The Holy War

OK-
I feel the need to start one of these....

Freebsd vs Linux

THe last 8 months or so I have been implementing RedHat and FreeBSD solutions.

RedHat has been stable and I have not had any problems. In addition, if software is mode for *nix to run on an intel chip it will work with RedHat.

FreeBSD is stable and I love the ports setup as well as the overall directory structure design. I also like the idea that FreeBSD is FreeBSD. Not many different install setups etc...like our penguin loving friends.

But I must ask....at this point in time...is there any trump card that BSD has over Linux....I think....Linux has prven stable by now. And why are all the big vendors lining up behind Linux not BSD. Does anyone think BSD will go the way of the DO-DO...????

-just feel like making convo

I'm just getting into playing with both of these. I've installed both and played with both and I'm working on making the "full switch" from Windows. Like you, I like that there aren't a bunch of variations to FreeBSD like there is with Linux -- it seems simpler, especially in the directory structure. I think Linux is becoming, dare I say, too commercialized?

I agree..linux is becoming much to commercialized. I don't believe it is working eather. The people who use linux are the computer nerds..not the everyday user. It's not worth ruining the nux' name to win the OS war.

Well yes...Linux is commercialized..in that I agree. I have found FreeBSD to react faster and be more efficeint than Linux SMP excluded though haven;t really tried it out on 5.0....yet.

I was a long time Novell fan to only lose to M$. I guess I am worried about development for BSD to fall of because of everyone "else" moving towards Linux.

Is it just me or does everything on BSD just seem cleaner?

It's not just you.

I too am concerned about the falloff of support. My soundcard isn't FreeBSD compatible, but I have no problem in Red Hat.

well BSD developers are "invite" only. linux is only a kernel and the way different distro's do things is getting very splintered.

HOWEVER..... freebsd kernel developers. for once, are "taking advice" from linux hackers cause the pre-emptible soon to be released 2.6 has already gotten around many of the problems BSD programmers are now facing! used to be the linux copied everything the other *nix's did, i think this is the start of a trend.

linux still isnt as stable as freebsd, it crashed twice on me (once was a absolute disaster), freebsd never once did even after 240 days uptime.

freebsd ports are great but not really useful for those who are stuck on narrowband and have to pay phone company per minute internet connections (and believe me, there is plenty of us!)

i like freebsd & linux but am torn between the 2...... wish there was a freebsd linux distro around

For a server, i just love the FreeBSD system. Stable, clean, easy to install, easy to update & easy to use. Few updates were necessary over a long time. Also has the best manual that i´ve ever seen for an OS!

Linux needs updates every other day though. And some software won´t run even after updating for months

For a workstation with GUI, i can´t recommend FreeBSD. It is not as up-to-date as linux is. Probably due to the closed developer group that cannot be as big as the linux developers group. The ports are good, stable too. Just that they are old for most stuff i tried to install on my workstation (especially multimedia stuff).

But from using different linux distros, i can tell you, this problem is not unique to FreeBSD. Debian for example has the same problem too.

Seems like you have to update your linux distro on a workstation even more often than windows. My personal comparison:
- FreeBSD: never crashed, servers up-to-date, GUI-stuff always outdated, lacks lots of drivers that linux has but "update" function worked like a charm.
- SuSE: quite stable, quite up-to-date, few problems. But no ISOs on the ´net and "Update" option always broke the whole installation.
- Debian: quite stable, much outdated software, but them folks patched it to work quite stable even though it is old. Didn´t test "update" option, but only heard good things about it.
- SlackWare: up to you if it is stable, up to you if it is up-to-date, updating is a science of its own, need to read a whole bible to make it work at all, need to re-read the bible every other month because things change quite often. Once you got control of the system, you will feel like god, but only till the day you need to update a component that you installed more than 6 months ago... (unless you have photographic memory)
- Knoppix: only met this recently. Great work. Boots from CD in seconds, found all my hardware by itself, installation on my HD still to come... (it works 100% off the CD-ROM, including X, KDE, Moz, just everything i needed in the first place !!! i´ll install it to my HD as soon as i see the need )

i never tried RH, but this is the next on my list although i expect it not to be much different from SuSE´s... (these two are afaik the biggest distros around)

My server/router will probably stay FreeBSD for ever, but my workstation will change every few months till i found the distro that works actually better than MS-Windows....

All this probably sounds a little ambivalent - IMHO it is.

... just my 2ct

From reading several of the responses I guess we all agree FreeBSD is just cleaner.

As for a desktop...Well I am determined to make it work.

Currently, running KDE 3.whatever come w/ 5.0 and using Opera and Konqueror for the web. I am definetely having audio issues though but I am really trying to fit it in more as a corporate desktop than a home machine.

I have installed openoffice "from the ports"....wow 2 days to compile. If you don;t feel like spending the time just run it in Linux Compat. Honestly I really haven't any difference between the port install and the download from OO.

I also run all MS apps via MSTerminal Services or Citrix. I am not a MS hater...and find that one terminal server running Citrix can meet all the needs of std Corp users.

I personally am using Free as opposed to Linux on desktop because my servers are FreeBSD. I can;t think of a better way to learn it than to constantly be interacting with it all day.

What really needs to be done is to convince Big Blue or someone like that to endorse it and provide Hardware support. The biggest obstacle with FreeBSD that I have run into is finding the appropriate drivers for some slightly unique hatdware.

It is a strange situation...here we have a really great OS....arguably the most stable OS for the Intel chip and it is in 3rd place behind MS and Linux!!!!!

What will it take to open the eyes others......Hey BSD big whigs.....Let's get some coverage in the periodicals....

Sigh........I lost the war to MS with Novell......Now I feel like I am siding with the wrong OS again.....maybe it is time to put away my little daemon and go and buy a penguin?????

First off, I don't count Linux alongside MS as the "enemy" and so don't mind that we Beastie users are in "3rd place". Second, I don't think the "end" of the war will result in the annihilation of any of the BSDs as it did when MS reduced Novell and, earlier, OS/2, to a niche market. That's the beauty of the open source model -- the goal is not world domination, but IMHO simply giving people an alternative. Besides, as long as at least one person is interested in maintaining BSD, it'll be around. BSDi in particular has a real revenue model, and enough following, to keep BSD alive and well.

Having said all that, I too wish the hardware support were better, and that there were more native apps. However, on the one hand, it's not that hard for me to check the hardware compatibility pages before going out and getting some gizmo. Besides, this might be a good thing in that it keeps me from making frivolous purchases. On the other hand, the BSDs' Linux binary emulation seems to work well enough so the absence of desktop apps doesn't hurt as much.

My US$0.02

need i say more?......

a strong reason in favor of linux

Im not sure what your talking about there.

Via ports, FreeBSD as a desktop is as up to date as any other linux

>> FreeBSD as a desktop is as up to date as any other linux

FreeBSD's ports collection is way faster than Linux, RPM binaries in particular.

I was not talking about binary rpms. Of course this would depend on the distribution you are using.
Also, different people have different definitions of a "desktop system".
My thoughts were:

- Most end-user desktop software is developed for linux.
- the software is most times made available as source code that compiles out-of-the-box in a linux system. It is available as soon as it is being published, i can download and compile it.
- by nature, the ports need some editing. This makes the ports collection stay at least some hours behind the original code. For projects that are not used so often, it can be days, weeks, maybe months. Maybe they are not available in the ports at all.



Depends. One quick example: (Not that I would be using it - but many other people are): Can you tell me where the FreeBSD port of "lmule" (linux emule) is?

But i have to admit - for the "standard" software, they are damn fast (and good)!

Yes you can. You also can be way smarter than the port maintainer who is responsible for that particular port. You of course can assume you can build it with success rate of 100%.