Aloha
yes I know there are posts on this
here is the questions I am asking and why
I do not really know redhat or freebsd so I do not know one system better than the other so starting from ground one pretty much in both worlds
I am familiar with dir structure of redhat but that is not that much to relearn so
I will be runningit as a mail server and webmail and a mailing list users unknow, DNS, MySQL db, Vbulletin, PHP
its a dell 1u 512 megs 750PIII 2 a8 gig hd running raid 1
my thoughts from reading so far are bsd is more secure and stable but harder to run and less addons etc.. can run on it redhat easier to maintain and most universal

1) if you had to start over knowing what you know now would you run one over the other and why ?
a) web based mail program your favorite ?
b) I take it I can run Qmail ?
c) bind or others out there your favorite?
d) security issues bsd vs redhat ?
e) any other thoughts

Mahalos for those that reply

from my limited experience of both operating systems id give the following responses:

1) Linux - easier to adminster and learn afaik, ive seen alot more support around for RedHat / Mandrake / etc...

a) exists for both

b) yes - QMAIL is faster on BSD

c) yes afaik you can run DNS on either of them

d) bsd is more secure as its a little more controlled in a sense and RH/ Mandrake/ etc... is far more widely used and therefore people try to exploit it more, this is my firm belief why M$ gets hacked more, as its hated more and used more worldwide.

e) if you are running DNS / QMAIL / SQL go for BSD, if you are looking to use it for learning purposes to further yourself use RedHat or equivalent...

1) FreeBSD - out of the box, it's more secure and reliable. It's not a dictatorship (Linus Torvalds or whatever his name is). The ports make administration for beginners very simple. BSD allows for much easier administration. BSD has a simple kernel configurator -- edit a conf file (in english!), run a couple of commands, reboot, you now have a new kernel. It's not so straight-forward in linux. BSD can handle TCP/IP much more efficiently than Linux (this is where the stable/reliability mostly kicks in). There are less exploits for BSD than for Linux (especially Red Hat). BSD is also much more organized as far as directory structures goes (out of the box). Did I mention BSD is easier to administrate? :)

a) SquirrelMail - www.squirrelmail.org

b) Definately run QMail. Sendmail is old, bulky, a pain in the rump to configure, and slow.

c) Bind for DNS runs on both RH and BSD.

d) Like xtstrike mentioned, RH and other linux flavors get attacked much more since they are more widely used, therefore more exploits are found. BSD isn't so readily attacked, so exploits aren't as readily available. It is known that BSD is more secure out of the box than Linux is. Further securing is up to the administrator to do. Either one can pretty much be as secure as the other provided the proper patches and precautions are in place.

e) I would recommend starting on RH just to get the feel for things. Install some things from source (not RPMs), configure a few things... get the feel for the *nix environment. Once you know your way around and have been spoon-fed most of the things, move on to BSD. You'll find it much more organized, much easier to configure, and a better all-around OS. That's just my suggestion. I have suggested it to a great many people in the past and that seems to be the easiest way for them to learn the *nix environment.

Other points to consider: Don't run BIND, run djbdns. It is configured differently (IMHO simpler), but the main point is that it is faster, more secure, and uses less memory.

Another point re BSD vs linux which nobody has mentioned: they have different default policies for disk coherance. Under linux if a system crashes you'll have to fsck the drives when you next boot, and even then you have a good chance of having problems. FreeBSD, on the other hand, has a default policy which is more conservative: It always leaves disks in a coherant state.

While this means that linux has faster disk writes than FreeBSD (again, by default, you can change this behaviour easily) in the case of web hosting write performance is far less important than drive coherance, except possibly for heavily DB-based sites.

I have been thinking of switching. I used freebsd once before for a very short time. What I want to know is how software install differently, i know linux pretty well, running it etc, just not the guts. I would like a more secure os, the reason I am reinstalling is because an attack. But what about apache, bind, etc, does anything really change? But Im doing webhosting and mainly need to know what differences there will be. Ima get a book and search the web this week.

davidb, you'll find that applications are configured and act more or less the same across operating systems; as for installation, if you use the ports system (cd /usr/ports/www/apache13; make all install, etc.) you'll find that it is very easy to install all your applications. (Far easier than searching around trying to find the right RPM).

I HATE RPMS, no source so you cant do jack, like patching if you need to(or at least I never knew how), I just know I learned my lesson of installing RH with just the bare minimum. The main software I plan on using is now being ported to free bsd(it only worked on RH6.1 and .2 before), so I want to try it becuase I heard it preforms better

Originally posted by cperciva
Other points to consider: Don't run BIND, run djbdns. It is configured differently (IMHO simpler), but the main point is that it is faster, more secure, and uses less memory.

Aloha
yeah this is what I was waiting to see if it came up saw this and he says his is better simpler etc...

Mahalos
so far info has been great looking forward to more input form others
again Mahalos

Originally posted by davidb
I HATE RPMS, no source so you cant do jack, like patching if you need to(or at least I never knew how), I just know I learned my lesson of installing RH with just the bare minimum. The main software I plan on using is now being ported to free bsd(it only worked on RH6.1 and .2 before), so I want to try it becuase I heard it preforms better
I think the way the ports in FreeBSD perform greatly outweighs ANY advantages RPMs have (if any at all). When I started out using RH, I would download an RPM and try to install it, only to find there was a dependancy. I would hunt down that dependancy and find that IT needed something else installed. I would finally get that initial dependancy installed and then I would need to hunt down ANOTHER!! You can pretty much bet I threw RH out the window shortly after. I didn't install anything else on it and just concentrated on learning how the configurations worked and all the basic things (I had prior Solaris experience, but Linux was a bit different).

I then moved on to FreeBSD. Oh wow. The ports. The ports do everything for you. They download the packages, check for dependancies, download those if necessary, configure and install everything for you, clean up after you -- everything is automated. If you need to customize the installation, just make some changes to some files and run the commands again. This is one part of BSD that makes administration a breeze. Although some things are better installed straight from source, the ports are an _excellent_ resource. I just can't say enough about them. :) If you Red Hat admins/users think RPMs are cool and easy, check out the BSD ports. :D

RedHat all the way :D :D :D

i dont even need to backup my answer :)

Well, I'm installing FreeBSD 4.3 on my former Mandrake box for the first time. I'm really looking forward to get to know FreeBSD. My friend is a DFN (Debian-Fanactical-Nut), so there is NO way I was going Debian :D

BTW: FreeBSD 4.3 has to be the easiest installation I've done so far. Doing it all by ftp :)

Hehe, my friend is a DFN as well. :D

I installed FreeBSD for the first time ever about a month ago. It was fairly easy, I also installed it from FTP. I learned how to use the ports, and that was it, from there I installed apache with SSL support, PHP4, Perl, MySQL, PHPMyAdmin, HalfLife (Counterstrike) server, etc. As mentioned before, the ports do the job for you. I also managed to add ipfw and turn the box into a gateway with some help. So far things have gone pretty good and although the box is only a Celeron 300a with 64mb ram, it loads the pages amazingly fast. Overall, I'm very happy with it :D

All this talk is wanting me to get mine up, Im stuck on hardware problems, I normally screw around with personal comps until fixed or they break, but not with servers.