Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!news.dacom.co.kr!arclight.uoregon.edu!nntp.primenet.com!uucp.primenet.com!news.typo.org!web From: BOFH <web@typo.org> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: FreeBSD VS BSDI, INC. Date: 14 Sep 1996 08:54:14 GMT Organization: typo.org Lines: 59 Message-ID: <51drrm$5s0@typo.org> References: <51963f$2dr4@news-s01.ny.us.ibm.net> <323A3293.5C66@wsg.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: typo.org : I personally was using BSDI for a time after setting aside FreeBSD for a : time. I think it is excellent software and may indeed be right for some : people. I cannot say it was right for me however. As far as setting up : a machine, they take about the same time to do. BSDI just has a few : more scripts to make things easier. Many such scripts are in FreeBSD : and those that are not can be found all over the Internet. Honestly, : setting up a FreeBSD machine without the scripts is not that much harder : as long as you have the will to learn. There are plenty of people here : who can help you as well. The hardest part about the BSDI 2.1 install is ifiguring out how you want to partition your harddrive and what packages you want to install. : A few things to consider. First, FreeBSD and BSDI are very, very : similar. You'll note they share almost identical spec sheets if looked They are both derrived from 4.4bsd lite so inherrited many of the same things. : at side by side. For an ISP, the differences are minor. One thing that : is different is the scripting found in BSDI. This was supposed to make : things easier though I found a few things were actually more confusing : since it was sometimes oversimplified.... Another thing too, what : happens if a script doesn't work. If you don't know how to do it : manually you're in trouble. It never hurts knowing how to do things the If you don't know how to do it manually, you shouldn't be an ISP. Your upstream provider doesn't have time to give you UNIX lessons and your customers won't wait for you to figure it out. : "hard" way. BSDI does come with tech-support however. In my experience : though it left some things to be desired.... A call to tech was : answered by a secretary who took down our information and informed us : that someone would get back to us shortly. The next morning they called : and were unable to solve our problem anyhow. I've gotten better, There are good and bad things about this. If they set it up properly, it gives them a chance to run your problem through a tech support database and possibly come up with someone elses fix for your exact problem. Which ends up saving both of you time and headaches. I must admit though.. I have had my own share of problems with BSDI tech support. (Namely in getting them to realize that I *do* know what I'm talking about and I'm *NOT* seeing things.) : quicker responses here in this newsgroup. In FreeBSD, adding a user can Yeah but theres no guarentee that the fix you were given will make it into the next release.. I have no real experience in maintaining a freebsd system as everything I maintain currently is either BSDI or solaris. After working closely with it, I've found several things about BSDI that I find very hard to live with but can do nothing to change (I'm no kernel hacker so there's not a whole lot of low level stuff I can do with a problem.) I'm sure if I poke around enough and put it under enough stress, I'll find things about FreeBSD I can't cope with as well. As far as I can tell though, they seem to be about even.