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Old 2nd August 2008
davidgurvich davidgurvich is offline
Fdisk Soldier
 
Join Date: May 2008
Location: NYC
Posts: 57
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I currently have a machine with opensolaris and one with freebsd. The machine with opensolaris initially had freebsd installed but had multiple issues with networking and video but not the wireless. Opensolaris has no issues with networking and video but has no support for the wireless card at all. The laptop with freebsd installed is having issues with networking such that I am considering opensolaris, though otherwise everything works well.

There is more difficulty in upgrading and maintaining a system with opensolaris. Each non-trivial change requires multiple configuration files and more than one administration utility. I did an 'ls /usr/sbin |grep adm' and saw a large number of separate programs. A freebsd program that does some task might be separated into multiple programs on opensolaris. That allows for more fine-grained control than freebsd but has a steep learning curve. I've seen the method of upgrading change 3 times so far in opensolaris, currently trying to get to build 94 from 91 (not successful yet, method changed again).

I know others have said that zfs is awesome. They are correct. Upgrading the system is complex but, because of zfs, quite safe. Multiple images, multiple rollbacks, combine filesystems with all sorts of options, compression of individual directories, encryption, unions of all sorts. I haven't even begun to see all the possibilities.

Freebsd has the ports, nuff said. Nothing to compare with that on opensolaris. There is a graphical package manager that is currently barely useable in Indiana but the command line program works well. The number of packages available is less and may require installing alternate build environments(more complexity).

So on opensolaris there is flash9, solid networking, great filesystem, more fine-grained control. Freebsd has more (sometimes better) hardware support, the ports, less complexity, and is faster. Both systems have been more stable than Linux on the same machines.

Hope this helps
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