Hi all,

First of all, thanks for viewing my message.

I am in the dilemma of choosing either FreeBSD or Redhat Linux. The server I will be installing is IBM xSeries 345. Please help me to decide by giving your view or justification based on:
a. Security
b. Stability
c. Support
d. SAN compatibility
e. Portability
f. Ease of use

The spec. of the server is listed as follow:
IBM xSeries 345
2 x Intel Xeon 3.06 GHz/533MHz FSB w/512KB L2 cache CPU
2 GB DDR RAM
2 x 73.4GB 10k rpm SCSI HDDs

Your help is really appreciated and I thank you in advanced.

Regards.

I know this question is hard to answer, please give some opinions please.

To the best of my knowledge, if you're looking for stability FreeBSD is the best way to go. For the rest, I would say RedHat (with the exception of SAN compatibility -- I don't know much about that).

I've read FreeBSD is much more "rock solid" but not as up to date as far as software and packages as RedHat.

I'm not very sure since I run RH & MDK but I've read in other threads the the BSD's are not Linux there a real UNIX. Sometimes while downloading apps I've seen different links for Linux/UNIX setups make sure what the differences are so you don't have a compatibility issue I'd check out the BSD Forums first.

quote:
I am in the dilemma of choosing either FreeBSD or Redhat Linux.

Whats the dilemma? Try them both and see which one works best for you.

quote:
I know this question is hard to answer, please give some opinions please.

Not hard to answer as it has been asked many times before.
Check these out: http://www.google.com/linux
http://www.google.com/bsd
http://www.freebsd.org/

Ease of use will probably go to RedHat
Both can be made secure and stable
Both have good support online
For San compatability check out the google sites

Hope this helps

FreeBSD is more secure straight out of the box.

A nice false statement, except for the much more rock solid part

FreeBSD is what I would run if I were picking between those 2. The BSD distro's have proven more stable/reliable in the past, but thats not to say that RH isn't or any other Linux distro. I've just heard that the preferred choice of a lot of people is the BSD distro's. But I'd look into OpenBSD if you're going BSD, they make a good OS.

It doesn't really matter in this case, does it?
Since you just don't instal OS on server and leave it that way??????
You must aditionally secure it for the purpose of being the server

Yes but if it's more secure to begin with, you theoretically have less work to do.

Thank you very much to all the opinions you gave.