My experience with FreeBSD started more than 20 years ago when I built my first home file server, managing a whopping 200G of storage (huge for the time).
Since then I built several more generations of file server, all running FreeBSD and all absolutely rock solid. They all typically had a 3-5 year service life, with uptimes of 1-2 years at a time. Each of them were only replaced for capacity reasons, with the previous generation server typically serving as a backup target for the next one.
Around 2002, broadcast and cable TV was still a thing, and rudimentary PVRs were becoming available but were pricey with few features. So I decided to build my own.
I started with Linux, thinking that it would provide better hardware compatibility, but stability issues soon drove me back to FreeBSD, and I managed to create a very complete FreeBSD based PVR solution, complete with remote control, automatic program scheduling, multiple simultaneous recording and viewing streams, auto DVD ripping and very intuitive remote (web) and onscreen user interfaces. That thing ran rock solid for 10 years, until replaced by Netflix.
I guess the point I am trying to make is that I fully agree with the author. FreeBSD is in a different league than many other operating systems in terms of capability and stability, while being surprisingly compatible with a lot of hardware.
Me too, built BSD/MySQL server from scratch following the on-line documentation and everything just worked. Server is still running after 5 years with two outages for power problems. I think I chose FreeBSD at the time for the ZFS file system which was its big selling point over linux.
I bought my first Tivo in 1999. It ran Linux and a Tivo hacking community quickly appeared.
Added a second hard drive (just put it in your Linux PC first and run a command to format it)
Bought an ethernet adapter and ran a command to install the driver. It had an FTP server so I could just type "get Friends-10-21-1999.mpg" and have the unencrypted file on my computer. It also had a web server to schedule recordings or act as a remote control.
Since then I built several more generations of file server, all running FreeBSD and all absolutely rock solid. They all typically had a 3-5 year service life, with uptimes of 1-2 years at a time. Each of them were only replaced for capacity reasons, with the previous generation server typically serving as a backup target for the next one.
Around 2002, broadcast and cable TV was still a thing, and rudimentary PVRs were becoming available but were pricey with few features. So I decided to build my own.
I started with Linux, thinking that it would provide better hardware compatibility, but stability issues soon drove me back to FreeBSD, and I managed to create a very complete FreeBSD based PVR solution, complete with remote control, automatic program scheduling, multiple simultaneous recording and viewing streams, auto DVD ripping and very intuitive remote (web) and onscreen user interfaces. That thing ran rock solid for 10 years, until replaced by Netflix.
I guess the point I am trying to make is that I fully agree with the author. FreeBSD is in a different league than many other operating systems in terms of capability and stability, while being surprisingly compatible with a lot of hardware.