ServerWatch review of FreeBSD

EDmaster wrote in mentioning a new review of FreeBSD at ServerWatch. It's very positive (if a little non-technical). (Nik: Moved to the BSD section, where it should have been. Mea culpa)

Re:I love FreeBSD

[mvw]

of course there are always those driver problems..

What are you complaining?

The driver list IMHO is rather impressive. Strong in the departments where FreeBSD is extensivley used (network, scsi..), weaker in the consumer realms (soundcards, gamepads, DVD).

I would go so far to say that any popular hardware will attract a driver writer sooner or later, or a porting effort from other free operating systems.

Typo???

[fatboy]

"Cons: Lack of third-party applications in the e-commerce and application-server fields; license is less restrictive."

Was that last part a typo or is it just too early? ;)

It's an upbeat kinda place...

[Solemn Bob]

It certainly is very positive; FreeBSD got 5 out of a possible 5 stars. Good -- FreeBSD deserves it. On the other hand, most of the platforms they've reviewed scored just as well. (The lowest performer, Novell NetWare, scored a mere 4 out of 5 stars.)

Worse, it's hard to take the "review" seriously; the author certainly didn't. It looks like he just flipped through a few web sites and summarized the conventional wisdom.

Re:Security?!

[NovaX]

Are you kidding? OpenBSD will likely always have the best security, that's one of their main goals, the top goal. If you want a the most secure system possible (and, umm.. I mean that's on the network.. cuz off-line might be the most secure in the foundation), choose OpenBSD. I don't think anyone from FreeBSD, Inc. would tell you otherwise. However, FreeBSD's goal is to be the best BSD server OS on the x86, and later on other platforms. So far, its done quite well at this, just like NetBSD has done well at their multi-platform goal, and OpenBSD with their security goal.

The point is, don't ask when FreeBSD will be as secure or more so than OpenBSD, because likely it never will be so, it will just have strong security.. not the strongest. However, since the BSD model means each project shares with one another, security fixes from OpenBSD make their way to FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Linux. FreeBSD's and NetBSD's changes may find their way in OpenBSD. That makes quite an impressive trio.

Also, does anyone know of another (preferably UNIXen like OS) that is much more trusted than *BSD or Linux?

As Linux is targetted towards a general purpose UNIX (meaning its good, but not the best at almost every task), I don't know how its security racks up to say.. Solaris. However, there are very few other UNIX-like OSes that are mainstream, though a large number of BSD derivatives, and others built from the ground up. I'd be quite surprised if they were any more secure than OpenBSD.

I've read that multics (circa 1960) is even more "trusted" than UNIX (B2 vs. C1 orange book ratings).

UNIX was made after because multics was a failure, because it was to costly in developement and to complex. Most UNIX books have a brief hisory that goes into this. That doesn't mean multics wasn't good, though, just that support died. By now, multics is history, and UNIX has grown to be far more than it was in when first created. Considering that OpenBSD is called the most secure operating system by a large number of people, who believe it, and no one has proven it otherwise, that raiting is (obviously) severly outdated.

90% fluff

[j1mmy]

I think the only thing anybody could really get out of that article wsa the point that freebsd networking is superior to linux and nt. I've been running 3.2 for almost two months now for serving web and developing purposes and I'm very happy with it. It even supports my old GUS, so I also use it as a jukebox.

The Endless BSD/SysV dialectic...

[zorgon]

That was wonderful to read. But I don't necessarily agree with the reviewer that Linux has a System V 'bias' -- although the rc startup system is pretty much that awful SysV kludge. Seems to me that Linux is pretty agnostic with regards to the BSD/SysV divide.
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Re:I love FreeBSD

[arih]

of course there are always those driver problems..

The review says...

[anatoli]

Pros: Built for networking from the ground up; conforms to BSD-style UNIX conventions.

Cons: Lack of third-party applications in the e-commerce and application-server fields; license is less restrictive.

I cannot understand the license bit. Why is it a "con"?

Also, I don't understand why they split this tiny review into three pages -- to show us more ad banners or what?
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Re:The review says...

[JeffI]

When I read this, I thought the same thing. My guess is that they are classifying it as a con because of the fact that the less restrictive nature can "hurt" the community. This because of the way the BSD license works, and the stipulations about redistributing and relicensing. Personally, I do not agree. Nevertheless, this is not intended to start any arguments over different licensing, just my thoughts on where the article was coming from.