Hi, > I'm considering FreeBSD as an alternative, but I was wondering what > people think of FreeBSD as a platform for Postfix. It's obviously not > as easy to maintain as Ubuntu, but it does have a reputation for > stability. Any thoughts, recommendations or experiences would be > appreciated. I am currently setting up a mail server based upon Postfix on FreeBSD. It works as well as one can expect.
Now regarding the ease of maintenance, I would say that you have a wrong point of view: OS upgrade on a production server should never be something automated that you run blindly: at any stage, it is possible that something goes wrong, so you better keep good control when you are doing an update. That is the reason why I keep on with the RELENG update track on FreeBSD, that only applies security patches (on a running server I don't need new features or new drivers for something I don't use and that could cause trouble to my system). Beside, I agree with the comments about separation between base OS and additional software, good documentation, good ports (build from source, with a flexibility in the options you want to install), stability of NFS server (nothing specific to do to accept Ubuntu clients BTW). And yes, I have been an happy user of FreeBSD for more than 10 years, so I must be biased :) Bests, Olivier
