My focus on operating systems is how easy it is to administer, in particular for security patches and new software distribution. I agree that FreeBSD seems more stable. If you don't mess with it, it will stay up forever. In my experience with a
real live production site, it is impossible to avoid messing with them. There is a terrifying complexity curve as traffic goes up.The winner for administration in my books is Debian linux. Security updates are usually about as simple as typing
apt-get updateapt-get -u upgrade
New packages (e.g. you need squid because your server is running out of spare connections):
apt-get install squid
Deinstallations are clean, and dependencies are just magically taken care of. The Debian project members are obsessive about keeping the tree labelled "stable" stable. RPMs, in contrast, are a terrible mess. I'm saying this after a few years of trying Slackware and Red Hat.
