# My experience with FreeBSD



## xy16644 (Jul 30, 2009)

Hello All,

I hope this is the right place to post this. I just thought I'd share my experience I have had with FreeBSD in the last 3 or 4 weeks (when I started using it for the very first time).

A client of mine was throwing away old desktops and offered me one which I took. The specs were as follows:

P4 2.8Ghz
1GB RAM
80GB SATA hard drive
Gigabit Ethernet NIC

A few days before I received this machine I heard about FreeBSD and OpenBSD on Slashdot. So I downloaded them both and burnt them to DVD. I have never used any BSD system before but I have once (for a very short time) looked at Linux so my command line skills were limited :e

I also got a copy of the book Building a Server with FreeBSD 7 A Modular Approach which I used to install and setup my machine.

Currently I run the following on the desktop I built as a FreeBSD server:

FreeBSD 
Apache
MySQL
Webmin
Postfix
Courier Authlib
Courier IMAP
Cyrus SASL
OpenSSH
OpenSSL
PHP
Procmail
Spamassassin
Squirrelmail (with a Nutsmail theme)
Wordpress
PF

What blows my mind is just how much I have installed on one little desktop and how WELL it performs. It reboots in about 30 seconds (with all those services enabled!!). Restarting services is almost instant. The security is top notch. The CPU is almost always idle and I always have up to 500MB free RAM.

Sorry if I'm rambling on here but its just such a refreshing change to what I am use to. FreeBSD must FLY on a proper server or higher end hardware compared to what I have! I also enjoy the fact that I never have to reboot...YEAH!

The other side of it all is the cost. The hardware I happen to get for free, FreeBSD cost nothing. I happen to buy a SSL certificate and a theme for Squirrelmail..total cost: +-Â£30...Â£30 for an ENTIRE server...wow!

And to top it all off I have it running with gmirror (two hard drives mirrored) and it runs well so far. I have tried software RAID before for mirroring on other server operating systems and it was sloooooow.

I still have LOADS to learn but my experience so far has been really really great.

Thanks for everyones help on this forum.:e


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## graudeejs (Jul 30, 2009)

Just, wait til you tray jails+zfs on FreeBSD (with proper hardware)

It really rocks


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## anomie (Jul 30, 2009)

xy16644 said:
			
		

> I also got a copy of the book Building a Server with FreeBSD 7 A Modular Approach which I used to install and setup my machine.



Good book, BTW. Read it and liked it.


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## cerulean (Jul 31, 2009)

Sounds like your off and running! FreeBSD is quite the workhorse. I found FreeBSD back in the 4.x days (2003ish) and to put it simply, I've never looked for anything else. The logical layout, the great documentation, the stability, the centralization (ports, portaudit, etc), the ease of upgrades, ease of installation, etc just make it my pick for so many projects and installations.


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## xy16644 (Jul 31, 2009)

I only wish I had started earlier!

I did give Redhat 5 a try many MANY years ago but gave up due to my impatience.

I'm glad I stuck with FreeBSD this time as I was quite frustrated in the beginning with FreeBSD until reading the book.

I started off trying to install Apache with the source (tar.gz) files. That was ummm scary.

Then I discovered ports...;-)


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## SirDice (Jul 31, 2009)

xy16644 said:
			
		

> I'm glad I stuck with FreeBSD this time as I was quite frustrated in the beginning with FreeBSD until reading the book.


Another very good book is our very own handbook :e

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/

It is also available in quite a lot of translations.

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/


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## tangram (Jul 31, 2009)

I'm also a big fan of the Building a Server with FreeBSD 7 book. Wrote a review on it here. Great purchase imho.


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