I saw the forum description and it got me thinking...

I know almost nothing about FreeBSD, other than its derived from the unix kernel. I'm kind of curious if it's its own beast or if it gets lumped in with the rest of the *nixes of the world.

It's my Unix of choice, and what this forum is running on.

And what I'll be installing in about 10 minutes.

So what's the attraction to FreeBSD then? I've been assigned the task of setting up a webserver for our new venture, and I'm trying to figure out the best route to take. I already know I'm going open source, fuck paying an arm and a leg for MS's web services. (Although we do have an extra Server 2k3 key, I'd still need (a legal copy of) SQL Server and all that other crap)

While I'm on the subject, will a dedicated T1 be enough bandwith for a startup, until we have the revenue to support a better solution? Trust me, I'd love to just get a hosting provider and be done with it, but my boss thinks people are going to steal his idea if it resides on someone else's server. (It's not even that great of an idea. He basically wants to compete with the likes of Enzyte)

Here's a good-sized rant I wrote up about FreeBSD on gamedaily

CLICK FOR FREE PORN

A T1 would be more than enough, I think. But you'll want to think about redundancy. Most sites would have a DSL or ISDN (preferably DSL) line to use as a backup.

Edit: looking back, I see that I talked more about why to choose FreeBSD over linux than I did the benefits of it.

Security
Stability
Simplicity (this doesn't mean triviality)
Good hardware support
Easy software installation and management

I can't find the statistics, but a very high number of Internet sites use FreeBSD. The company I work with uses it exclusively for its infrastructure.

Yeah, the office that'll be housing the server has DSL already that goes pretty much unused.

I think I might throw the OS on another drive here and try it out. Security seems to be my boss' primary concern. I'm going to have a bit of a learning curve any way I slice it, as well.

My favorite variety too, and the one I have the most experience with (which isn't much, but eh)

I wish I could try out FreeBSD. Every time I've tried to install it, fdisk won't commit any changes done to the hard drive and the installation fails. I've even tried pre-formatting with another OS(Which works fine) but FreeBSD refuses to use the pre-made partitions.

What version of FreeBSD were you using? As for fdisk failing, FreeBSD doesn't use partitions in the sense that other operating systems do. FreeBSD's version of partitions are called slices, which are created by fdisk. After creating the slices, bsdlabel is used to create the 'partitions' we're accustomed to in other OSes like Linux. All of that probably sounded pretty obvious and this might be the result of some odd hardware, but never hurts to be verbose.

Also, did you follow the Handbook?

I've tried FreeBSD 6, FreeBSD 6.1, and PC-BSD 1.2. Haven't had luck with anything.

Morm, I owe you an apology - it isn't FreeBSD's fault my card isn't working, it's a pan-posix problem. Apparently there's a new driver with the 2.6.something Linux kernel, but that still won't work for me. As soon as I find a normal way to get it work under FreeBSD, I'm moving back to that.
And I need my Hebrew to work.