Except Jails in FreeBSD are for segmentation, not security, they are trivial to break out of. 
OvermindDL1
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RisingFromAshes
Sure, and FreeBSD deployments can be found to be used by some of the world’s largest companies too.
But answering the title question of this thread, FreeBSD would be a better pick for most in this community to run Phoenix on instead of a Linux distro,.
And for reasons already listed above, FreeBSD would be a better choice over SmartOS/Illumos for most in this community to run Phoenix/Elixir/OTP on, which I think is proven by the WhatsApp to Netflix choosing it over alternatives.
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RisingFromAshes
I agree jails are far from perfect, but I also think OS containers and even application containers are a distraction if not irrelevant for most developing with Phoenix, especially in the production environment.
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andre1sk
Some and most are 2 very different categories . And the areas they are used in are also very different FreeBSD is pretty much at the edge only e.g. web servers. Google is using Linux for pretty much everything and it’s x times bigger than WhatsApp and Netflix combined so it’s a tough way to make an argument.
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RisingFromAshes
Sure, there’s no perfect OS for everyone, and I’m not trying to engage in a pissing contest of that type, but I think for all the reasons I’ve listed above, FreeBSD would be a better choice for ‘most’ in this community, especially taking into account single and small team developers who do not have the resources of Google to build and nurse their own Linux distro.
As I’ve said before, if someone needs an edge case, then pick a Linux distro (perhaps for a unique hardware requirement) or SmartOS/Illumos (for a leading edge OS feature), but otherwise, choosing FreeBSD will give ‘most’ in this community all the features, stability, security, and support they need to go far, and should they find FreeBSD doesn’t do what they need, they will be in a good position to migrate to an alternative.
I used WhatsApp and Netfix and Apache Foundation as examples because they represent diversity of uses, but I could have also include Yahoo etc simply to show the FreeBSD should cover most production scenarios that Phoenix could be used for.
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DianaOlympos
my 2 cents : yes FreeBSD is great, and yes use it. In the end, the SmartOS/Illumos and the FreeBSD communities are quite close.
About Jails : it is made for security from the get go, while Zones were made for segmentation with security too.
The problems of Jails is that there are still a lot of patch lingering around and not being accepted upstream that are needed to bring them up to speed with Zones, especially concerning networking and ressource usage.
Now, i use a freeBSD for my server right now. I would use SmartOS if i had to handle a dozen hardware machine or need to build an infrastructure on top of it.
If you have a handful of hardware servers and not a lot of different loads/jobs to run on to it, use a FreeBSD. If you want a DC/OS or a container scheduler on top of it, use SmartOS.
If you have a strong preference for any of them, go for it.
You can also choose a Linux. Your pick. I am not always a fan, but they have a deep amount of knowledge floating on the web to help. FreeBSD is catching up, mainly due to DO offering them, but SmartOS is still far behind.
It all depends of your engineering needs and constraints.
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evbogdanov
I’ve been using Erlang+FreeBSD combo for about 3 years now with no issues whatsoever. It’s a rock-solid, battle-hardened (WhatsApp: Half a billion unsuspecting FreeBSD users) foundation you can safely count on.
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MarcusForPeace
Some of the most prominent Erlang projects of recent have been hosted on BSD infrastructure. What’s App is one, but there are others.
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douglasv
Netflix uses FreeBSD exclusively - all that video streaming - all that reliability - all that concurrency
Netflix has at least 37% share of internet traffic in North America
Go with success!
before you start read FreeBSD Storage Essentials, FreeBSD mastery ZFS
https://www.freebsdmall.com/cgi-bin/fm
FreeBSD pdf
ThecompleteFreeBSD.pdf
AbsoluteFreebsd-2ndEdition.pdf
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idi527
Netflix uses freebsd only for streaming, and linux for everything else, I think. And I’ve read somewhere that they are considering to move away from freebsd completely to have a more homogeneous environment.
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