Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.mel.connect.com.au!news.mira.net.au!vic.news.telstra.net!act.news.telstra.net!imci3!newsfeed.internetmci.com!newsxfer2.itd.umich.edu!portc01.blue.aol.com!newsstand.cit.cornell.edu!news.acsu.buffalo.edu!acsu.buffalo.edu!pleung From: pleung@cs.buffalo.edu (Patrick Leung) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: FreeBSD VS BSDI, INC. Date: 14 Sep 1996 17:25:31 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 84 Message-ID: <51epqb$84b@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> References: <51963f$2dr4@news-s01.ny.us.ibm.net> <323A3293.5C66@wsg.net> <51drrm$5s0@typo.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: gagarin.cs.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: pleung X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] BOFH (web@typo.org) wrote: : : 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. haha... more and more people today rely on some quick point & click solution. ;-)) I agree that it's important to know how to do everything from the ground up yourself rather than heavily relying on scripts or point & click solutions. : : "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.. Newsgroups are great. I've learned quite a lot by reading various UNIX newsgroups alone. Sometimes, I get the feeling that there are more questions than answers though ;-)) Or even worse, half or more of the articles are flames about windoze and M$ which have nothing to do with UN*X. I can't comment on BSDI's tech support, since I never used it. However, the tech support you get from ANY company is not necessarily better than what you'll get in the newsgroups. You might get ignored for a while, or they say they'll call you back later but never do. The people doing tech support may or may NOT be professionals, depending on the company. Tech support team may consist of full-time 24 hour on call professionals ( I kind of doubt it), OR newbies that may not even know more than you do and get paid $5/hour to answer your calls at 3:00 am at night. ;-)) In some cases, it may be a mixture of both professionals and newbies in the tech support team. : As far as I can tell though, they seem to be about even. One thing that no one has mentioned so far is warranty. BSDI is commerical product, and comes with warranty, while FreeBSD, as the name suggest, is free and comes with NO warranty. If your system suddenly screws up, corrupts some multi-million dollar project you might have in your system, you can sue BSDI, but you can NOT sue FreeBSD. ;-)) This is providing that you have evidence that BSDI has some real system error that caused the screw up, and it was not from misuse or abuse on your part. This is one reason you MIGHT want to use a commerical UNIX system rather than one that is free, such as FreeBSD or Linux.