Linux or *BSD

[gobeavers]

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum...its not just BSD, but its not just Linux...
Anyway-

I have already done some things with Linux, but I hear that FreeBSD/NetBSD are good OS's also.

What are the different advantages of BSD over linux, or vice versa?

[CoffeeMan]

Well, the BSD OSes have Linux Binary Compatibility, and they have a package management system called ports. Dealing with ports is different than dealing with RPMs or DEBs.
The major advantages are in the specific Flavors of BSD.
FreeBSD comes with everything you need, it is a full-fledged OS that uses packages that Linux users would be familiar with, (i.e. X11, KDE, Gnome, Mozilla, bash...) and it is (in my experience) stable as a rock and fast too.
OpenBSD is regarded as the most secure operating system in the world.
NetBSD is so small that most consider it to be just a kernel , (like Linux) it is notoriusly portable, (meaning there's probably not an architechture it hasn't been ported to.)
DragonFlyBSD is a jack of FreeBSD 4.x.x.
ANd ekkoBSD is dead. I think that BSDi is just for servers. But, I personally would take a distribution of linux before a BSD, because I like the Linux kernel better.
But overall, I would say that working in BSD is like working in linux, but with a different kernel.

[dr_te_z]

One is great and the other is fabulous. But the reverse is also true.

[spork2000]

The big difference I see is *BSD's have a board of people looking over what goes into it. It's a more complete package.

I'm not saying Slackware or Fedora or whatnot aren't complete packages but it's easier to take a Linux kernel and start adding stuff to it to get a distrobution.

The BSD's maintain a more cohesive package.

I love Slack, but found recently that FreeBSD ran faster on my laptop so I've been giving it a go. Just loaded 5.3 RC1 on it this AM. If it's as nice as I think it'll be I'll be keeping it around for a while.

[spork2000]

Ignoring the flames against linux here there are some good illustrations of differences between the two philosophies:
http://www.freebsdforums.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23172

[dboyer]

dr_te_z hit it on the head. They are just different.

I personally tried FreeBSD and loved it. I would be using it right now except that it cannot seem to mount fat drives over 132gigs, which my media drive is. So, no FreeBSD for me.

However, it was interesting to find problems I've never figured out how to solve in linux (http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/sound-setup.html#AEN8384) easily solved using the FreeBSD handbook. It IS much more cohesive than linux, and that was nice for a change.

[goon12]

This article might be a bit old, but I found it to be pretty informative.


http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/bsd4linux2.php


-goon12

[BMK1st]

You also should read thie article (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0%2C1558%2C555398%2C00.asp) :)

[Uranus]

Originally posted by spork2000
Ignoring the flames against linux here there are some good illustrations of differences between the two philosophies:
http://www.freebsdforums.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23172
Wow! serz is a BSD n00b! :P
Sam

[serz]

Originally posted by Uranus
Wow! serz is a BSD n00b! :P
Sam
11 posts.. yea! :p

[CoffeeMan]

I think that the FreeBSD guys are a little full of themselves, if you ask me.

[Uranus]

Actually I don't think that's really strange, since I think it is a much more professional OS than Linux - professionals are always full of themselves :)
As soon as I've read the manual and understand BSD a lot better I'm quite sure I'm going to install it, and if I don't meet any hardware (laptop) problems, I'm very likely to switch :)
I've tried several distro's, and I found that I really liked the Slackware init-scripts and building programs from source, yet having a stable system. I think BSD is closer than any Linux distro to my wishes. I switched from Slackware because I hated the package system (and the amount of packages) and switched from Source Mage because it wasn't stable enough for me.
Sam

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

I think this site said it, or I heard it somewhere:

http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/bsd4linux1.php

BSD users tend to know Linux better than Linux users know Linux or BSD, for that matter. I'll shoot for a disclaimer, and state that the link above is a BSD advocacy post, but it brings up numerous good points about the way *BSDs are usually done, and the way that Linux has evolved.

What it boils down to is that you could sit for hours and debate this-for-that comparisons of each OS versus the other, but in the end, you'd probably end up pretty even in terms of usability, and stability. All of the same packages are available in binary form, or at least buildable in each OS, so you're pretty set there.

Linux and the *BSDs are all fine OSes. Personally, I came from Slackware, and I just developed a fondness for both FreeBSD and NetBSD. For some reason, I find myself using FreeBSD on desktops, and NetBSD on my lower-end and non-x86 setups.

edit: goon12 already posted the link that I did! oops! :eek: