[UFO Chicago] Solaris 10 vs. Linux: Get the Real TCO Facts (fwd)

[Brian Sobolak]

On Fri, March 27, 2009 1:06 pm, Christopher D. Heer wrote:

> Having said that, I've got a few older boxes lying around and I'm tempted
> to try BSD and others, but I'm curious as to what it is the proponents of
> BSD, Solaris, etc. really like over Debian-based Linux, or even Linux in
> general.
>
> What's the hardware/driver situation like?  I'm thinking of things like
> printers, scanners, and even video...is this relatively painless these
> days?

<!--  warning -- something vaguely memoirish follows -->

I first tried FreeBSD in 1997 when I copied 17 floppies from the UIC
computer lab and then subsequently stayed up all night loading them onto
my *blazing* Packard Bell, only to have the thing fail on me at about
5:45am.

In 1999 I installed various flavors of Linux.  I worked at a tiny company
and pirated an old PC to play with.  I installed Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse,
BeOS (not linux but fun) etc etc.  They were fun to play around with what
came out of the box, but installing software *for me* was a nightmare. 
RPMs didn't work too well.

I switched to FreeBSD and have been running it off and on ever since.  The
reason I switched (and stayed) are:

  - _Social Engineering_  As I said at the meeting last night, I like that
I can keep all of the URLs for support and technical materials in my
head and the development process is orderly.  (In particular, I liked
freebsd.org/handbook, freebsd.org/ports, and questions at freebsd.org)

  - _GNU_ I was frequently exhausted by some Linux fora that would go at
great lengths to tell me how awesome GNU/Linux was, only to have my
compile fail.

FreeBSD is fantastic for server needs.  I've run mail servers, web
servers, etc. off a DSL connection and appreciated running a real Unix
server.

It's typically a bit behind Linux on support cutting edge hardware, but
hardware support, especially for an older computer, is good.

brian