anything
>> if they don't have the one driver you need.

>If you want stable and small footprint, I suggest FreeBSD.
>I've found it very easy to install/use and it has good driver
>support. Another bonus is that it actually is free!

And can be made really really small. You can use the picobsd
to build you own custom system to make a firewall, a router,
bridge, etc. Locally GTA builds and entire firewall that all you
need is an iNTEL based machine with one floppy - as it runs off the
floppy. That's a small footprint.

--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

In article <bp3495$683$1@news.tdl.com>,
Justin Robbs <justin_robbsNO@SPAMhotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> If you want stable and small footprint, I suggest FreeBSD.
>I've found it
>> very easy to install/use and it has good driver support.
>Another bonus is
>> that it actually is free!
>>
>> Just a suggestion,
>> Fabio

>I hadn't thought a whole lot about BSD. I don't know much about
>it other than it is pretty similar to Unix, it was developed at
>Berkeley, and it is considered to be the most secure OS out of
>the box (ie. without patches and security tweaks). Does anyone
>have any suggestions about BSD vs. Linux?

I do - and so do many others.

I just really like the clean design and predictability of FreeBSD.
The team does an excellent job of keeping everything where it
belongs, and you can totally upgrade the OS and not touch anything
else with no problem.

That's because only the OS is on /, and everything else is on it's
own partitions. During a system reinstall the /etc is saved and
you can put back the old one, rewrite your config files, or merge
them.

On a fast system I can build then entired OS from sources in 25
minutes. A kernel build - using the newly built modules but not
yet instaled on the system - takes about 1 min. Install the kernel
in about 30 seconds.

Reboot and see if the kernel is OK, go to single user and install
the entire OS - about 3 minutes on a fast machine and 15 on
something like a 200MHz P5.

Then you run the merge program to coalesce your config files in
/etc - which is the most tedious part - usually about 15 minutes if
you do that, reboot and you are done.

I've rebuilt the servers remotely with no problems. Documentation
is about the best there is. Some of it is so good that Linux uses
many of the pages as is with just a search/replace on the OS.

I've found some things in Linux don't seem to be 'fail safe'

xinetd bit me recently when I got a call that a system was rebooted
because power failure outlasted the UPS and nothing would come up.
No mail, they have many who telneted in for mail too and telent
was gone. I was able to get with ssh as I had installed that.

Upon examing things I found that everything that xinetd was to
start was not started. I fired it up manually, everyting started
and then immediately died.

A little man page persuing and I found the flags to log inetd,
and ran it, and watched everything startup and then stop.

I looked at the log and saw 18 or 19 things start up, and then when
the ftp daemon tried to start it failed, and xinted bailed out and
took down everything it had started. To my way of thinking only
the problem service should have failed to start.

I traced it to a corrupted startup script with a wrong parameter
in the xinetd tree.

Granted, that's only one thing - but something that should never
happen IMO. But then again I came out of the broadcast industry
where if something was 10 seconds late it could mean thousands of
dollars lost as that time can not be recovered. That's why on big
things like live football there are dual systems running for
commercials and if one fails the changeover is instant.

So I guess it's where you are coming from as to whether you
tolerate things like that.

At an ISP years ago I moved everthing off of very expensive SGI
machines - eg in the $15k range each with RISC processors and the
genunine Netscape servers, into FreeBSD [2.6 at that time I think],
with apache, and found the performance easily doubled. Part was
the slimmer OS and of course Apache was cleaner than the Netscape.

But 3 $2000 machines were far cheaper than the one $15K machine and
the two $10K. The same could be said for Linux - but that was in
1995 and I've never seen a reason to change.

However I have no clue as to how they would work in a POS.
That's one area where SCO seems to shine and many are using it.
But for servers directly on backbones I really like them.

So that's a data point of 1.

Bill

--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com