Technological advantages over Linux

[David Christensen]

On 2020-02-14 04:16, Victor Sudakov wrote:
> Dear Colleagues,
> 
> Not to start a flame war. A purely technical question: what
> technological advantages does the modern FreeBSD have over modern Linux?
> 
> Several yeas ago I would say ZFS was a killer feature, but now Linux has
> ZFS too, and AFAIK FreeBSD is going to migrate to Linux's ZFS
> implementation.
> 
> What other features do we have to (persuade the management to) prefer
> FreeBSD for new installations?

I see the cultural and historical differences between BSD distributions 
and Linux distributions as causes, and the technological differences as 
an effect.


When measured according to some key qualities identified by Brooks [1], 
I would give the BSD's a better score than the Linux's:

- Programming Systems Product

- Conceptual Integrity


In a commercial environment, the decision should be based upon total 
cost of ownership (TCO).  Licensing may be a pass/fail criterion for 
options to consider, depending upon application (e.g. embedded).  You 
should consider more than two FOSS alternatives, and you should include 
the hardware/ virtualization/ cloud dimension.


Your question is one that could challenge a CIO.  A thorough answer 
backed by objective data will require effort and expense.


David


[1] 
https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/program/Brooks-Mythical-Man-Month-The-Essays-on-Software-Engineering-Anniversary-Edition-2nd-Edition/PGM172844.html