Who am I you may wonder?
well... first, I'm a FreeBSD user like you might (or shall?) be.
On the other side I'm an admin for several FreeBSD driven systems doing plenty of jobs. Also I'm a developer...
My Unix experience look like:
- SINIX - anybody remembering? :)
- SCO Unix SysV R 3.2 - will not put my fingers on it anymore since the IP stuff of SCO
- SCO Xenix/386
- AT&T SysV R 4
- Novel UnixWare
- GNU-Linux (SuSe)
I'm really sure I've forgotten some OS in that list (SUN Solaris and Interactive Unix are not listed because I've sitten in front of them just one or another day).
Back in the early 90's while I've worked with DOS, SINIX and Unix SysV, I've heard about a really free OS called BSD-386. Back in these days I've been highly interested in it but have not been able to get a copy of it (or it's source code) here in Europe as there has been no internet at all and I was unable to find something on CompuServe. That has been the time when Unix'es were mostly commercial and really, really expensive. I continued to work with these commercial *nix systems. Later Windows came to market and most customers switched over and started going away from *nix based systems. I definitely thought it was a bad idea but as most customers (yes... I'm working as a freelancing software developer) went away from *nix I used to develop for Windows systems (in 1993). First I ported some *nix communication daemon programs and later I've been dedicated in developing for the weighing industry (mostly truck weighing).
Over the years as being a Windows (only) developer I felt like getting stupid by the lack of good documentation and surrounded of (mostly undocumented) bugs in the Windows APIs. The MS-KB has been my best friend but I don't like those kind of friends. As a developer one has to develop and not searching for bugs and work-arounds in the API layer.
I always felt sad of not having the same tools and the same power of a *nix based system while using Windows. Then (I guess it was in 1999) I bought a CD set of FreeBSD (R 4.5?) and I started living again. I started to feel the power of a real operating system. I guess you (currently reading this) will know what I'm talking about, aren't you? :)
Every other day you may see me at Daemonnews support forum, FreeBSD Forums or (if you're german speaking) at BSDForen trying to help other users. I really do like to idea of the community and like to help others as others have often helped me!
My main focus on the beasties is:
- routing
- VPN / IPSec
- network services (like DNS, SMTP, HTTP, etc.)
- security
- 3G / UMTS
As I'm located in Germany, I'll probably start a user group in the Berlin Brandenburg area some day...