# FreeBSD my impressions after one month



## Radek (Nov 21, 2010)

Hi everybody,

after the latest release of Ububntu (10.10) I was just quite disappointed of it because lot of things suddenly stopped to work the right way. So I just started to search for some alternative. Then I just tried to become a bit familiar with FreeBSD and PC-BSD.

Well, it's more than one month now since that time and here I am. I would like to share my impressions about it.

As first I tried PC-BSD on my working station which doesn't work with Ubuntu after the latest update any longer. The system, I mean PC-BSD, is much more performant and more stable as any operating system I ever saw before. Almost. Main problem I have, is the desktop environment. KDE wasn't usable at all, Gnome or XFCE just partially. The X-Server is dying very often. 
However all these problems are probably related to the intel video driver and not to FreeBSD self. I pretty sure about it as I got similar problems with Linux.
So my conclusion is: for a software developer and probably not only, *PC-BSD is very suitable for a workstation*.

Then I tried to use PC-BSD as primary operating system for my notebook. Well, I have to say, if you are using your notebook as a multimedia computer I would either suggest to use Kubuntu or something similar. There is until yet no possibility to use webcam with skype for example. An USB-Headset is quite complicated to configure and it's very hard to use additional monitor/beamer if you have to plug it in while the system is running.
I wasn't able to get suspend and hibernate to work. However maybe if I could invest bit more time... I just don't want to say it is not possible.
So my conclusion: *PC-BSD isn't very suitable for (multimedia)desktop or notebook*.

Now the best thing: two days ago on one of our server one of the HDD has been damaged. After I restored the RAID I used this opportunity to move some functionality to an other server. Basically the statistics (Piwik). I created a virtual machine on our other server and installed FreeBSD on it. The installation (via ports) of all these things you need on a server needs a bit more time as for example on Ubuntu but it's definitely not more complicated. Quite contrary to. So after I installed everything I moved Piwik to the newly created server. 
Now I wouldn't say that our sites are very high traffic websites but we have about 100.000 (humans) visits every day. Now our statistic are counted on the server so about 100k visits every day lot of MySQL queries aso. And I just have to say: what a performance. It's just unbelievable!! The system is using just about 200MB RAM. The load average show mostly 0.00 - 0.1 This machine is extremely fast.
Therefore my conclusion: *FreeBSD* is, I think, the *best operating system for servers* I ever saw. 

Best regards,
Radek


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## graudeejs (Nov 21, 2010)

Thanks for sharing your experience.
If I may suggest: Try to make custom desktop  It might have some rough edges, but once you're used to it, you'll be 10x times as fast as using Desktop Environments (That's what I think)

100K visits a day, I think that is A lot


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## Radek (Nov 21, 2010)

killasmurf86 said:
			
		

> If I may suggest: Try to make custom desktop  It might have some rough edges, but once you're used to it, you'll be 10x times as fast as using Desktop Environments (That's what I think)



I think it's good idea, I was already thinking about it. However in this case it's really some problem with the intel video driver so I hope they (intel) are going to fix it some day.



			
				killasmurf86 said:
			
		

> 100K visits a day, I think that is A lot



Thanks. However visits, not visitors


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