FreeBSD

[randychase]

Anyone experienced with running this OS?
http://www.freebsd.org

I guess I am going to have to learn. We are moving parts of pcbstandards over to a new server running on it.

PCBstandards is now located on 2 servers with 1.4gigs of space and we are transferring around 15-20gigs per month in downloads. That is a lot. I expect it will increase too.

[Ivor Bowden]

Yes, I run FreeBSD at home, on an old 486 machine. I use it mainly as a firewall and server for my home network of PCs. I have a cable modem, and with "natd" (name/address translator daemon) all my PCs have separate ips, but I only need one from the ISP. The firewall is pretty strong.

FreeBSD has been extremely reliable. Uptime is months - the only time it goes down is for a power outage, and that wouldn't happen if I had an UPS on it.

It is also quite efficient. Even though I run all my network traffic through it, the PCs are just as fast as if they had a direct connection. This on an old 486 machine. A streamlined OS, it doesn't need much processor power and memory to get its job done.

FreeBSD is FREE! There is a lot of support for it. I suppose the closest "competitor" is Linux. The people I know that use FreeBSD instead of Linux do so mainly because they believe that FreeBSD has better network capabilities.

If you really want super network and security there is a version called NetBSD, I think it is also free, but is more concerned with network and security issues.

There is also a stripped down version call picoBSD, for embedded systems type applications.

There is an X-server if you want a GUI, I have not used it, I only use the command line interface.

I am quite pleased with FreeBSD for my application.

-Ivor