Fried server and the new era

Some time ago my home and development server crashed or more likely got fried. It survived with a crappy PSU and without a single upgrade for 10 years until one day in April - RIP. I have now put together a new machine and I’m quite pleased with it, quite sexy if you ask me!

Slackware has been my choice for the UNIX enviorment for a couple years now, simply because all other Linux distributions are unstable and lacks performance and simplicity. Slackware was my first real experience with Linux and the reason it became my choice was to learn about system and be able to solve my own problems.

Slackware was however a pain to keep updated so I decided to look around to see what was available. There is a huge number of Linux distributions to choose from and I have came to the conclusion that if you are going for Linux get either Slackware or Debian as these are the most stable and well known distributions.

I also gave FreeBSD a try because it’s one of the most stable and secure operative systems you can find, besides it’s been around over 30 years so it can’t be that bad :) FreeBSD has an excellent guide of the operative system and it’s simply a joy to read - The FreeBSD Handbook.

A new era

The Linux community is chaotic compared to BSD because BSD feel like a complete organization and operative system whereas Linux feels like there’s a bunch of developers that has no real goal other than not to use Micosoft Windows ;) The BSD community appears to have a lot more friendly attitude and I would say since BSD is a mature system so are the people that use it.

I have completely fallen in love with FreeBSD. It’s extremly easy to setup compared to any other UNIX-related system I have used. One of the nicest things is that you only need one thing and that’s the FreeBSD Handbook.

Everything is logical on FreeBSD and easy to configure which makes me wonder why it isn’t more popular other than as a server OS. You do need some basic knowledge of UNIX which the reason there is a FreeBSD Handbook and it will help you get started.

If you are going to run FreeBSD as a desktop user then you should be aware that it does not have the best hardware support so it can be a bit tricky to get the hardware detected at times. My only issue was that it could not detect my monitor, however this doesn’t matter if you just run the CLI (Command-line Interface).

I have now left all my Linux problems behind me and have completely moved over to FreeBSD with great joy and excitement :) My home server now works better than ever, more stable and secure, and easy to maintain. I simply can’t ask for more than that.