4a4a4714f0
not have been there but was included due to a bad copy and paste. Requested by: hrs Approved by: gabor (mentor)
206 lines
8.6 KiB
Text
206 lines
8.6 KiB
Text
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//FreeBSD//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional-Based
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Extension//EN" [
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<!ENTITY base CDATA "..">
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<!ENTITY date "$FreeBSD$">
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<!ENTITY title "FreeBSD Advocacy Project">
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<!ENTITY % navinclude.about "INCLUDE">
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]>
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<html>
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&header;
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<h1>Why Choose &os;?</h1>
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<p>Why would you consider using &os;? We think that there are
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lots of reasons. Here is a selection of reasons that some of
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our existing users gave for their choice of operating system.</p>
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<h2>The Community</h2>
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<p>&os; is a community-driven operating system despite it being
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sponsored corporately. &os; has active mailing lists,
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forums, and IRC channels where experienced users and
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developers are always willing to help the less
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experienced.</p>
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<p>The community is largely driven by technology, not ideology,
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and is focused on building the best possible system and making
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&os; as widely used as possible, not on pushing any other
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agendas.</p>
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<p>There is no dictator—benevolent or
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otherwise—for the project. The Core Team is elected and
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is nominally responsible for overseeing the goals of the project,
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but this is a very light touch. Core mediates disputes between
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developers, but rarely needs to take an active role in
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development, beyond their separate contributions as individual
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developers.</p>
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<h2>Stability</h2>
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<p>Stability means many different things. &os; very rarely
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crashes (and when it does it is usually due to hardware
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faults), but while that was a great boast a decade ago, now it
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is an expected feature for any operating system.</p>
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<p>Stability in &os; means much more than that. It means that
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upgrading the system doesn't require upgrading the user.
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Configuration interfaces do change over time, but only when
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there is a good reason. If you learned how to use &os; in
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2000, most of your knowledge would still be relevant.</p>
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<p>Backwards compatibility is very important to the &os; team,
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and any release in a major release series is expected to
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be able to run any code—including kernel
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modules—that ran on an earlier version. The entire base
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system is developed together, including the kernel, the core
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utilities, and the configuration system, so upgrades are
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usually painless. Included tools like mergemaster help update
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configuration files with little or no manual intervention.</p>
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<h2>Early Adoption and Collaboration With Other Projects</h2>
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<p>&os; has been one of the first adopters of the LLVM
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infrastructure, including the clang compiler and the libc++
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stack. The entire &os; 9.x system, including kernel and
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userspace, can build with clang, and from &os; 9.1 both clang
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and the permissively-licensed libc++ are included, giving a
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modern, BSD-licensed C++ stack. Several &os; developers are
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also active contributors to LLVM, ensuring that both projects
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thrive together.</p>
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<p>This same collaboration works downstream, with projects like
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PC-BSD and pfSense building on top of the &os; base to provide
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desktop and firewall oriented distributions, respectively.
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These projects are not forks, they base their work on the
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latest version of &os; and customize the system for specific
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uses.</p>
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<h2>Simple Configuration</h2>
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<p>&os; service initialization is very simple. Each service,
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whether part of the base system or installed from a port, comes
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with a script that is responsible for starting and stopping it
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(and often some other options). The /etc/rc.conf file
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contains a list of variables for enabling and configuring
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services. Want to enable ssh? Just add sshd_enable="YES" to
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your rc.conf file. This system makes it easy to see at a
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glance everything that will be started when your system
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boots.</p>
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<p>The rc system that reads this file understands dependencies
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between services and so can automatically launch them in
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parallel, or wait until one is finished before starting the
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things that it needs. You get all of the benefits of a modern
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configuration system, without a complex interface.</p>
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<h2>Ports</h2>
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<p>The ports tree contains a large collection of third-party
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software, including older versions of some things where the
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userbase is divided about the benefits of upgrading, and a lot
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of niche programs. The chances are that anything you want to
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run which works on &os; will be there.</p>
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<p>Unlike some other systems, &os; maintains a clean division
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between the base system and third-party ports and packages.
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All third-party software goes in /usr/local, so if you want to
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repurpose a machine then it's trivial to simply delete all
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installed packages and then start installing the ones that you
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want.</p>
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<p>The upcoming pkgng tool makes working with binary packages
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even easier, although source installs are still supported for
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people who want the level of configurability that this
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implies.</p>
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<h2>Security</h2>
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<p>Security is vital in any network-connected machine. &os;
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provides a number of tools for ensuring that you can maintain a
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secure system, such as:</p>
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<ul>
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<li>Jails, allowing you to run applications or entire systems
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in a sandbox that can't access the rest of the system. With
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tools like ezjail and ZFS you can instantly create a new
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jail with a clone of an existing system, using a tiny amount
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of disk space, and run untrusted code inside it.</li>
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<li>Mandatory Access Control, from the TrustedBSD project,
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allowing you to configure access control policies for all
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operating system resources.</li>
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<li>Capsicum, from &os; 9 onwards, allows developers to easily
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implement privilege separation, reducing the impact of
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compromised code.</li>
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<li>The VuXML system for publishing vulnerabilities in ports,
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which integrates with tools such as portaudit, so that your
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daily security email tells you about any known
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vulnerabilities in ported software.</li>
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<li>Security event auditing, using the BSM standard.</li>
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</ul>
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<p>And, of course, all of the standard features that you'd
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expect from a modern &unix; system including IPSec, SSH, and so
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on.</p>
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<h2>ZFS</h2>
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<p>Cheap snapshots, clones, end-to-end checksums, deduplication,
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compression, and no need to decide partition sizes on install.
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Using ZFS for a few days makes going back to a more
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traditional volume manager painful. If you want to test
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something with ZFS, then it's trivial to just create a
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snapshot and roll back if it didn't work.</p>
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<p>If you're using jails, then ZFS lets you clone an existing
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jail in under a second, irrespective of how big the jail
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itself is.</p>
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<h2>GEOM</h2>
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<p>Even without ZFS, &os; comes with a rich storage system.
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GEOM layers providers and consumers in arbitrary ways,
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allowing you to use two networked machines for
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high-availability storage, use your choice of RAID level, or
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add features like compression or encryption.</p>
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<h2>Working Sound</h2>
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<p>&os; 4.x introduced in-kernel sound mixing, so that multiple
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applications could play sound at the same time even with cheap
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sound cards with no hardware mixing support. &os; 5.x
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automatically allocated new channels to applications, without
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any configuration.</p>
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<p>Now, &os; has low-latency sound mixing with per-application
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volume controls and full support for the OSS 4 APIs out of the
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box. There's no need to configure a userspace sound daemon.
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The same audio APIs that were used a decade ago still work on
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&os;, including some compatibility modes to allow
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applications that try to manipulate the global volume to only
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change their own. If you want to watch DVDs with 5.1 surround
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sound, just install your favourite media player and press
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play.</p>
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<h2>My System, How I Want It</h2>
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<p>&os; gives you an easy-to-use, working, &unix;-like system.
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This base system can then be extended easily. If you want to
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run KDE or GNOME, then just install the metapackage for the
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version that you prefer. If you want a headless server, then
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it's equally easy to install the server tools that you want.</p>
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<p>It's easy to run the &os; installer via a serial port and to
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configure the entire system from the terminal. It's also easy
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to install and use an existing desktop environment. The
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decisions about the kind of system you want to use are left to
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you.</p>
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<p>If you're deploying &os; in a corporate environment, then
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it's very easy to customise both the base system and the set
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of installed packages for your specific requirements. The
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build system provides numerous tuneable variables allowing you
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to build exactly the base system that meets your needs.</p>
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&footer;
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</html>
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