Transcript Linux - Workshops

Why are we using FreeBSD?
Scaleable Services Workshop
AfNOG 2008
Rabat, Morocco
slides by Hervey Allen
presented by Joe Abley
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What are the options?
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Unix: FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris,
HP/UX, IBM AIX, etc.
Linux: Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS, SuSE,
Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, etc.
Windows: Vista, XP, Server 2003
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Other?
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A “neutral” discussion
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Windows has matured as a server platform.
Windows can now deliver some services
under load as well as Unix.
Linux is now as responsive as Unix under
load in many situations.
Windows, Unix and Linux outperform each
other in various scenarios.
No OS is necessarily the right tool for all
situations.
Use the tool that works best for you.
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A rebuttal: Linux
Strictly speaking much of the prior slide is true,
but there are some issues:
Linux
 As an OS is equal to Unix for provisioning
network services, but across distributions is
not as robust as FreeBSD.
 Which distribution do you choose? Why? Will
it stay a good choice over several years?
 Still has a lack of debugging and network
tools when compared to Unix.
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A rebuttal: Windows
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A major issue with Windows is who makes it,
how they make it and what drives them to
make it as they do.
Windows has largely developed in response
to market forces at the expense of proper
operating system design – i.e., Marketing
won!
Endless poor design decisions that have
compromised the Operating System for
commercial gain.
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A rebuttal: Windows cont.
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The responsiveness of Microsoft to security flaws,
stability issues, etc. has been mediocre to abysmal.
Microsoft FUD: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt
campaigns are extensive and destructive to the IT
community.
Microsoft's lack of respect for agreed-upon
standards has caused endless problems for millions
of users and companies world-wide.
While all of this may be legitimate business
practices, they have put customer (your) data at risk,
which is not acceptable.
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A rebuttal: Windows cont.
Windows 1.0 released Nov. 20, 1985. Since then
arguably four attempts to include proper design
practices have been made. These were:
Windows NT
Windows 2000
Windows 2003
Windows Vista
Windows NT was probably the the purest attempt at
proper design.
Windows 2003 is pushing “Windows” to a non-GUI
environment. I.E., what Unix has done from the start.
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A rebuttal: Windows cont.
In most/many cases Windows licensing is onerous.
As a counter-example see how IBM licenses, designs,
builds and supports their closed Operating Systems.
Microsoft is willing to block superior technical solutions
at the expense of humans for the sake of profit
(WSIS Summit II, Tunis, Ethiopia, Nov. 2005*).
For many, many years Unix (FreeBSD) was the only
reasonable choice for truly stable, large-scale,
secure network servers (at a reasonable cost).
*http://www.itworld.com/Tech/4535/051128msremove/
http://ipjustice.org/WSIS/IPJ_WSIS_Report.html
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A rebuttal: Windows cont.
Support. What does this mean? Support for Windows
is no better or worse than for Linux than for Unix.
With all this...
Even if Windows is a reasonable choice it's not clear
that it is a safe one from a long-term customer
perspective.
Microsoft philosophy pervades other products as well.
Consider Microsoft Office file formats.
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A rebuttal: FreeBSD
FreeBSD does not support unnecessary hardware as
Windows and Linux do. ;-)
But, it does pride itself on supporting hardware you are
likely to use in servers.
Anything else?
Note
We are interested in server operating system issues, not Desktop issues.
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FreeBSD: Why it's cool
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It's fast
Extremely stable
Proven over many years at many sites (Yahoo)
Uses a single source tree
FreeBSD project is a non-commercial & independent
FreeBSD uses the BSD license vs. the more
restrictive GPL license
Excellent software package system
Updating and upgrading FreeBSD is reliable and
can be done without a binary install
FreeBSD has a massive software repository
(18,500+ ports as of May 2008).
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FreeBSD: Why it's cool cont.
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FreeBSD can run Linux applications, and it can run
them as efficiently as Linux in most cases
Several superior FreeBSD features include:
Indexed database file for user passwords
Software RAID such as geom
ZFS file system support
A large and experienced community for support
Very geeky logos...
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