[OpenIndiana-discuss] OpenIndiana vs FreeBSD

[andy thomas]

On Wed, 15 Jul 2020, Judah Richardson wrote:

<snip>

> I run both of the above, in addition to 3 release channels of Windows, 3
> Linux distros, and Android, because I love OSes and am fascinated by the
> different approaches various projects take to solve the same problems.
> You'll learn a lot regardless of which one you choose.

Absolutely! This is my experience too - I originally started with Linux in 
the early 90's and then added Solaris, Ultrix, Digital/Tru64 UNIX, 
OpenSolaris. OI/Illumos, FreeSBD and OpenBSD in roughly that order. As a 
sys admin working for a number of organisations where I need lots of 
xterms open on a multi-screen set-up, I use FreeBSD + ZFS + fvwm2 window 
manager nearly all the time as a desktop O/S and it works fine for me, 
occasionally switching to OpenSUSE (or Unbuntu) + mate for 'officey' stuff 
like Teams and Zoom meetings, etc.

I still look after some Sun SPARC kit running Solaris 9 & 10 plus a few OI 
Intel/AMD-powered servers running ZFS where the clients tell me they feel 
"there is something solid & dependable about Solaris" and its descendants 
compared with Linux or FreeBSD. At the same time, by default I tend to use 
FreeBSD + ZFS for new storage, web & email servers and Ubuntu Linux server 
edition for compute/HPC systems as there's so much more scientific & 
specialist software available for that platform. (And OpenBSD is great for 
network applications - routers, firewalls, VPN boxes, etc).

The important thing really is not to get stuck in a O/S rut, especially in 
today's employment/economic environment. I've seen too many people train 
up exclusively on Red Hat only to find they're unemployable in other Linux 
environments, never mind in OI or FreeBSD-related roles.

cheers, Andy

----------------------------
Andy Thomas,
Time Domain Systems

Tel: +44 (0)7866 556626

http://www.time-domain.co.uk