Anyone doing this in FreeBSD? I have it (kind of) working, using atacontrol detach / attach before removing or inserting a drive. Works with regular filesystems, but I want to use vinum - the logical volume manager. As soon as vinum touches the replaced drive, it panics.

What are people using for volume management on FreeBSD anyway? I really wish a Linux-like LVM was available.

OT I know .. but I could say exactly the same thing about Debian [debian.org].

I've used FreeBSD a little, but not enough to appreciate it's strengths I guess.

(My initial impressions were raised by the firey screensaver upon the console, and the way it printed your uptime when you rebooted it!)

"...and added initial support for Firewire, HyperThreading, and other new hardware technologies."

Umm... firewire isn't exactly new. What's taking them so long to get more than "initial" support? And what does THAT mean?

So has anyone done exhaustive performance comparisons of all the x86 OS under different kinds of loads (network connections, processes, I/O, multiple processors)?

In the days of yore FreeBSD was highly regarded for its performance in some areas and I'm wondering if that's still an accurate assessment compared to Linux, Win2K/XP, other BSDs.

Check out the traffic graph [freebsd.org] for ftp2. Now slashdot that!

Well that depends on wich distro of linux you are using, if your using redhat, it gets brutally slaughtered by freebsd, as do many of the other linux distros. However, there is a new linux distro out that really gives freebsd a run for its money. Gentoo linux is great.Its still realitivly new so there really arnt any gui tools like there are in red hat, so its not for beginners. But gentoo runs at about the speed of a freebsd 4.7 box. And about the same stability.

The really nice thing that comes with gentoo is an enhanced version of the ports collection. Literally, when i want to upgrade all the software on my machine to the latest version i type emerge rsync && emerge -u world, and then walk away. It literally does everything you want, and makes makes you a cup of coffie if you want :) not to mention that all the patches applied for you :)

so all in all, if your considering gentoo vs freebsd, flip a coin. Because gentooand freeBSD are breaking about even. I see both in a production enviornment and i still couldnt choose one over the other. But virtually all of the other linux distros get their asses kicked by freeBSD, so unless your looking at gentoo as your choice for linux, then freebsd is going to make the better desktop

5. For far too long, power has been concentrated in the hands of "root" and his "wheel" oligarchy.

RMS doesn't like wheel all that much neither. [gnu.org]