Gentoo vs FreeBSD

j79zlr · Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2004 9:57 pm Post subject:

This really isn't a good example, but you used it. php4.3.10 was released on December 15th, it was in the freebsd ports tree on the 16th, http://www.freshports.org/lang/php4 It wasn't marked as stable on x86 until the 17th http://www.gentoo-portage.com/dev-php/php/ChangeLog

As far as being unstable, well, a month ago or so I unmasked glibc to use the nptlonly and the userlocale features and it completely hosed my install, I had to reinstall, without unmasking glibc, to fix it. I've never had anything in the freebsd ports tree break my box so bad I had to reinstall it. There is a lengthy thread on this board about it here. I am just saying that ebuilds fail a lot more frequently than FreeBSD's ports.

Like I said before, I use Gentoo, and I really like it; I just don't like the pointless and often wrong arguments that FreeBSD sucks because of _fillintheblank_.

jonaswidarsson · Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2004 10:54 pm Post subject:

OK, but you are talking about unmasked ebuilds now.
You said above that portage has been buggy.

I understand fully that tricking with masked ebuild might give some trouble. But then one should be prepared for crazy behaviour, correct?

As gentoo is a do-whatever-if-you-like-but-don't-blame-us distro (I am thinking of freedom of choice, "optimize 'til you die") this is possible. But I never do those things on the gentoo servers. Running gentoo a little laid back as far as "optimizations" goes is wuite stable I think. I mean. I've had no trouble yet on my six boxes, over the year that has passed.

jonaswidarsson · Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2004 11:04 pm Post subject:

j79zlr · Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2004 11:10 pm Post subject:

Thats my point though, you have to unmask ebuilds to get the latest version, but they break, and often. I learned my lesson, I don't unmask barely anything anymore except for a small amount of apps that I want the latest version of, e.g. Gaim, Firefox, but the only way that the glibc build, that completely killed my box along with quite a few others, could have gotten into portage to begin with was by not being tested _at all_. It wasn't hard masked, and it should have been.

j79zlr · Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2004 11:12 pm Post subject:

SJR3t2 · Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2004 11:20 pm Post subject:

I just learned of this site http://www.securityfocus.com/bid . And it show security flaws of different systems. FreeBSD has hardly any, Gentoo has more, and it looks like microsoft has less then Gentoo.

Steven

j79zlr · Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2004 11:32 pm Post subject:

Be careful when you look at security reports. #1 alot of sites include ALL linux software when they make comparisions. Vulnerabilities in say apache are included, but add-on software is not included with Windows. #2 There may be more security holes found in Linux/Unix, but they are also patched. Microsoft has known holes, years old, that go unpatched. #3 look at the time to patch, Microsoft's FUD department likes to claim that they fix their holes more quickly than its open source counterparts, but this is purely a lie. Ususally a patch is really within hours of a hole being discover in OSS, Microsoft can take weeks or months, if they even bother to patch it at all. IE6 has 20 known and unpatched security advisories, some are over a year old.

SJR3t2 · Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2004 11:36 pm Post subject:

Okay that explains the difference between Windows and Gentoo. But even with that I think FreeBSD is better off then Gentoo. But maybe I am reading things wronge. If you could help me out with this it would be greatly apreated.

Steven

SJR3t2 · Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2004 11:39 pm Post subject:

Gentoo's list dose include other OSS on its list. Why is that? Why is it not included on FreeBSD when it uses some of the same software?

Steven

shagrat · Apprentice Joined: 10 Mar 2003 Posts: 219 Location: Norway

I tried installing FreeBSD 5.3 on my server last week. It lasted 3 days before i dd'ed back my gentoo setup

. But somethings were awesome. I liked it's more relaxed update cycle (looking forward to GLEP 19), it was VERY fast and it's implementation of pf rocked (haven't tried it on OpenBSD yet).

krolden · Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 11:38 am Post subject:

I wonder what's the best *BSD is to start with. FreeBSD has good documentation, but OpenBSD's POV on security really appeals me.

shagrat · Apprentice Joined: 10 Mar 2003 Posts: 219 Location: Norway

spb · Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 8:19 pm Post subject:

shashir · n00b Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 18

It is server you want... go with FreeBSD... all you need is server tools and database... FreeBSD has plenty of apps for that... It is pretty fast for servers... but Gentoo is best for desktop because as someone already said, all the applications for desktop are first made for Linux... If you want try Slackware... it is good for Server and Desktop... so stable that even Debian backs off... and if you use it right... you will not hit a single crash from the actual system.
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Raffi · l33t Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 731 Location: Moscow, Id.

When this thread started, I was intrigued by what I heard about FreeBSD, so I decided to install it on a spare machine. It took me a day or so to figure my way around, but in that time I figured out how to get X and sound working. Install new binary and compiled packages. How to compile a kernel and to integrate it into my home network. It's been a few years since I have used a BSD system and I must say things have come a long way. If there was no Gentoo, I would certainly be using FreeBSD.

However, that said, I like Gentoo's approach to packages better. All packages (system and others) are in portage. You don't have to figure out if what you want updated is part of ports or the system. Most of the things I did not like about FreeBSD were more of a matter of taste rather than something that was wrong. Not that anything about FreeBSD is bad, but I did not see any compelling reason to like it over Gentoo.

Mystilleef · Guru Joined: 27 Apr 2003 Posts: 561 Location: Earth

If stability and security are of highest priority, I suggest OpenBSD or Hardened Gentoo. Trust me, you will sleep better at night.

URL: < http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/hardened/primer.xml >

URL: < http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/hardened/ >
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Naughtyus · Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 10:26 pm Post subject:

j79zlr · Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 10:35 pm Post subject:

uptime doesn't necessarily mean stability, besides updating the FreeBSD world requires a reboot, and there are some security patches that require a rebuilding of the world. Same thing goes for the Linux kernel, it needs to be updated when there are security fixes released. Having a 1000 day uptime on a production server usually just means it is unpatched, regardless of OS.

petrjanda · Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 10:46 pm Post subject:

FreeBSD definately seems better managed than Gentoo.
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Raffi · l33t Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 731 Location: Moscow, Id.

monotux · Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2005 1:03 am Post subject:

The Linux kernel (gentoo != linux ffs!) does scale slightly better than FreeBSD, has better hardware support (alsa kicks OSS arse all the way to...some place very far!

) - but if there is something that makes the security, stability and usage hard for a Linux administrator is these freaking distros!

But, somehow, iptables feels a lot "snappier" when it comes to routing trafic etc, than OpenBSDs PF.
I think it's placebo, but who knows?

FreeBSD is a nice thing - one taste, tested, stable (have there ever been a vuln in the FreeBSD kernel?), good documentation (it's a lot better than the average linux distro, including gentoo), great performance with IDE drives (or is that a myth? I'm not sure), a superior tcp/ip stack, and if I would host a critical production server, FreeBSD would be my choice of OS.

and oh - using OpenBSD on a production server is not very smart, due to it's bad scaling (OpenBSD isn't developed with speed nor scalability in mind, security is their main focus) - even NetBSD would perform better

Conclusion:
Linux is great, but it's main problems are the distros, but does do well as a server and is great for the desktop.
FreeBSD seems a lot more stable and mature, though.
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Raffi · l33t Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 731 Location: Moscow, Id.

I must say I have been impressed by FreeBSD's man pages. Each command has one and they are well written. The only thing they lack is examples of command use. The man pages that are worth while in Gentoo have those.

I'm not sure their handbook is any better than ours. Both are very good.

Syntaxis · Guru Joined: 28 Apr 2002 Posts: 511 Location: London, UK