On 04/24/12 15:56, Robert Schmid wrote:
Many years ago I used to run a FreeNet on abandoned Macs and NetBSD. They ran great and it was a great second life for that hardware but when OS X matured I switched over. Sadly, the promise of OS X as a serious server solution never came to fruition and Lion has ended that dream for me. Now that I've returned to NetBSD it seems that the attitude and intent of NetBSD has changed slightly. It seems to be much more geared toward students, researchers and experimentalists. So, the question I have is "Would you as a NetBSD user recommend NetBSD for production servers? Why or why not?" Robert Schmid RaptorNet
I use it a lot for virtualization (Xen), and in that context, also in virtual machines running simple services (nginx, syslog servers, etc)
For network stuff (IPSec, OpenVPN, etc) I tend to use OpenBSD, altough since they have no Xen port, the uses in a Xen environment are limited due to HVM overhead.
For more complex stuff (many dependencies) like a IMAP/SMTP server, I still prefer FreeBSD.
I don't share your perception that NetBSD is for students/researchers. I've been using it in production for a couple of years now, and it's rarely failed. When it did, the developers were usually quick to help.
It is, in my opinion, a secure, compact OS that performs as expected (ie, well). Definitely production ready.
Hugo