I was told freebsd has much better performance than linux under heavy load. I have experience managing linux boxes with cpanel but some of the boxes just under too much load even with a lot of php/apache/drive/network tuning. Just wondering how much faster will freebad be than linux and is it hard to learn freebsd?

I went through a very similar choice recently. Freebsd is well known for its stability. I also believe the server "load" is calculated differently. My observations have been the following:

1. The freebsd servers have been very, very stable. We have yet to see hardware lockups, server hangs due to high utilization, etc.

2. I have observed the server "load" to be lower on Freebsd, however, I can also say that I have noticed a little slowness on freebsd on serverloads above 2-3. While on linux, I usually wasn't able to notice until around 7 or so.

3. I think the freebsd system of ports is far superior to the rpm/yum/up2date system that linux uses. It provides for easy configuration/compilation of software from the server....this is my opinioni.

4. Freebsd/cpanel sometimes seems to be treated like a red-headed stepchild by the linux developers. However, we have managed to work through the issues and have developed a very stable hosting environment.

5. The learning curve is a little steep going from linux to freebsd. But as I become more acclimated, I like it more. Most of the commands are similar, but many things are in different places or the syntax is a bit different.

The bottom line for us? We are continuing to deploy and offer FreeBSD as our preferred operating system.

Well, ive never used freebsd. Fedora Centos and Redhat as servers...

It's been FreeBSD all the way for me. As dandan said, you can't beat the ports system, stability, TCP stack, etc. I've never used cpanel, so I can't comment on that.

I also run FreeBSD 4.x / Cpanel combo. It runs very well. It takes a while to get it up to speed and get cpanel working the way it should. Ater that though it feels like smooth sailing. I have done little to no maintenance over the past 6 months on the machine aside from the occasional kernel compile and makeworld to keep track of the stable tree.

Use whichever one you are comfortable with. Both can do the same tasks. When you ask this question, it's basically asking something along the lines of, do you like apples or oranges? They're both fruits, but they taste different.

can anybody provide some hard statistics? e.g. somebody hosting 50+ servers comparing stability+speed of heavily loaded linux vs. freebsd boxes?

Originally posted by dandanfirema
3. I think the freebsd system of ports is far superior to the rpm/yum/up2date system that linux uses. It provides for easy configuration/compilation of software from the server....this is my opinioni[/B]
The rpm/yum/up2date system that *RedHat* uses. I generally agree with your other points, but Debian and Gentoo have excellent package management tools.

for me its the other way round, I found freebsd easy to get into and linux hard to use, the main reason been is freebsd is smaller and tidier so easier to configure etc.

I do prefer freebsd as well, find it pretty reliable on heavy load than linux.

Go with the OS that you know better.

If I want to start learning freebsd, where should I start? I am thinking to get a fbsd box to start messing around and stuff. Any suggestions?

http://freebsd.org/handbook/
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/eresources.html#ERESOURCES-MAIL
all you need :)

If you want something that is "semi production" you might try getting a managed/semi managed box from someone that offers FreeBSD. That way you can have some "assistance" from someone in case you get over your head while you learn the ropes.

I would never go with FreeBSD after my experience. Under heavy load, FreeBSD kept on failing and crashing. It had costed me much money to get my datacenter to reboot my FreeBSD box, and it maintained a high downtime (over 80% downtime). That chased away many of my customers and caused them to all ask for full refunds. Linux does without a problem when it comes to heavy loads. I think this problem has been adressed though in FreeBSD 4.10, but I never was able to get someone with floodbots to test it. FreeBSD is much like Linux, but is just different. If you just treat it like Linux, you will break it easily. As for its stability, it's actually quite stable as long as you use reasonable software (not like UnrealIRCd). Also, it's more secure. You wouldn't need to upgrade FreeBSD that often, making it more stable. Usually, I would not be able to keep over a 60 day uptime on my Linux boxes because usually, I'd get rooted via a bug in the kernel, or I'd have to reboot the box to upgrade the kernel.

I 3> FreeBSD :D

Originally posted by excelblue
I would never go with FreeBSD after my experience. Under heavy load, FreeBSD kept on failing and crashing. It had costed me much money to get my datacenter to reboot my FreeBSD box, and it maintained a high downtime (over 80% downtime). That chased away many of my customers and caused them to all ask for full refunds. Linux does without a problem when it comes to heavy loads. I think this problem has been adressed though in FreeBSD 4.10, but I never was able to get someone with floodbots to test it. FreeBSD is much like Linux, but is just different. If you just treat it like Linux, you will break it easily. As for its stability, it's actually quite stable as long as you use reasonable software (not like UnrealIRCd). Also, it's more secure. You wouldn't need to upgrade FreeBSD that often, making it more stable. Usually, I would not be able to keep over a 60 day uptime on my Linux boxes because usually, I'd get rooted via a bug in the kernel, or I'd have to reboot the box to upgrade the kernel.

You must have had some kind of FreeBSD install. We use UnrealIRCD on one of our FBSD boxes for internal communication and it's chugging along just fine. It's even an old 566 celeron!

I asked our server provider to put FreeBSD on one of our servers just for a test, and after only using it for a week, we switch to Red Hat. For me, Red Hat is easier to use, and is much better. However, every person is different.

Originally posted by excelblue
I would never go with FreeBSD after my experience. Under heavy load, FreeBSD kept on failing and crashing. It had costed me much money to get my datacenter to reboot my FreeBSD box, and it maintained a high downtime (over 80% downtime). That chased away many of my customers and caused them to all ask for full refunds. Linux does without a problem when it comes to heavy loads. I think this problem has been adressed though in FreeBSD 4.10, but I never was able to get someone with floodbots to test it. FreeBSD is much like Linux, but is just different. If you just treat it like Linux, you will break it easily. As for its stability, it's actually quite stable as long as you use reasonable software (not like UnrealIRCd). Also, it's more secure. You wouldn't need to upgrade FreeBSD that often, making it more stable. Usually, I would not be able to keep over a 60 day uptime on my Linux boxes because usually, I'd get rooted via a bug in the kernel, or I'd have to reboot the box to upgrade the kernel.

We had ~10 unreal ircd's running on a freebox box just fine. around 7500 connections total.

I can't imagine any OS could beat FreeBSD long-run race, the best kernel integrity, the fastest TCP/IP stack, ports tree, easily upgradeable/downgradeable and great support on IA-64 / AMD64.

I have just started using FreeBSD on a few servers and I am liking it. (Thats after finally getting a Perl Module installed after several hours). Even when I first logged into FreeBSD it felt faster. Can't say I have tested it under load yet, but I do know that Linux does not fare to well under high load. If all goes well all our new servers will be FreeBSD.

FreeBSD is great but it does not support java . . .

Originally posted by mcraft
FreeBSD is great but it does not support java . . .

:confused: http://www.freebsd.org/java/

Does freebsd use apache as webserver too? If so is it the same way to configure httpd.conf as in linux? Will cpanel run well on freebsd?

Yes, you can use apache on FreeBSD, as well as your httpd.conf... I can't say how well cPanel runs on FreeBSD...

according to the cpanel site, it runs on freebsd versions: 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8, 4.9, 4.10, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2

FreeBSD and DirectAdmin!

FreeBSD is a good Os, I have tinkered with it at home, but I'm not comfortable using it on a server yet.
Does anybody know of a JRE availability of 1.4 on FreeBSD?

I've heard that FreeBSD traditionally is a far more secure environment - or am I mixing up my BSD's?

Originally posted by I, Brian
I've heard that FreeBSD traditionally is a far more secure environment - or am I mixing up my BSD's?

You've got it right. And OpenBSD is even moreso.

Originally posted by I, Brian
I've heard that FreeBSD traditionally is a far more secure environment - or am I mixing up my BSD's?

I believe that is OpenBSD.
Could be wrong though, since I'm not very well educated in the world of demons.
NetBSD should be very secure as well when set up properly (IE the usual politicaly correct awnser)

Originally posted by Golthar
FreeBSD is a good Os, I have tinkered with it at home, but I'm not comfortable using it on a server yet.
Does anybody know of a JRE availability of 1.4 on FreeBSD?

http://www.eyesbeyond.com/freebsddom/java/jdk14.html

It seems the FreeBSD site unfortunately forgets to update various parts, and sometimes refers to older versions of things in places. But the link above has the latest info.

Thank you :)
Good to see a 1.4 JDK on FreeBSD

Freebsd is nice but linux takes my vote in terms of ease.

I am really interested in freebsd cuz yahoo utilize freebsd's power on their line and I think there must be a point between linux and freebsd that makes them believe bsd is a better choice for the most demanding site in the world.

LINUX IS BETTER

FreeBSD as I hear is good for it's stability as I hear.... what does this 'stability' include?

ch2000, any reason?

Originally posted by ch2000
LINUX IS BETTER

You sound really angry, FreeBSD made you cry? ;)

I have been working with FreeBSD for about a week now, and I already am really liking it. Its very easy to install new packages, etc. Have 2 servers up already running it.

After being a unix / bsd / linux for 6 years, performance wise under load the race would be so:
1) linux 2.6.x
2) Freebsd 5.2.x
3) Freebsd 4.x
4) linux 2.4.x

security wise, a server is only as secure as its admin. the less daemons you have running the more secure / stable the box is going to be.

most people dont reach the default 1024 fdlimit, those who do need >1024 sockets per process would probablly go with freebsd for the ease of changing it without having to recompile a kernel <insert any big distro here> or modify /usr/include/bits/types.h.

That and freebsd comes with syn flood protection out of the box, as apposed to linux needing to enable tcp syncookies in the kernel.