hmm, on Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 06:46:27PM +0000, Jacob Meuser said that > so who's benchmarking install/upgrade time? lost time due to > instability? lost time due to gratuitous API changes? lost time > "tuning" setups? lost time searching on google instead of reading > manuals?
i am afraid my world is not that black and white. i did not know you are familiar with the install/upgrade procedures of every system besides openbsd. a debian minimal is done as fast as openbsd, just to name one i know. (not prefer it, mind you). openbsd is really not the only system that can be installed in ~5 minutes... and upgrading is still easier on e.g. linux just because of the sheer man power they have to track all the packages. the only way to upgrade e.g. binary packages in openbsd is to a) upgrade together with the system, b) build it yourself. neither is a time saver. having said that, i always cross my fingers when doing debian upgrades/updates, because they tend to sneak in little surprises. i have no such fears doing pkg_add -ui re: instability, i used to run snapshots in production as well, but since 4.2 i switched to releases because it was as easy as running rtorrent to lock up the machine. there is instability in every single computer system.. re: tuning. it is nice to have a system that always performs the best, pitty it is often impossible. program writers have to provide sane default settings that work "everywhere". specialized workloads (or just plainly higher ones) will always need special settings, and i still prefer to tune knobs to recompiling sources... for example the default installed openbsd with its apache without "tuning" is basically useless for any site with a bit heavier traffic. re: documentation, yes openbsd's is superb, but lets be real, who has never googled anything related to openbsd? and also comes down to user base, the chances of finding even a ridiculously obscure issue on certain unnamed systems' mailing lists is way higher than elsewhere. just look at all the ignored mail on misc@ coda: there would be everywhere openbsd if it would be up to me. but it isn't. and so i need to be proficient in many more systems. and that's why your argument limps, i have very good chances of solving problems on all those platforms, not just openbsd. -f -- i think emacs is a nice operating system, but unix has a better editor.
