I am new to FreeBSD. I got my last two servers with FreeBSD. I was using Linux on my servers, i brought my FreeBSD box as many says its best and i want to try it. May be because FreeBSD newbie, still i can’t find the real advantage. Here is some points from my short experience with FreeBSD.
Advantage
Software Install From Ports, that is easy to do… just got to port directory and type in “make install clean” everything will be installed including required other packages. I like the phpX-extensions port, that is really time saving when installing PHP extensions.
In Linux, you can download source and install it with “./configure && make && make install”, at times, you need other depended packages to be installed first. But this is a one time process and you know what you are installing on the server.
Disadvantage
You don’t have any control over what version of other packages a port will be installing. For example, if you need MySQL 5 and PHP5 installed, you install MySQL 5 from ports, them PHP5. Latest PHP5 from ports will not work with MySQL 5. It need MySQL 4.1 to work with… So port developer decide which version of MySQL i use on my server and not me…. I want MySQL 5, but php5 is not supporting it, have to wait for port developer to use the latest version.
I feel like i have to depend on some one known as port maintainer, if he is busy or feel like using old version, i have to use that.
Would like to know why others prefer FreeBSD over Linux.
