Re: how to convince that debian is one the three major choices for a stable server environment?
Γιώργος Πάλλας put forth on 2/22/2010 7:01 AM:
> (it is, isn't it? :-) )
>
> So, yes, we are moving on from our 10year experience with gentoo, and
> are searching for our new environment. From my personal experience I
> would say debian stable - any hard evidence to support the claim? Server
> OS statistics? Statistics for stableness? Bugs? Any white papers showing
> debian's superiority?
>
> I am also doing my google research, but I'm asking if someone can point
> me to something like real hard evidence...
What applications are you planning on running? What kind of performance do
you need?
As others have suggested, *BSD have a great security and stability track
record. However, Linux (all distros) have much more capability than *BSD in
many areas. File system choice is limited in the *BSD variants to UFS/FFS,
the BSD Fast filesystem, and SFS, which reserves odd numbered inodes for ACL
information, but otherwise is identical to FFS. *BSD do not often
alternative high performance file systems such as XFS, the fastest
filesystem available for most applications.
*BSD has abysmal driver support for much modern hardware including RAID and
network cards, printers, USB, etc, etc. There simply aren't enough
developers coding drivers for *BSD. This has been the case for a very long
time. I've not used *BSD for many years, so this driver starvation
situation may have changed recently, but if so, I'm unaware of it.
In summary, *BSD have a few advantages over stable Linux (Debian, SLES,
RHEL). However, IMO, *BSD have far more disadvantages compared to stable
Linux variants than advantages. *BSD have a better overall security track
record. System stability is probably a tie, although depends on application
mix and work load. Linux trounces *BSD in filesystem choice, application
choice, hardware choice, active development, shorter time to bug fixes,
quicker driver development for new hardware, etc, etc.
Your choice of Unix like OS really boils down to your particular needs. I
would never dream of selecting *BSD for an application just because of its
perceived better security track records, especially if it forced me to jump
through various hoops to get all of what I need running on and under *BSD.
--
Stan
Reply to: