# My boss asks: why FreeBSD?



## nORKy (May 10, 2012)

Hi,

Please, I need some help. My boss only know*s* Linux and ask*s* me "Why now choose FreeBSD?" With a new OS like FreeBSD, some people need to learn this new OS, it takes some time to do that.

So, how can I explain to my boss that FreeBSD is a good OS? How do I justify to teach to some people (1 or 2) how to use FreeBSD?

Speak about Jails? ZFS?


Thanks for your help


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## vermaden (May 10, 2012)

http://freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/bsdl-gpl/article.html
http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/

Other arguments:
- You do not need a lawyer to check for GPL2/3 isues.
- You can do whatever you want (BSD License).
- A complete designed system and kernel, not glued parts from all over the world.
- Show him who else uses FreeBSD (netapp/google/yahoo/...)


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## ondra_knezour (May 10, 2012)

If I should pick one argument, I will use either great documentation (for example compare FreeBSD and Linux man page for ifconfig) or stability over time - in network with hundreds of Linux wireless routers I never knew, if I should use ifconfig, iw, wi, iwpriv, ip etc. Some interfaces created with an ip can not been seen with ifconfig utility as bonus etc. Also instalation of 3 different incompatible versions of fdisk during use of the official Debian embedded image creation script, which even does not work without rewriting half of that mess (can't even locate own config files) says something.


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## jef (May 10, 2012)

Where to start? 

For me:

Clear filesystem organization
Clear configuration structure and approach
Focused on performance, robustness, and security _and delivers on it_
Not at the whim of "backyard programmers"
No GPL entanglements for the OS itself

Too many times in Linux that I've configured something using one GUI tool and gotten totally hozed trying to do something else (for example, network configuration past "use DHCP" or "assign a single fixed IPv4 address to the interface")

The clean separation between OS-level configuration and scripts (in /etc) and "add-on" configuration (in /usr/local/etc) is beyond value, especially when upgrading.


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## UNIXgod (May 10, 2012)

Let your boss know that it's got direct historical ties to BSD UNIX started in the 70's by Bill Joy.

The link below should give your boss some idea what BSD is and how it may relate to it's GNU cousin:

What's The Greatest Software Ever Written?

tl; tr
Look at the end entitled: "A GNU Philosophy"


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## bbzz (May 10, 2012)

Or you can go straight to the point.


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## graudeejs (May 11, 2012)

bbzz said:
			
		

> Or you can go straight to the point.



Epic argument.


On the serious side: zfs, stable kernel and stable api (No random b******t every few months)


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## Crivens (May 11, 2012)

nORKy said:
			
		

> "Why now choose FreeBSD?" With a new OS like FreeBSD, some people need to learn this new OS, it takes some time to do that."



So it does for the script kiddies and drive-by intruders.
We need maybe some days to adjust, if at all.

Someone trying to root a box with a buffer overflow script from some leet toolbox bumps his nose and then? Sitting down there and spending some time to adapt?
Attackers who would do that, there is no real protection as these also would lockpick your office and steal the hardware.

More or less quoted from an admin we had who had a gateway running some seriously obscure combination of PF on a (emulated) VAX.


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## da1 (May 12, 2012)

I think it depends on what services the company is providing. For instance, if your company is selling things, you need to talk in sales-terms to your manager and convince him that FreeBSD is able to "sell more" by providing better stability and better performance that Linux on the same machines. From my experience, it will help nothing if you talk to a non-techie person in techie terms. Bottom line is that you need to talk in his language for him to understand you.

My 2c.


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## _martin (May 13, 2012)

As @da1 pointed out: It's hard to say - depending on your environment. What are those Linux servers doing? In some cases, unfortunately, you can't use FreeBSD. SAP application server is one good example, oracle hosting server is another. 
These are all technical questions and are more or less not important for management. Usually it's green/red cell in excel whether this solution is acceptable or not. 

But there is also question about the support/SLA. Do those (linux) servers come with it? It's really bad if you hit a bug, system keeps panic-ing and you can't make heads or tails of it. Quick and prompt support (and patch for that matter) is a need for the business. 

I've never seen such support in FreeBSD, but that's because I never looked (I guess some 3rd parties may do this).


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## da1 (May 13, 2012)

@matoatlantis: http://www.ixsystems.com/support-center/ix/software/freebsd.html


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## Crivens (May 14, 2012)

da1 said:
			
		

> "... if your company is selling things, you need to talk in sales-terms to your manager ... "
> "From my experience, it will help nothing if you talk to a non-techie person in techie terms. Bottom line is that you need to talk in his language for him to understand you."
> 
> My 2c.



You are very correct in this, sadly. I for one find it really annoying when you need to powerpoint your information instead of simply telling the other side of the communication about your arguments. So you need to learn to speak "marketing", which might as well be it's own language. (Since marketing seems to live on it's own planet, that is understandable, isn't it? SCNR)

So what is there to do for you?

find out what you need
find out what you can have
find out what you want
list pro/contra points for each
... also as seen from the other side of the table
follow the gradient

The point about listing pro/contra is extremly hard if you are not used to it. I found that several years of D&D and other role playing experience can help you to ignore what _you_ know and see some situation from the point of someone else. 
That is why I sometimes come overdressed to a meeting because I know that the customer to talk to has no technical background. So he tends to stick to things he trusts - and that may be a three-pice and cufflinks. For other customers, the t-shirt, sneakers and cargo pants are better. That are those who come from the same stable as you, who have a solid technical background and who also see a tie as a competence simulator. 

Long story short - make your homework, the other side of the argument needs to trust you to take your information, and it needs to like you to act on that information.

But in the end it comes down to numbers. If you convince your boss of a solution that does not work out, guess who gets the heat for it. Be sure to move into a direction where you want to go, where it needs to go and where real benefits _for all involved_ are possible.

My first answer addressed the uptime benefit and the better protection from random problems by script kiddies. These can be real benefits for a small biz, but they do not protect from dedicated evildoers.

What you (or others who have to deal with customers and sales/marketing) may want to do is spend a weekend with Sun Tzu, The Art Of War. If nothing else, it will help you to understand those guys better.


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## swa (May 14, 2012)

nORKy said:
			
		

> So, how can I explain to my boss that FreeBSD is a good OS? How do I justify to teach to some people (1 or 2) how to use FreeBSD?



Because, they will have a great learning experience! And as a good boss he wants to have smart employees, wouldn't he . As a side effect, from learning FreeBSD and opening their minds they will probably also learn to understand and troubleshoot the Linux systems much better.


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## joseche (May 16, 2012)

*business reasons, not techie*

Provide real reasons to your argument using the business language, is not so hard as you think.

Examples: 

We are going to reduce the time it takes to deploy websites because fbsd FreeBSD enables us to script / automate the process faster because .........
We are going to increase the security of our servers due to design of the fbsd FreeBSD OS
We are going to reduce the time it takes to deploy a new server because fbsd FreeBSD will let us ...... blabla
We are going to recover from hardware failures because fbsd FreeBSD enables us to ....... blablalbla
We can implement solutions that we don't have today because with linux it takes more time

Basically he wants to hear about cost reduction, increasing potential of existing hardware, implementing more solutions/services, etc... It will be your task to really make that difference with FBSD FreeBSD.


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## da1 (May 16, 2012)

Precisely.


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## nORKy (May 18, 2012)

Thanks you all guys. There many things to say!
I'll tell you when I speak with my boss


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## shitson (May 18, 2012)

Has there really been any conclusive OS vs. OS comparison of Linux and FreeBSD done in the past 2-5 years? Obviously FreeBSD nor Linux can live on its merits from 10-20 years ago. I think a good project for FreeBSD advocacy would be to do this on current hardware under a range of enterprise and desktop workloads. 

Actually this is something that is relevant to my interests, so if *I* can conjure the time/effort/Red Bull *I* may try to get something together.


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## zodias (May 18, 2012)

shitson said:
			
		

> Has there really been any conclusive OS vs. OS comparison of Linux & FreeBSD done in the past 2-5 years? Obviously FreeBSD nor Linux can live on it's merits from 10-20 years ago. I think a good project for FreeBSD advocacy would be to do this on current hardware under a range of Enterprise & Desktop workloads. Actually this is something that is relevant to my interests, so if i can conjure the time/effort/Red Bull i may try to get something together.



Last year I did some sysbench tests of FreeBSD 8.2-STABLE+ ZFS + aesni vs Debian GNU/Linux 6.0.2 Stable + xfs + aesni on i3-12xx ~ 2,4GHz / 8G RAM / 2x500GB WD RE4 / Supermicro MB machine. FreeBSD was about 4 times faster with 8 MB sized files in random read write. On the test with 80MB sized files the two setups were almost equal. On 400MB sized files Debian GNU/Linux was a lot faster.

Need to search for the test records for precise results.


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## jrm@ (May 18, 2012)

*Why FreeBSD (according to IBM)*

Why FreeBSD (according to IBM)


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## _martin (May 18, 2012)

jrm said:
			
		

> Why FreeBSD (according to IBM)



In all due respect to objectivity you can't judge it on nearly 7 years old paper. 

I did, however, f*i*nd some other, similar, newer (2012) papers on developers @ IBM page, but I don't think it's enough. IBM is not offering it in their services as they offer Linux (very well known setup in production - HP-UX/AIX/Solaris with Linux application servers as their NFS satellites). Neither does HP. 

It's true I never saw FreeBSD connected to a SAN dealing with multipathing, but I can confirm it's a nightmare in Linux (compared to HPUX/AIX e.g.).

Needless to say I would love to see FreeBSD used here instead of Linux. Maybe some day ..


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## Morte (May 18, 2012)

My reasons for using FreeBSD really don't have much to do with performance. It performs well enough, I don't care if it's a few milliseconds faster in some benchmarks or slower in others. In the end this almost always comes down to system/software tuning to really get performance.

After getting shafted by Redhat 8/9x I swore I'd only go with community supported distributions. You can never be sure when a company decides that you're "no longer commercially viable" and drop you as they please. What I like most about FreeBSD is that it is stable and consistent. It has a well defined division between the system, and third party software. I've had problems with upgrades sure, but I've always been able to fix them. Sometimes from some pretty messed up states. MS Windows doesn't expose the guts enough to make that possible, nor does it provide you with the tools to do that kind of thing. Linux has the tools and also does expose the guts, but what about the documentation? Maybe it's my imagination but it's hard to find answers to Linux related questions, because many distros do things their own way, use different sets of cobbled together software to implement the system, or the documentation you find is severely out of date.  I still can't get Gentoo to boot into single user mode, nor can I find the correct answer to get it to do so.

The more I've learned about FreeBSD, the more I've been able to leverage the system. Learning  Windows always made me feel like learning the latest techniques to apply band-aids and put up with the latest "great MS initiative", while learning Linux often feels like I'm learning the latest in fashion, only to be dropped when the next shiny idea looks better.

FreeBSD isn't the best for everything. I wouldn't go that way for a desktop, but for a server it's always my preference.


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## germanopratin (May 18, 2012)

There are many comparisons around: Linux vs BSD vs Windows. The problem is that they are, for the most part, terribly outdated. It drives me mad when people keep mocking Windows for its blue screens. I have to use it in the office - and I can't remember a BS for nearly a decade now. This is all long gone. 

What I like about BSD, is that it is more UNIX than Linux, technically/historically it IS Unix. And it simply feels more stable, robust. I like simplicity. An OS should NOT put you into a GUI. This would be plain wrong. ;-) It should not hide everything under config tools. 

Performance-wise it seems to be pretty hard to judge who's in the lead. After all it is emphemerical. Just a snapshot, I guess. Like Michael Lucas said it is a tug-of-war, with different annual outcomes..


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## shitson (May 22, 2012)

My biggest attraction to FreeBSD is its consistency between versions. All the Linux Distros seem to have their own idea on where stuff should go, missing the point that it's better if everyone puts stuff in the same location than finding a better location, but being the only one to use it. 

FreeBSD is also nice in terms of being a barebones OS, giving me the very standard tools and letting me decide if *I* really need the latest and greatest tool for that job (rsyslog vs. syslog) or (anacron vs cron) - One gets lost in determining what version is running on a base install. 

The thing that really deters most from the OS is its seemingly large learning curve, being confronted with no X11 really scares some people off as well. But most miss the Documentation Project and the vast array of knowledge that you can gain from it.


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## throAU (May 23, 2012)

shitson said:
			
		

> My biggest attraction to FreeBSD is its consistency between versions. All the Linux Distros seem to have their own idea on where stuff should go, missing the point that it's better if everyone puts stuff in the same location than finding a better location, but being the only one to use it.



This.

My "hardware" platform these days is vSphere, so Linux driver support holds no advantage for me.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's pretty much phasing out bare metal installs for most stuff because unless you're playing at the extreme high end of user numbers, modern hardware is way more than fast enough to support multiple VMs on a single machine.

You also get failover, snapshots, portability, etc.

So, the one real linux advantage just doesn't apply any more.  The only single Linux box I have on my network is to support a third party application that the vendor has only certified on either RHEL/CENTOS, Solaris, AIX or Windows.

Which brings up another point - don't get into religious reasons for pushing an OS.  If you have apps that are certified on OS Foo, then don't try and run them on OS Bar in production unless you have a very good reason to do so.  The OS is an application platform - if your application doesn't run then it doesn't matter how good the OS is.


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## olav (May 23, 2012)

Morte said:
			
		

> My reasons for using FreeBSD really don't have much to do with performance. It performs well enough, I don't care if it's a few milliseconds faster in some benchmarks or slower in others. In the end this almost always comes down to system/software tuning to really get performance.
> 
> After getting shafted by Redhat 8/9x I swore I'd only go with community supported distributions. You can never be sure when a company decides that you're "no longer commercially viable" and drop you as they please. What I like most about FreeBSD is that it is stable and consistent. It has a well defined division between the system, and third party software. I've had problems with upgrades sure, but I've always been able to fix them. Sometimes from some pretty messed up states. MS Windows doesn't expose the guts enough to make that possible, nor does it provide you with the tools to do that kind of thing. Linux has the tools and also does expose the guts, but what about the documentation? Maybe it's my imagination but it's hard to find answers to Linux related questions, because many distros do things their own way, use different sets of cobbled together software to implement the system, or the documentation you find is severely out of date.  I still can't get Gentoo to boot into single user mode, nor can I find the correct answer to get it to do so.
> 
> ...



Exactly what I would say!


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## Anonymous (May 28, 2012)

FreeBSD can run linux apps quicker than linux does and linux cannot run BSD binaries at all. So running BSD servers means less vendor lock-in
 FreeBSD's community is in general more educated about technology therefore support is better quality which saves a significant amount time/money when solving technical issues
 FreeBSD has much more and better organized documentation making training quicker, easier, and therefore cost less
 FreeBSD is developed by teams of people in a highly coordinated/organized way leading to stability in features, security, structure, etc from it's beginning. Whereas, linux's development is more unorganized/chaotic leading to applications quickly becoming incompatible and features frequently being removed and/or added.

Linux is for the short sighted business owner who thinks the larger linux labor force will save them money because hiring linux people is perceived as cheaper. In the long run using FreeBSD for anything linux can do is a lot less expensive though for the reasons listed above. Especially considering linux admins can be hired to administer BSD because of the similarities, a short training and research period of no more than a week should be enough for them to adjust.


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## fluca1978 (May 28, 2012)

FreeBSD has a much more professional support (for free) than any linux distro, at least this is true in my experience.
FreeBSD is much more solid and rigorous than Linux is
FreeBSD has a very well done documentation.

And you are lucky if your boss is asking only "why", I had once that let me choose the switch to BSD and then tried to make the whole switching to fail since he was so little brained that he simply refused to learn something different from Linux (not that he knew Linux so well, tough!).


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## paulfrottawa (May 28, 2012)

When I do get a chance to say something about Free*BSD* I say this.

It's the userland that can be trailered in comparison to a distribution that couldn't be upgraded. And it has no purchasing distractions.


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## nORKy (May 29, 2012)

Wow! I didn't think my subject would have many response like this! I know why I choose FreeBSD too! The FreeBSD community is: patient, interesting, professional, sharing ideas. You are like a family or best friend, try to respond, try to find a solution.

I saw on some other community guys that are "fighting" about which one has the better response! You're not like this.

Thank you all!


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## graudeejs (Jun 2, 2012)

nORKy said:
			
		

> Wow! I didn't think my subject would have many response like this! I know why I choose FreeBSD too! The FreeBSD community is: patient, interesting, professional, sharing ideas. You are like a family or best friend, try to respond, try to find a solution.
> 
> I saw on some other community guys that are "fighting" about which one has the better response! You're not like this.
> 
> Thank you all!



So how did it go?


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## nORKy (Jun 5, 2012)

*N*ot yet. I'm waiting for the meeting.


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## swirling_vortex (Jun 6, 2012)

First, I would ask yourself is FreeBSD good for you? Ultimately at the end, if the project is approved, you're going to be the one responsible for the whole thing. So, before you advocate a certain OS, you need to make sure that FreeBSD is going to be able to do what your current setup does. 

Now, I don't know what the technical expertise of your boss or other personnel are, but in general speaking technical terms to management doesn't go over too well. So, if you're focusing on an enterprise filesystem, don't say, "FreeBSD has ZFS and Linux only has ext4." 

Say, 

"One advantage to FreeBSD is that it has an enterprise level filesystem that can help ensure greater reliability of our data. This means that issues such as hard drives failing won't be as much of a problem as ZFS has a high focus on data integrity. Unfortunately, due to licensing issues, our current Linux setup won't ever get those features."

Then, you also have to factor in training. If your staff don't know FreeBSD, then you'll have to account for training in your plan as well. If you can give your boss a reasonable migration plan, then he might change his mind. But as I'll state again, the main point should be on how it'll improve his business.


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## kpedersen (Jun 6, 2012)

Why toilet tissue rather than tree bark?

*chuckles*


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## Mage (Jun 6, 2012)

Today the only sane filesystem is ZFS. (BTRFS is the worst IT joke in this century. When I read fedora-devel I feel sorry every time). No other available filesystem but ZFS cares about your data. After switching to ZFS you will see how often the hard drives do mistakes. You won't believe your eyes. And you won't understand how can anyone use a checksum-less filesystem in 2012 for anything. Yes, I mean anything. Even for photos or music collection. If you don't need your data you shouldn't even save it. ZFS was my number one reason for switching from Linux.

FreeBSD is clean. You won't have 2536 obsolete files in /etc. You won't have ten /something/somewhere/bin directories. You won't have installed programs mixed up with the base system. You can remove every installed package in seconds without hurting your system or leaving obsolete files. You don't have to reboot your freshly installed system from CD just because you forgot to install a DHCP client or something like that. (There is no DHCP client in Gentoo base). In FreeBSD the base system contains the software you need to maintain your computer. Your system update won't make your bootloader fail like Debian, Ubuntu and even Gentoo does that sometimes.

Everything is there where it should be. (Well, 99.5% of times.) You just feel right.

At least one of the available firewalls (ipfw) were made by people who don't hate everyone else in the world. This is not true for iptables.

You won't spend hours configuring 10k features of the kernel time after time but you also won't miss kernel features.

FreeBSD for the desktop is in no way less than Linux. I switched to FreeBSD on all my desktops and I never looked back. The things you will miss from a FreeBSD desktop are the same you will miss from Linux. (For me it's high quality audio and most of the 3D games. But those are presented in Windows and not in Linux).

Ten years of using Linux never made me donate. After several months of use I donated to FreeBSD. Because I felt that my money goes to the right place.
As for downsides: sometimes software gets available for FreeBSD later than for Linux. I had to wait for MongoDB 2.0 for several months more. I also had hard time installing Ruby with RVM one year ago. It wasn't stable. Now it is.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 7, 2012)

#3 was a huge point for me when I first started out using FreeBSD years ago. Still is.


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## fender0107401 (Jun 7, 2012)

Mage said:
			
		

> Today the only sane filesystem is ZFS. (BTRFS is the worst IT joke in this century. When I read fedora-devel I feel sorry every time). No other available filesystem but ZFS cares about your data. After switching to ZFS you will see how often the hard drives do mistakes. You won't believe your eyes. And you won't understand how can anyone use a checksum-less filesystem in 2012 for anything. Yes, I mean anything. Even for photos or music collection. If you don't need your data you shouldn't even save it. ZFS was my number one reason for switching from Linux.
> 
> FreeBSD is clean. You won't have 2536 obsolete files in /etc. You won't have ten /something/somewhere/bin directories. You won't have installed programs mixed up with the base system. You can remove every installed package in seconds without hurting your system or leaving obsolete files. You don't have to reboot your freshly installed system from CD just because you forgot to install a DHCP client or something like that. (There is no DHCP client in Gentoo base). In FreeBSD the base system contains the software you need to maintain your computer. Your system update won't make your bootloader fail like Debian, Ubuntu and even Gentoo does that sometimes.
> 
> ...



When I use gentoo, I have to spend time to config the linux kernel over and over again.
I have to confess that I am aggressive, but I do config the linux kernel when a new kernel is available in gentoo stable.
Finally, I have realized that this is an endless fight.
Right now, the linux kernel includes about 2000+ options.


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## UNIXgod (Jun 7, 2012)

fender0107401 said:
			
		

> When I use gentoo, I have to spend time to config the linux kernel over and over again.
> I have to confess that I am aggressive, but I do config the linux kernel when a new kernel is available in gentoo stable.
> Finally, I have realized that this is an endless fight.
> Right now, the linux kernel includes about 2000+ options.



Yep it's a joke. *make menuconfig* is ridiculous. The first time I compiled linux I was so turned off with it after years of building kernels on FreeBSD with simply copying GENERIC and editing the custom kernel configuration with vi.

It really amazes me that it gets the marketability it does even until today. The "Year of the Lunix Desktop" never happened and it has none of the elegance of a real UNIX server. It's prime user base really pushes it like yet another buzzword.

It's just the way the world works I guess. I still recall watching Steve Jobs announce OSX with its core OS running Berkeley UNIX and he had to explain in the key note that it's "Like Linux" and "FreeBSD UNIX which is the same as Linux". 

Reference is made at 2:45 ish:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko4V3G4NqII

Buzzzwords and marketeers =)


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## joseche (Jun 8, 2012)

This are good technical reasons, but you don't go with technical reasons to business people.

Again you have to present true cases of improvement for your business. Ex. you don't need to improve the performance or the security of an application that doesn't have an impact on customers ( either internal or external), your time should be invested on critical services and the impact to final users. If FreeBSD helps you improve critical services in some way, explain exactly that and you may have a case, if not, moving from any OS to FreeBSD will just be a waste of time from management's perspective.

My 2 cents.


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## graudeejs (Jun 8, 2012)

Nice article
http://adrianchadd.blogspot.com/2012/06/freebsd-netflix-cdn.html


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## frijsdijk (Jun 8, 2012)

Security. FreeBSD is far more easy to secure than Linux.


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## da1 (Jun 8, 2012)

Windows is even easier, just pull out the network cable ))).

Sorry, coulnd't resist ).


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## graudeejs (Jun 8, 2012)

da1 said:
			
		

> Windows is even easier, just pull out the network cable ))).
> 
> Sorry, coulnd't resist ).



You forgot to say: remove any chance to attach removable media (CD-ROM, USB.... etc)


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