Cent OS migration

Kevin Oberman oberman at es.net
Mon May 9 20:45:36 UTC 2011


> Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 14:58:57 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Jay Ashworth <jra at baylink.com>
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Walter Vaughan" <wvaughan at steelerubber.com>
> 
> > You most definately will want to make sure your user id's are
> > identical between the two systems, otherwise stuff like @CB will have wrong information.
> 
> Excellent point.
> 
> > Also, do you have any expertise maintaing a linux box? If you want
> > something closer
> > to SCO in mentality, FreeBSD and SCO have the same grandparents. Linux
> > is like
> > the cute girl that moved into town. Stuff isn't always where you
> > expect
> > to find it,
> > and you may get a surprise if you reach into the wrong place.
> 
> Oh, don't *even* send him to BSD.
> 
> CentOS and SuSE 11 are the only rational free Linuces for business use.
> 
> *Any* of the BSDs are so much less well supported that they'll drive you
> straight up a wall.

Depends on what he is doing. BSDs tend to be far more mature than any
Linux. They are poor systems for desktops or anything like that. They
are heavily used as servers by many vary large providers and as the
basis for many products like Ironport (Cisco) and JunOS (Juniper). (I'll
admit that I run FreeBSD on my laptop with great success, but you have
to REALLY want it.)

That said, the BSD community is smaller and the addition of features and
the latest hardware support is slower on BSDs.

If you are very concerned with security, I'd never hesitate to recommend
OpenBSD. For more general use, FreeBSD. For an "unusual" platform,
NetBSD. For a walk on the wild side, try DragonFly and Hammer.

That said, I run both Linux and FreeBSD regularly and they both have
their place. You want the right tool for the job. 

The one Linux distro I don't recommend for experienced users is
Ubuntu. I don't like Windows because it presumes it know how I want to
do things better than I do and Ubuntu does the same. If my sister was
planing to play with Linux, I'd send her directly to Ubuntu, though.
(Tool...job. She does not get along well with computers.)
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634
Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4  EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751




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