Debian OS vs. FreeNAS

Debian is very well suited for application servers, web servers, file servers, hypervisors (personally, we use Proxmox for some hypervisors and this is based on Debian), and much more. It can run on various CPU architectures and scales well from large to small. We have Debian DNS servers running on Raspberry Pis, and large application and database servers running on powerful Debian installs in our racks.

If you want an OS that is rock solid, easy to manage, and predictable, Debian might be the OS you're looking for. The official packages are generally far from being bleeding edge versions, but this means that you are using packages that are battle tested and will not break compatibility at any point during its life-cycle. This, to me, is one of Debian's core strengths and a good reason for recommending it to others.

On the flip-side, the lack of up-to-date versions of various packages may be an annoyance if you actually do need to be using the latest version of such a package. If you need to be using more modern versions, you will need to remedy that yourself or look at an alternative distribution. Ubuntu may be worth a look, in this case, being that it is basically Debian with newer packages and some minor differences here and there.

Personally, I would not recommend Debian for a graphical desktop OS. You'll nearly always be better off with one of the Ubuntu flavors for a modern desktop with all the bells and whistles you'd expect with a GUI desktop.

Incentivized

FreeNAS suited really well in managing our legacy systems and it handled all our network flows really well, less maintenance is required on our part. FreeNAS also gave the option to switch to TrueNAS for free as now its support is limited. The major issue that we faced was with the installation as it is really complex and required lots of time. Rest all is good and FreeNAS still works well on our systems.

Incentivized

• Runs smooth and fast.
• Supports many tools since it being an OSS.
• Has got rich software feature and great backend support.

Incentivized

• The FreeNAS web interface is modern looking. It makes tasks like provisioning drives into raid volumes easy.
• The ZFS raid option allows you to add in an SSD as a cache drive to increase performance.

Incentivized

• sometimes I have trouble with drivers; took me a while to figure out that my HDMI TV was overriding my onboard sound card.

Incentivized

• Not good for beginners as it requires deep understanding of networking and storage.
• Most of the good and required features are not available in free version.

Incentivized

Debian is one of the most well-thought-out, logical, and intuitive Linux operating systems you can use. Configuration, package management, file system layouts, etc, are all based on many years of usage, and it's very rare to find anything surprising or confusing in everyday usage. Package management and updates are handled by APT in such a way that once configured, you can almost guarantee your system will behave as expected for the lifetime of its service. Top-notch system integration provides all the tools you'd expect from a modern Linux system, with all the stability you demand from a demanding server OS.

Incentivized

There were some things that can be found by other users on forums and Google and some things that were not.

Incentivized

Debian is the most widely used operating system in our environment due to being how lightweight, stable, and versatile it is.

Incentivized

Before swapping to FreeNAS, we'd been using plan old Linux servers running Samba and NFS with ZFS storage underneath. This worked really well for our requirements at the time but required a lot of administration when new versions came along, or new users had to be added or drives needed replacing, and so on. FreeNAS did away with 95% of that work and does a much better job too.

Incentivized

• we have always had a positive impact being a stable operating system helps to meet our goals
• the security that Debian OS offers is a quality that contributes to our objectives
• everything that helps productivity and efficiency in our work has a positive balance in the fulfillment of the objectives that we set ourselves

Incentivized

• Low-Cost Network Attached Storage
• Provides additional network storage to support client & business operations
• FreeNAS secures our data using custom encryption keys

Incentivized