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Looking for wannabe FreeBSD/EC2 users

daemonology.net

30 pointshasanove21 comments

Can anyone tell me the benefits of freebsd over popular Linux server distros (Ubuntu/centos/rhel)?

When your team sort of grew up with FreeBSD (or any other OS) you want to lean that way. Also, when you're shipping an appliance you don't have to think about licenses. Those are the two reasons we stick with FreeBSD.

Prime example: NetApp uses (and contributes back to) FreeBSD.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/06/prweb1042664.htm (minor mention)

Thanks. That makes sense.

I am not familiar with limitations of GPL license over BSD license. What limitation does GPL license have that you don't have to worry about with BSD when deploying your app on a Linux server?

Edit: Answered elsewhere. Thanks.

Licensing. The BSD license is less restrictive than the GPL.

Can you give a non-hypothetical real-life scenario where Freebsd with BSD license helps over GPL license based linux-distro when running a server?

I am genuinely curious.

Real life situation. You are producing a network appliance of some kind doing high throughput stuff and you have implemented some bits in the kernel. On Linux (GPL) your code is all covered by GPL so your competitors can copy and use it. On FreeBSD you can keep your technology proprietary and away from your conpetitors. This is why FreeBSD is so widely used by network appliances.

Most of the time it's that question that bothers you more when you're using something GPL. If I do X should I release the code or not? BSD eliminates that nagging question from the back of your mind.

Not a physical benefit but I suppose it could be argued you're showing support for bsd style licenses. That seems trivial but possible.

not being "popular linux distro" can be a benefit perhaps?

otherwise, I don't see what difference does it make what kernel you're running. matter of taste

For me, it's not really about the kernel but the whole OS, userland included. I agree it's still mostly matter of taste, or maybe more honestly, what you're used to.

Some people really like apt-get/dpkg but I prefer working with "make buildworld/installworld" and the ports system on FreeBSD.

Also, though it's not something I've taken advantage of much, I love how on FreeBSD I can "cd /usr/src/bin/ls" and hey: there's the source for ls! If I wanted to, I could hack it, and run "make install" right there. I prefer this over (for example) source packages with Doogie's Build System on Debian.

recompiling your programs on every machine is such a waste of cloud

You mention funding for development. What amount would cover it and what is a meaningful amount?

I'm one of those people that bugged you on the AWS forums about this :). I run FreeBSD on my servers but have had to compromise on EC2 (running Ubuntu now).

I'm not sure exactly how much funding is necessary; but it's not a big number on the scale of internet startups.

Please send me an email. :-)

I presume the only thing I would like to check out on FreeBSD is dtrace. The 2nd thing would be perhaps something related to ZFS.

Interesting you should mention those technologies, as they both originated from Sun and have been ported elsewhere. While FreeBSD's ZFS is a solid port and probably the best non-Sun implementation, it's actually a few versions behind.

It might be worth checking out OpenSolaris, despite its future seeming to be up in the air, with Oracle's acquisition of Sun.

And you can already run OpenSolaris on EC2.

I've wanted to use EC2 for some projects, however I don't like using Linux, so if FreeBSD would work on EC2 it would certainly help get me using Amazon's services.

However because I am currently unemployed I do not have any money to put into development, and all my projects that require a positive cash flow have been put on the backburner.

Please send me an email anyway -- whether people can provide funding is one measure of community interest, but definitely not the only one.

OpenSolaris already works on EC2. Have you considered that?

Yes, I have, and I run an OpenSolaris machine at home as my file server.

The issue I have with OpenSolaris is that if you stick to their /release PKG tree you don't get any security updates what so ever, if you however track the /dev PKG tree you get experimental updates, that may or may not break functionality you need.

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