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

[Daniel Kelly]

"Something vaguely memorish"

I've been getting a feeling from this thread that I got when I logged onto a
BBS via telnet about a year ago.  Nostalgia.  Even toying around with
MacPorts on OSX brings me that feeling, and I was never a Unix user, I
started out on DOS/Win 3.11.

I can relate to the RPM nighmare, I gave up on Mandrake relatively quick as
a noob.

On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 11:14 PM, Brian Sobolak <brian at planetshwoop.com>wrote:

>
> 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
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