Here we touch upon the larger issue of why we chose FreeBSD over Linux at this time. The argument goes like this:

What are your reasonable "free" choices in the Linux world at this time?

• RedHat?
• Fedora Core?
• Debian?
• Gentoo?
• Ubuntu?
• Mandriva (Mandrake), SuSE (now Novell), Turbolinux, etc.?
• Others?

• RedHat: No longer offers any free versions of their software. You must pay to use Red Hat Enterprise Server. While not that expensive (Go here for pricing), around USD $349/year/server, this is too much for many smaller ISPs.
• Fedora Core: Uses absolutely cutting edge technologies that are often not ready for production environments. For instance, selinux was integrated in to both FC2 and FC3 before it was/is truly production-quality ready. Once you choose your version of Fedora Core, then you must migrate to a new version within approximately one year as your version will no longer be supported by the Fedora Core team. Migrating a production server every 12 months to a new Operating System is not a good idea. Here's the Fedora Core Release Schedule.

  Update: As of June 3, 2005 Red Hat Inc. has decided to hand over control of the open-source Fedora Project, creating the new Fedora Foundation to manage the project. This means the future of Fedora is uncertain at this time. If the Open Source community does not embrace Fedora Core, then the project may stall or become outdated. Previously almost all direction and development on Fedora was done by Red Hat staff. This change may be for the better, but as of now this is unclear.

• Debian: From a technical standpoint is extremely stable, free, and has an excellent package management system. But, for newer Linux users it installs with Kernel version 2.4.27 (Debian 3.1 as of June 2005) and requires you to update immediately to kernel 2.6 if you need this functionality. As going to Debian from Red Hat or Fedora is almost as big a jump as going to FreeBSD (in our opinion), then why not teach you what we consider to be a superior operating system to begin with?
• Gentoo: Tempting, but has more than one package management system and neither is complete at this time. This feature is critical. In addition, Gentoo, like Debian, is a big change from Red Hat or Fedora Core.

  Update: As of June 14, 2005 Daniel Robbins, the founder of Gentoo Linux and its former chief architect has accepted a position to work at Microsoft.

• Ubuntu: offers a truly free Linux distribution that comes on a (currently) 500 MB single CD. But, additional software for Ubuntu must be downloaded over the network. For slow connections this can be difficult. In addition, Ubuntu is not aimed at the server environment. While it can be configured to run as a server, the distribution is new with minimal real-world testing.
• Mandrake, SuSE, Turbolinx, etc.: Either don't offer any ISO images from which you can install the OS, or the version that is "free" is very minimal in nature and no guarrantees that they will continue to make it available.

Why Did we Choose FreeBSD Rather than Windows?

• Windows design has been driven by market forces, which has led to many dubious design decisions.
• Windows does not scale. Windows Server still breaks down under heavy process load.
• An extremely poor history of security flaws. Windows boxes are unsafe to put on the open Internet, even after they have been patched.
• An almost complete lack of remote management and scripting features.

• Microsoft has spent 10 years, so far, trying to fix the original design of Windows to make it work better, and they have been somewhat successful, but the core OS still has fundamental and broken design flaws, these include:
  • Dynamic Link Libraries
  • User and System registry. Attempts to separate these fail. The registry is your OS and it's a binary file. Corruption leads to OS meltdown. A very weak link.
  • Lack of adherence to open standards. For example: Active Directory is based upon LDAP, but adds extensions that cause it to fail with open standard LDAP servers. This lack of adherence to open standards means that you must use Microsoft-only methods to solve your problems. You have no escape route.
  • Incorrect Digital Certificate signing methods
  • Dependent code. Many services must run other services to work. (examples: Telephony is needed to do NAT, and you still cannot turn off RPC and have a useful server running.)
  • Corruptable memory space. (improved in 2000 and XP)
  • Default configurations are consistently insecure and broken (same can be said for many Linux distributions).
  • Unclear division between bundled software and OS features. Consider IE.
• And, as you know, Windows costs money to buy, on a per seat basis.

We could go on, but really this is an issue of experience. If you look around you'll see that the majority of Web servers and larger email servers are not running under Microsoft Windows, and there are many reasons for this.