--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, Tanovic Branko <tanovic@...>
wrote:

> The most important thing for me is stability . I had case in ext3 fs
> Gnu/Linux in work with Firebird my computer lost power and rebooted

and

> I got corrupted database.

This can happen with any filesystem if pages are kept in FS cache
instead of the hard disk. While forced writes should prevent it, FB
can merely tell the FS what it wants. Even then, the cache management
for the drive itself has undeteminate default state until you set the
one you want (see hdparm manual page). If you really, really want to
be sure, you best use hdparm -W0 on your hard disks.

> The next thing is speed as I understand FreeBSD have only CS server for
> FB not SS.The question CS on FreeBSD and SS on Gnu/Linux be compared on
> the same machine.

Sure they can be compared. Speed and server model depend on what do
you do. Is it more OLTP or more OLAP. In case of OLTP, SuperServer is
much better, and you'll have better performance on Linux. CS also eats
more memory, and if system starts to swap, it can be disasterous. You
should measure your requirements before deciding.

No matter what the benchmarks say, I'd always pick the system I'm more
familiar with. I'm quite certain I could solve most Linux problems one
can run into, and I can't say the same for FreeBSD. Even if FB on
FreeBSD would be 20% faster, I'd still pick Linux.

> Third thing. Problems with installation which is more easy to setup

and

> what is compatibility with Windows OS <-> Linux <-> FreeBSD and other
> problems encountered.

Everything is "easy" when you're familiar with it. If you haven't been
using Linux or FreeBSD at all, then both would be equally hard for
you. SuSE has some tools that resemble Windows counterparts, but I
don't recommend it. Maybe it is a good way to migrate from Windows,
but IMO not a good way to learn Linux/Unix. To really learn how to use
it, you should learn that things are done differently, and not try to
apply Windows' ideas to a quite different system.

The other problem I find with SuSE is that you can't reuse (on other
systems) much of the system configuration knowlegde you gain.
Everything is too specific, hand edits of system files go missing
after a reboot, and a lot of generic instructions that you might find
on the Internet might simply not work.

As for the compatibility, you should write a list of all programs and
hardware you wish to run, and then check if it is supported, or there
are alternatives. With hardware, Linux supports much more devices,
while with FreeBSD you might even have unsupported network card. Most
standard "server" hardware is supported by both. Software is a similar
story: most server-side programs are ported and available on both.

</M>