Ken Wahl wrote:
...
I found FreeBSD to be very stable, fast and friendly as long as you
stuck with the pre-compiled packages from pkg_add. Once you start
upgrading your ports tree by following CURRENT things got flakey and
there would be fairly frequent breakage and hours of frustration after
compiling a huge port to only have it exit "error 1." This flakiness
drove me, along with my interest in its security aspects, to OpenBSD...
Okay, I can't restrain myself. :) This is exactly the behavior you
should expect when following the CURRENT branch. To quote the
freebsd.org web page, "...keep in mind that FreeBSD-CURRENT is the
bleeding edge of FreeBSD development. FreeBSD-CURRENT users are
expected to have a high degree of technical skill, and should be capable
of solving difficult system problems on their own. If you are new to
FreeBSD, think twice before installing it." They go on to say, "whether
or not FreeBSD-CURRENT brings disaster or greatly desired functionality
can be a matter of which exact moment you grabbed the source code in!" [1]
What you probably wanted, to get the desired functionality, would be
FreeBSD's -STABLE. Note that even tracking -STABLE (RELENG_5,
technically) is not considered the ultimate in system stability, for
that consider tracking a particular release, such as RELENG_5_4, which
is generally reserved for servers which have little to no interest in
new functionality, only in preserving a running system with security
updates and as little disruption as possible.
Yes, FreeBSD can be just as stable as OpenBSD. Yes, OpenBSD has a
marginally better security track record. Yes, pf has now been
integrated into FreeBSD, and you can have your favorite packet filter on
your BSD of choice. :) Yes, FreeBSD has something like half an order
of magnitude more packages than OpenBSD or NetBSD.
That's the end of my rant,
Aaron S. Joyner
[1]
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/current-stable.html#CURRENT
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