Hi,

Since FreeBSD 8.0 now officially supports running on Xen as a guest, will there be a FreeBSD image soon?

From the FreeBSD 8.0 press-release:

"FreeBSD now supports host and guest modes in VirtualBox, and can run as a 32-bit Xen DomU guest."

I think previous forum topics have shown FreeBSD to be in great demand. You would make a lot of customers happy and more than likely win a few new ones!

Hopla

I've had some interest in switching to FreeBSD for my server platform for a while now. The only thing that's been keeping me from switching has been my reluctance to leave Linode.

You could already run BSD on your Linode: http://www.linode.com/wiki/index.php/BSD_Howto
But it is unsupported.

Yes and it's complicated and tedious, exactly the kind of stuff that Linode could automate for us by providing an official image!

Anyone from the Linode staff who wants to comment on this? This is a genuine feature request from happy customers who would be even more happy if they could run FreeBSD

For those that want this, you're going to need to roll it yourself. There simply isn't enough demand to justify creating and supporting this officially. We provide you the tools, so get busy!

-Chris

I'm sorry, but 'rolling it yourself' is far from easy compared to the point-and-click deploy that's provided for the Linux distro's.

The ease of deployment is what makes Linode great. If I'm going to have to fiddle with stuff, I might as well rent a dedicated server (the Linode 360 I'm running now is of course not worthy of a full-blown dedicated server, but I administer one that might move to Linode if there is FreeBSD support).

I think the 8 pro-votes you see here on this topic represent more (potential) customers than those 8 people. Just Google around and you will find people everywhere looking for a good VPS host that supports FreeBSD. Linode IS a good VPS host, you would get those customers in no time!

Please don't be short-sighted and ignore this request solely on a perceived low demand. You provide Mandrake images too! How many customers use that?

Of course I understand that, if you are able to modify one Linux distro to run on your Xen setup, it probably isn't that hard anymore to modify a bunch of other distros. And that modifying FreeBSD might be a whole different ball game.

But I think you would find that the FreeBSD developer community would very much welcome an effort from a professional VPS host to support their OS. I'm fairly certain that you would be able to get all the help you need from mailinglists, IRC, ... and for free too!

Besides, if some things are a bit hard to solve right now, then I would have no problem using a FreeBSD option that lacks certain features that the Linuxes have now. Like filesystem expansion, console, ...

I would be very happy already just with an easily deployable base installation.

Thank you for taking your time to listen to me and btw: also thank you for the new London datacenter option! It made my day and shows that Linode does really listen to and care about their customers. I hope you will continue to do so in the future!

Sure, maybe the much-vaunted "developer community" would welcome an effort, but would they pay for it?

For official support, there is no such thing as free. For Linode, providing an official image implies (in my view anyway) time spent sanity checking the image, keeping it up to date, having staff able to support it, and so on. While there may be someone on the staff now, having to account for that (again, officially) now and going forward is something they don't want to do. It is more than just getting it to work for people now. An unwritten law in IT is only support it if you want to support it for eternity. Imagine if Linode did this, and then discovered that a Xen hotness option that made everything faster than on iron wasn't available to us (the customers) because it made FreeBSD barf.

As a customer with a passing interest in FreeBSD, I respect (and rather prefer) caker's stance --- I would rather have stellar support for my Linux functions than a split load due to minority interest in something that could have tangible impacts on supportability, maintainability, and new enhancements.

You're not being told you can't do it, you're just being told you're on your own, which is an understandable stance to take on Linode's part.

I understand that, and your previous points, and caker's. Although I think your argument about FreeBSD potentially blocking improvements for Linux in the future is just FUD. Xen is a solid virtualization technology supporting mixed guest OSes, they wouldn't make a release with obvious bugs like that.
And since FreeBSD 8.0 was released, they now also support Xen 'officially' as guest OS.

But I agree, supporting something new isn't something to go over lightly. Even if they get lots of free support from the FreeBSD community, there would still be a cost for Linode.
But if they can do it and there is demand, it would make good business sense. Especially if they can beat the competition to it.

In the unfortunate case that Linode would absolutely not want to officially support FreeBSD: wouldn't it be possible to find an alternative somewhere in the middle? Would Linode be willing to provide some extra/new features (in the form of new/better tools or a basic image) to make the process of installing FreeBSD at least a little easier? Officially not supported ofcourse (with big bold red letters).

It could be done as a test, for a limited period of time. After which Linode can decide to continue the endeavors of supporting FreeBSD, maybe officially or just drop the idea completely after all.

Hopla

We have something in the pipeline that will make life much easier for doing custom deployments. That's all I can say about it, at the moment.

-Chris

Sweeeeeeet... if only you could see the huge smile on my face now !

I'm waiting anxiously for the new feature and promise not to bug you guys about FreeBSD anymore in the mean time

And a name change too...how about LinBSoDe

Hey I managed to get Linode, BSD and BSOD in there !!

What, you want Windoze too?

I have previously seen requests for Windows hosting, so I think I got all the bases covered with LinBSoDe.

Wonder if Caker wants a PR man

Linode is an excellent service but the day someone offers FreeBSD with the service quality of Linode we will have to jump ship. Sorry but Linux cannot compare to FreeBSD.