How good is FreeBSD as a development platform?

Question

I know that lots of web hosting providers are offering FreeBSD, but how good is FreeBSD as a development platform?

Specifically, is Java 1.6 available in it? Is there s

Answer 1

I've been using FreeBSD as a server platform and a desktop/laptop since v2.1. As a secure, stable OS it is excellent. However, as a graphical UI it doesn't fare as well. I've often had to hand-carve an X config, and had little or no luck installing Flash (whether that's a feature or a bug is debatable) for Firefox.

You will find you can't just download a binary for things such as Firefox and the like, but the Ports library more than makes up for this. Doing a full install from CD/DVD gets you a solid server platform, but installing Gnome from source can take a lot of time as it has to download and compile sources for everything. Yes, you can often find precompiled PKG files, but 'make install clean' in the appropriate /usr/ports directory is too easy.

Generally you will find that features get added to Linux kernels faster than they appear in FreeBSD (dtrace and zfs notwithstanding). I don't think Video for Linux is yet supported, which makes things like MythTV difficult at best. Similarly, ISDN support if you're using Asterisk.

Ultimately, it's a matter of personal taste. I continue to use FreeBSD in production, but have tended towards Ubuntu for a desktop, lately.

I can't speak to the Java stuff, but Ruby on Rails deploys flawlessly and seamlessly.