Re: Help w/ *BSD advocacy in the workplace please

[Daniel De Kok <daniel.de.kok@hetnet.nl>]

> I am about to become involved in a project begun by others who have since 
> moved on.  Unfortunately for me these people were Red Hat fans.  I am 
> advocating for OpenBSD and/or FreeBSD.  It's a startup in it's very early 
> stages, so there's not a lot invested that will be lost by switching.  I 
> know quite a few of us started with Linux before getting clued in.  I'd 
> appreciate if some of you could lend your voice and help back me up on this 
> by providing summaries of your Linux experiences and motivations to move 
> onto what we all know to be a superior OS.

Some reasons why I personally stopped using Linux:

- Most Linux distributors are very commercial. They are the type of companies
that only think about making releases (thus making money) instead of delivering
a good product.

- Most Linux dists are user-friendly, but not sysadmin friendly. They contain
all sorts of wizzards, but "real" sysadmins prefer plain config-files.

- The BSD-license is in my opinion better than GPL, you don't have to give the
sources away if you don't want to.

- BSD originates from the 1970's and is much more mature.

- Theo and other folks did a line-by-line security audit. So if you want
security choose OpenBSD.

and last but not least:

- Daemons look much cuter than penguins;-)

On one of our school's servers I installed SuSE Linux (I only heard about *BSD,
I never used it that time). Right now I wouldn't install Linux, because:

- We have to buy each release (there isn't a real upgrade mechanism in Linux
like in BSD). 

- The configuration is done through programs like yast, so it is really hard
to influence your system directly.

- Each version is unstable. SuSE Linux version 6.0 is crashing all the time and
6.1 messes up the filesystem. I have the same experiences with Red Hat.


My 2 cents,
Daniel