Here you can search and view our site Knowledge Base. To find a specific article, use KB-article number format (ex. KB-1)
Article number: kb-23
Q. Why does ICI use BSD Unix?
A. Whether you use mac or pc, do not be afraid of BSD Unix, be happy! Here are all the reasons why you should be relieved that BSD Unix is running on all ICI server hardware--seamlessly supporting and enhancing all the work you do on your ICI hosted website.
For a full comparison between other operating systems such as Linux and Windows click here.
Reliability: FreeBSD is extremely robust. There are numerous testimonials of active servers with uptimes measured in years. The new Soft Updates1 file system optimizes disk I/O for high performance, yet still ensures reliability for transaction based applications, such as databases.
Performance: FreeBSD is the system of choice for high performance network applications. FreeBSD will outperform other systems when running on equivalent hardware. The largest and busiest public server on the Internet, at ftp.freesoftware.com, uses FreeBSD to serve more than 1.2TB/day of downloads. FreeBSD is used by Yahoo!, Qwest and many others as their main server OS because of its ability to handle heavy network traffic with high performance and rock solid reliability.
Security:FreeBSD has been the subject of a massive auditing project for several years. All of the critical system components have been checked and rechecked for security-related errors. The entire system is open source so the security of the system can and has been verified by third parties. A default FreeBSD installation has yet to be affected by a single CERT security advisory in 2000.3
FreeBSD also has the notion of kernel security levels. These are much more powerful than simple run-levels since they allow the administrator to completely deny access to certain operating system functions such as reading /dev/mem, changing file system flags, or writing to disks without mounting a filesystem.
FreeBSD includes a very robust packet filtering firewall system and many intrusion detection tools.
File System:FreeBSD uses the UFS (Unix File System), which is a little more complex than Linux's ext2. It offers a better way to insure filesystem data integrity, mainly with the "sofupdates" option. This option decreases synchronous I/O and increases asynchronous I/O because writes to a UFS filesystem aren't synced on a sector basis but according to the filesystem structure. This ensures that the filesystem is always coherent between two updates.
The FreeBSD filesystem also supports file flags, which can stop a would-be intruder dead in his or her tracks. There are several flags that you can add to a file such as the immutable flag. The immutable (schg) flag won't allow any alteration to the file or directory unless you remove it. Other very handy flags are append only (sappnd), cannot delete (sunlnk), and archive (arch). When you combine these with the kernel security level option, you have a very impenetrable system
Commercial Applications: The number of commercial applications for FreeBSD is growing rapidly, but is still below what is available for Windows. In addition to native applications, FreeBSD can also run programs compiled for Linux, SCO Unix, and BSD/OS. (Honestly, it is not worth the security risks to run many of these commercial Windows applications on a Web Server)
Free Applications:
There are many, many gigabytes of FREE software available for FreeBSD. FreeBSD includes thousands of software packages and an extensive ports collection, all with complete source code. Many people consider the FreeBSD Ports collection to be the most accessible and easiest to use library of free software packages available anywhere.
Development Environment:FreeBSD includes an extensive collection of development tools. You get a complete C/C++ development system (editor, compiler, debugger, profiler, etc.) and powerful Unix development tools for Java, HTTP, Perl, Python, Tcl/Tk, Awk, Sed, etc. All of these are free, and are included in the basic FreeBSD installation. All come with full source code.
Development Infrastructure:FreeBSD is an advanced BSD Unix operating system. The source code for the entire system is available in a centralized source code repository running under CVS. A large team (200+) of senior developers has write access to this repository and they coordinate development by reviewing and commiting the best changes of the development community at large. FreeBSD is engineered to find elegant solutions for overall goals, rather than quick hacks to add new functionality.
Support: Several organizations, including BSDi, offer a wide range of support options for FreeBSD. In addition to 24x7 professional support, there is a large amount of free, informal support available through Usenet newsgroups and mailing lists, such as questions@freebsd.org. Once a problem is found, source code patches are often available within a few hours.
ICI is not just a hosting company, we are foremost developers--who really like hardware as well software. So, like all of you, we are always looking to use the latest and greatest. What we find, we make available and share with all of you. For the moment, the operating system of choice is BSD Unix.
Article number: kb-23