What is BSD? If you ask a typical computer “expert,” he or she is likely to reply (incorrectly!) that it is “an operating system.” The correct answer, however, is more complex than that. BSD is — among other things — a culture, a philosophy, and a growing collection of software, most (though not all) of which is available for free and with source code.
The BSDs: Sophisticated, Powerful, and (Mostly) Free
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
That time I went into /usr/ports/deve/ and did ‘make install all’? While this may not be correct, it certainly shouldn’t break the system.
Sorry I didn’t clarify, but this was FreeBSD 4.6.2.
Proponents of Linux tend to take a “revolutionary” stance, seeing their work as a war to compete with, and destroy, Microsoft and other commercial software vendors. But the BSDs are content to coexist with commercial software, and in fact are happy to allow commercial software to use what they create.
I’m going to print that out and hang it over my desk…
I knew most of this stuff already, but still, it’s a pleasure to read an article that doesn’t engage in FUD or mere opinion. I also like the idea that BSD, not Unix, Linux, or Windows, is the real backbone of modern computing and standardization (all semantics aside).
BSD is not an OS, but then it’s not a culture.
BSD is an abriviation.
can i start telling people BSD is my religion?
😀
Linux is for people who hate Windows.
BSD is for people who love UNIX
Brandon Barker: that will not break your system, just fill it with crap, is like if in Debian(IIRC) you do “apt-get install ‘*'”(not sure, haven’t used Linux in more than a year..)
Try doing “make deinstall” in the same dir, you will wipe a few things that maybe you where using, but you can install that latter.
\k
Linux is for people who hate Windows.
BSD is for people who love UNIX
Sometimes I wonder if it’s not: BSD is for people who hate Linux.
I use Linux, used it since Red Hat 4.2. I hardly use Windows, so I pretty much don’t care about it. Much less hate it. Windows doesn’t bother me, so I don’t bother Windows. I tried OpenBSD, NetBSD, and FreeBSD, and I don’t really see what all the fuss is about.. I like Linux more.
I use it over Linux not because of the technology (although I am biased), but because of the organization of the culture behind it and the OS itself.
Linux is just a kernel where as FreeBSD is a complete OS. I find it much easier to deal with. The help from the userbase and the documentation out there is also first rate.
Keep in mind that I am not knocking Linux, just saying that I much prefer FreeBSD. As far as the other *BSD distros, I have never tried them, but have heard good things about them.
For me, this is not a religious issue; I just want an OS that doesn’t crash every 5 minutes (read windows), and one that suits my interests and I find enjoyable to work with.
Brett
Sometimes I wonder if it’s not: BSD is for people who hate Linux.
I’ve ran linux almost exclusivly for about 3 years, taking time to fiddle with the other OSs; and, I really don’t see the advantage the BSDs give over the Linuxes. Linux just seems to have more flavors and choice, but that’s not the point. I can run Linux and not get on any of the BSD people’s backs, but everbody that I have ever talked to that runs BSD has gotten extremely defensive when I even mention that I’m running Linux. Why are you guys so up tight?
Linux is for people who hate Windows.
BSD is for people who love UNIX
I may run Linux and have no love for Windows, but most of the BSD people I know have no love for it either. A simple phrase like this doesn’t wash their hands clean, all it does is show the typical bsd users opinion that everything they do is better.
I read only far enough to get to this passage:
When code is licensed under the GNU General Public License or GPL (as is Linux), the license effectively eliminates any financial rewards anyone — whether an individual or a corporation — might hope to gain from improving upon it. It does this by compelling an author who uses any part of the code to give up the right to charge a license fee for the finished product.
This is such utter bullshit, it puts the whole article in a bad light. The author obviously has an ideology to push. Perhaps the poster above was right that BSD is for people who hate Linux, then?
From a happy FreeBSD user: Take that attitude and shove it!
The BSDs are just not deveoping fast enough. I’ll bait on linux first.
>>>The BSDs are just not deveoping fast enough. I’ll bait on linux first.
The whole linux distribution world is adopting 12-18 month release cycles.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s not: BSD is for people who hate Linux.
Linux (that is to say, the kernel) is fine (for the most part) I hate GNU. I hate their gimpy, krufty userspace and I especially hate their C library.
I take solice in the fact in FreeBSD the same people that write the kernel write the userspace and C library.
>>>The BSDs are just not deveoping fast enough. I’ll bat on linux first.
Umm, something in particular you’re looking for? Driver support perhaps? That just requires more active developers, which only comes from popularity.
Otherwise, the BSDs tend to have applications into the ports collection faster than most of the Linux distributions get them packaged.
Here’s an interesting way to look at it all.
One way to compare BSD and Linux is by the distributions.
BSD has, at the moment, 3 main camps: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. 3 forks with similar heritage. They sometimes share code, sometimes not, based on the philosophy of each camp.
To create a new BSD, you would need to effectively fork the entire project, and no doubt there would be much kicking and screaming and flailing.
Now Linux, of course, is “simply a kernel”. It has several distributions, but those are mostly collections of software with few actual code changes, a different filesystem structure, and perhaps a few “proprietary” utilities.
When a new Linux distribution comes out, some may cry about “Why? Why? Why?”, but they’re mostly concerned about the time wasted to do a distribution. Distributions can come and go.
Now the BSDs are more than just the kernel, their systems are a more integrated whole. Not only are the kernels different from BSD to BSD, but the supplied software is different as well.
Now, in some way, we can see the BSD model starting in the Linux world. The recent fork of KDE by RedHat is the most recent example, but I can easily see RedHat and UnitedLinux start taking on more of the “cohesive whole” philosophy of the BSDs, if for no other reason than to improve stability.
The ramifications of this will be “RedHat” versions of software, and “UL” versions, and then the “wild” versions. The companies may easily start bringing systems under their own wings and make little tweaks. If the original team doesn’t want those tweaks in the public, wild distribution, then, no problem — snip — RedHat Sendmail v1.0.
I consider the BSDs to be the Dell and Compaq of the free Unix world. It’s an open system made from mostly commodity parts, but the camps make a reasonable effort to test the entire system, whereas most of the Linux’s are trips to the local Computer Swap meet and bringing back a big box of parts needing assembly to get it to work.
I am sitting at a BSD machine right now as I type this, as a matter of fact, I use this machine all the time. It is mature and stable. Which BSD do I use?
Mac OS X!
That’s the one thing I can’t stand about BSD users. They constantly have to put down linux and the GPL.
Most articles just can’t resist the urge to mention how BSD is somehow “better” then linux.
Its pathetic that BSD users don’t have enough faith in their distros, and to have to use FUD ever time they mention Linux. So then you get crap like this.
“Linux is for people who hate Windows.
BSD is for people who love UNIX.”
Whatever, grow up already.
I have been a Windows refugee for about 3 years now. (Don’t want to start a flame war (:) Just a variety of things came together at about the same time and I made my first jump by putting linux on a system. The usual clueless with UNIX problems ensued and I was soon back in the comfy world of Microsoft. After several attempts at this new OS I was able to do what I wanted to do and improvements in linux itself made the jump relatively easy. Besides I was enjoying my newfound skills. Suddenly I felt that I was actually working with my computer like a car mechanic works on a car. I was able to get under the hood and actually manage the beast much more directly than with windows. There was no GUI, Wizard, or Paper Clip Guy standing between me and the innards of the system. After learning that instead of typing up those ridiculously long commands by hand every time, I could open up vi and type the command once and use this as a script.
Soon I was completely free from Microsoft and I was happy. For a while. Then I noticed that there was another player on the field. A player that had a demonic mascot (ouch) and had far less hype associated with it. So I bought -gagh- a FreeBSD box at CompUSA and went home and tried this little satan out on old P200 1gb 32mg ram machine. Talk about a foreign language. I had already spent considerable time learning the idioms and grammar of linux and now I was being asked to sit through beginner Swahili just to get the OS installed. Like Linux I learned that its best to assume that the first several installs are just for play and it would be wise to just roll with the punches because its going to be a long drive. Like my latest travel exploit OpenBSD, FreeBSD has custom and immigration guards at the gate that expect you to know the game and if you don’t you are taken to a little room and strip searched. Quite an uncomfortable experience that you do not want to have happen again so you learn how to get past
these somewhat unfriendly people. As with Windows though I was soon back in the comfy arms of Linux because I was NOT going to sit through beginner Swahili for 3 or 4 semesters. Actually the whole ‘ports’ thing at the time confused the heck out of me and I had an all night when is KDE going to finish installing kind of experience. WHAT is the installer doing???? AAAAA
To make a gruesome story short, I got tired of the yes I can say it, tired of the security issues with linux and so I ordered a set of OpenBSD disks. OPenBSD’s mascot is a blowfish. Fugu in japanese. This is cool I thought. HA. ONce again I forgot that I would have to sit through beginner Urdu to get this new OS up and running. The rewards will be great they kept telling me. Eventually I got it running and set the machine up as a router with a firewall for my inhouse network. And it ran and ran and ran. And the best part was I RARELY had to touch it.
So here I am in my new country, eating god knows what, and having to converse in tongues to order my food but the locals are actually incredibly friendly and the pace is MUCH more pleasant.
So it is possible. I know. I’ve done it.
There is nothing wrong with the GPL, just that BSD uses a BSD license. Each has their uses. I use BSD because it’s superior technology, not because of any license issue.
I am a FreeBSD fanatic…i’ll say what up front…now with that said…
I use Red Hat Linux 7.3, FreeBSD 4.6.2, and Windows XP every single day…but the one I use most is FreeBSD…i only use Windows because my major requires it…and I use Linux for compatibility testing of software i write and because it works better on my laptop
some people have been asking what’s the big deal in FreeBSD…well it’s integrated…it’s clean (compared to the GNU tools and the absolutely chaotic file system layouts of most Linux distros)…it’s easy to keep updated…make install world…but my favorite thing is the package management…the ports system kicks so much ass!!!
FreeBSD as a kernel is nothing spectacular…i would say that it’s roughly equivalent to the Linux kernel…better in some areas (networking stack) and worse in others (hardware compatibility)
of course these are just my opinions
use whatever system you love
peace
-bytes256
It’s about time the BSDs got some more press coverage — I keep telling people it’s better than Linux, but oh well, one day.
Also, if you’re looking for a nice, easy to use BSD based firewall, check out http://www.netboz.net
“Most articles just can’t resist the urge to mention how BSD is somehow “better” then linux.”
errr … cos it is. And the press has just gone Linux hype crazy, so someone’s gotta bring them back to reality.
Its pathetic that BSD users don’t have enough faith in their distros, and to have to use FUD ever time they mention Linux. So then you get crap like this.
“Linux is for people who hate Windows.
BSD is for people who love UNIX.”
Whatever, grow up already.
Linux is also for communists, so go away conrade.
conrade = comrade
I tried many Linux distributions and the one I really liked is Debian. I’m using it (at home and university) for two years now.
I tried FreeBSD, but I like NetBSD more. Why? More clean, more minimalist, incredible good documentation and code. So I use NetBSD too. Linux is too messy for educative purposes (reading source, learning Unix, networking etc.). Linux is also too bloated, older computers are much more happy with NetBSD.
(Why not OpenBSD? One reason: that stupid mascot! Long live Beastie!)
Of course, Debian have more packages and gets new ones more often, I can play OpenGL games better, and my Duron likes the Linux kernel more. So I just use both OSes.
Politically, I like GPL and the GNU philosophy, but I understand the BSD point of view, and I see no problem in using and contributing to BSD projects. Some things are better with a BSD licence (games and game libraries, for example). I really don’t understand all this religious war, nor why many BSD users waste their time bashing Linux. We are all on the same boat, remember?
–Leonardo Boiko
What? Blasphemy! You should be tarred (or tarballed) and feathered!
Everyone knows that The Blowfish is the one that took the bite out of the apple, gave the demon a wedgie, and grounded the penguin. And Sushi Fugu (2.8) is just sooo cool/cute/hip.
I see the good in BSD when you go to do something and the company actually wrote how to do what you want. I am a Linux user and time and time again I will go do research on how to do something and hear 20 different ways to do it. Then when I find the best documentation I can find, I type in the first command it says, command not found, or error, or even on the compile error. Anyways, if I could use BSD I don’t think I would have that problem. BSD is just a little to hard for me to handle right now. Example… I’m using RedHat Linux 7.3 I wanted to just forward some ports over to my laptop (Netmeeting) so I went online to find out how. RedHat 7.3 uses IP Chains (of course I just learned that) all the information I read was IP Tables… and other tools the RedHat ‘used’ to have like ipmasqford or whatever it was called.
Linux (that is to say, the kernel) is fine (for the most part) I hate GNU. I hate their gimpy, krufty userspace and I especially hate their C library.
>>>>>>>>
Exactly what do you hate about it? ‘ls’ isn’t doing it for you? GNU userspace has made free UNIX a reality. Even BSD uses a lot of GNU userspace tools. We’ve gotten to the point where GCC (see benchmarks for 3.2) is in the same league (if not quite as fast) as Intel C++, which is written by the people who make the freaking processor! glibc has an incredibly full set of functionality, and GNU tools power obscure platforms that nothing else will touch. Now, before bashing such an important project, would you care to list any specific complaints.
I take solice in the fact in FreeBSD the same people that write the kernel write the userspace and C library.
>>>>>>>>>>
Um, what makes BSD’s C library better than GNU’s? Sure its about half the size, but do you have any benchmarks to prove that this leads to any improvements other than the extra 500K of saved disk space?
>>>I consider the BSDs to be the Dell and Compaq of the free Unix world. It’s an open system made from mostly commodity parts, but the camps make a reasonable effort to test the entire system, whereas most of the Linux’s are trips to the local Computer Swap meet and bringing back a big box of parts needing assembly to get it to work.<<<<
the above analogy blows donkey balls:
one of dell’s primary advantages is that it moves more machines then anyone else. This makes for an incredibly large user base. Which in turn makes it far easier to run down problems and solve them. PERIOD.
redhat and linux in general, have far more people running the os, then say freebsd. Problems are discovered, tracked down, and solved faster. period. this can be seen quite easily with google groups. it can also be seen on LUG’s. you can argue all you want..i don’t give a crap. i know 20 people who are very knowledgeable in linux. i know one bsd’r…and he ain’t that great. point made.
linux is progress….bsd is unfortunately (but deservedly cause of elitest assholes) dying a slow death.
bsd has some very nice points to it, over linux. some are subtle. but really all the defenders of bsd end up just coming off jaded, can’t see the forest for the trees, pathological types.
first they claim that linux is a movement (implying bsd is not)..yes one poster already hit the nail on the head: true bsd’ers are quick to get all out of shape when the “linux” word is mentioned. when your average linux user will not react at all to the word bsd…hell it could be just another distribution for all it mattered (sure they’ll try it…got an iso cd i can borrow?)…so in the end, my own experience? bsd’ers are far more fanatical then any linux user i’ve ever dealt with.
a lot of the elitest linux users were not happy with using linux cause it just wasn’t elistest enough…to many damn linux newbies bugging them or soemthing…so they jumped ship to something even more lesser known.
or maybe you got some aix/solaris admins who can’t afford to get the real deals at the house…so they run bsd.
anyway that whole defensive elitest attitude can go where the sun don’t shine.
I use in my computer a FreeBSD 4.3, a Red Hat 7.3, BeOS 5.0.3 and a Windows 98!
I like of FreeBSD, fast, more fast than Linux!
I hope that OpenBeOS be fast than FreeBSD!
And, of course BlueEyedOS!
– Michael VinÃcius de Oliveira
– BlueEyedOS Webmaster
Why do people insist on describing things in contrast to other things?
Why even mention Linux, Windows or the GPL when describing something that is not one of those?
Do you describe a friend in contrast to your other friends?
Do you describe something you love in terms of things you do not love?
For something titled “The BSDs: Sophisticated, Powerful, and (Mostly) Free” I would not expect the various contrasts the author seemed so eager to make mention of.
You need to turn the rant off and go hit the english books. Better yet, go smack your english teacher for letting you graduate thinking that “than” – a comparison, is the same as “then” – a timing, procedural word.
“I like it better THAN that.”
“I would like to smack, THEN kick you in the butt for thinking such dreary, un-comma’d *snicker* thoughts….”
well that’s just how ppl work though … they love to compare stuff.
it happens with music — I seem to remember Oasis being called the new Beatles or every Australian actor that makes it big in the US is compared to Mel Gibson.
And I think the most cliche quote used in all industries has to be “compare apples with apples” …
I’ve used FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Linux, and Mac OSX. They all have their good points, they all have their bad points. I like FreeBSD, but I don’t have the comfort level in it as I do in Linux. OpenBSD, to me, is a dedicated tool. It’s not a desktop OS. OpenBSD is what you run on your firewall or webserver. OSX is a desktop OS. Linux is closer to being a desktop OS than FreeBSD at the moment, but it’s a close race.
Still, I like the GNU tools, and the GNU philosophy, so…..next week I’m installing the Hurd. (Not on my primary system, mind you. 😀 )
Hey freebsd guys, lets go play unreal tournament opengl accelerated? Oh wait, whats that? No nvidia driver?
Freebsd by far is not better than linux. Everyone keeps saying “well linux is just a kernel”. So then use a frickin distribution idiots. Redhat is a complete system.
FreeBSD is faster? Show me the benchmarks.
FreeBSD has a cleaner file system? Granted, everything is in the /usr directory. But linux’s directory structure makes just as much sense.
I swear to god you freebsd trolls are doing great injustice to freebsd. If you just promoted its features without ever bringing linux into the picture maybe you would piss less people off. But maybe ignorance is bliss right?
I use FreeBSD as my main home pc. At work, I use RH 7.3 to interface with DEC Alphas, Crays, SGI 03ks, IBM SP’s (3 & 4), and a Sun Enterprise 10k. I was using a SUN dual 366mhz ultrsparc, but moved over to RH because they are starting to push them over the SUNs. I also have a laptop with Windows 2k pro that I am not allowed to use because of some bullsh*t licensing crap.
Anyway, as a perfectly happy FreeBSD user, I want to say a few things:
1) I started out going from winbloze to linux, but found FreeBSD easier to learn. Maybe I am dumb, but all of these distros confused the crap out of me. Plus, I found the FreeBSD userbase and culture to be much more professional and mature.
2) I like my RH box just fine, but if the IT powers that be would let me throw FreeBSD on there, I would do it in a second.
3) I did have some negative experiences with FreeBSD. For example, I found some FreeBSD users on some forums I frequent to be very patronizing and elitist. They would treat linux users like little bitches, and considered linux to be a lower tier system. Just for the record I disagree with that.
4) I recommend FreeBSD over Linux all the time because it is mostly to those interested in moving from Windows, and my personal experience was that it was an easier move to FreeBSD than to Linux.
5) If Linux is ever to move into the mainstream and be used as a viable desktop solution as an alternative, then a lot of linux users really need to become a lot more friendly and accepting of the mainstream user. I believe the thing that is hurting Linux the most is is the culture more than any technological obsticals. It is a culture that allows anyone to become the master elitist of his domain. I would make the claim that some of your more secluded and maladjusted computer users tend to be Linux fans, and it is them using their standing in the culture to counter the self loathing and anxiety regular society causes on them. For this reason, I believe that many hardcore linux users DON’T want EVERYONE to use linux for fear of losing their sancuary…FreeBSD has some people like that, but I would guess that most of its users tend to be professional, well adjusted people…thats just me though.
6) I also do tend to agree in the BSD way of doing things over GNU. I am not calling anyone communist, but some wants and claims seem to slight anti-capitalistic in nature.
I don’t know…I think FreeBSD rocks though.
Having worked with BSD and Linux kernals – I feel that BSD is better engineered under the hood. Code organisation is better, is more ”tighter”, and so on. Net/OpenBSD more so than FreeBSD.
The most annoying part is the disparity between the BSD flavours. Somewhat annoying to find various sys artifacts (hardware support, drivers, etc) supported in one BSD flavour and not in the other. Okay, so you can ”port” them across – but that’s quite annoying.
If anything, some work towards unification would be good. This would be in the favour of the BSD community as a whole – still allowing different flavours to support their particular orientation/segment/mission.
I’ve been using Linux for a long time, and thought I’d try NetBSD. Installed it, and some tweaking later – works just like my linux machine, except it can play sounds correctly.
Not to mention all the great code that did come, and still comes from the *BSDs.
Moving from Windows to BSD is easier than to Linux. Windows is a consistent OS and so is FreeBSD. On the other hand it seems every Linux distro insist on doing everything differently. Then you need to hunt down the documentation for your particular distro…
My preference is : XP on the desktop, FreeBSD on the server. Unreal Tournament might run better on Linux than *BSD but it does run even better on Windows
They teached me that BSD was a branch of UNIX, SYSV beeing another.
If that’s true, how can someone say BSD is disparate, fragmented? What would that someone say of SYSV?
And how can we see so many people comparing the whole BSD family to one ember of the other one?
Maybe my teachers were good, and I was a bad pupil?
Has Open Office ported to BSD yet?
It has – it is just too damn hard to find the packages
Go to http://projects.imp.ch/openoffice/ for some packages or check the ports collection
Also some points :
– I find KDE to be much more responsive under FreeBSD than under Linux
– FreeBSD installed on my laptop without a hitch when Mandrake crashed repeatedly during setup
– getting sound under FreeBSD required recompiling the kernel, under linux recompiling alsa with support for my sound card (sort of a draw – although the documentation was easier to understand for FreeBSD)
Overall my experience with FreeBSD has been much more pleasant than with Linux.
Also, does ALSA sound driver work with FreeBSD?
Its in pkgsrc for NetBSD 1.6 atleast…
Some Linux people call us elitist assholes, but in the same line they’re dissing BSD systems to hell, and are bragging how superior Linux would. So who is the elitist asshole?
And BSD isn’t dieing a slow death at all. Do most of you linux elitist idiots know how to use tcsh or bash or whatever other shell? I mean except of just typing startx???
…how superior Linux would be.*
–quoted by Mindwarp–
Hey freebsd guys, lets go play unreal tournament opengl accelerated? Oh wait, whats that? No nvidia driver?
–/quoted by Mindwarp–
Pretty soon, there will have the Nvidia native for FreeBSD. Don’t forget that Nvidia isn’t only card that is for the game and OpenGL. There have more different video card with the OpenGL support in FreeBSD, but fewer than Linux.
http://nvidia.netexplorer.org/news.html
–quoted by Mindwarp–
Freebsd by far is not better than linux. Everyone keeps saying “well linux is just a kernel”. So then use a frickin distribution idiots. Redhat is a complete system.
–/quoted by Mindwarp–
Linux doesn’t mean it’s RedHat, you idiot. They are talking about Linux; not a distro. In the fact, BSD is better than Linux in the numbers of reason beside the hardware support.
–quoted by Mindwarp–
FreeBSD is faster? Show me the benchmarks.
–/quoted by Mindwarp–
Don’t you know how to use the google.com? You need to give FreeBSD a try and you will see how it’s faster than Linux as well. Awful a lot of Linux folks don’t understand why BSD is faster than Linux, because they haven’t try it. BSD’s kernel is just amazing!
–quoted by Mindwarp–
FreeBSD has a cleaner file system? Granted, everything is in the /usr directory. But linux’s directory structure makes just as much sense.
–/quoted by Mindwarp–
Not only in the /usr. /usr and /usr/local are complete seperate. /usr is for the based system stuff and /usr/local is for the SysAdmin that who install stuff. It keeps thing away from the confuse or mess up the based system’s stuff.
Gentoo is following FHS, but not fully. FHS -> http://www.pathname.com/fhs/ are pretty similar to FreeBSD’s hier(7).
BSD’s filesystem hierarchy is much make more sense to me. Of course, it’s personal prefer. Don’t forget that you can change FreeBSD’s filesystem hierarchy if you want to. Who said, you can’t?
–quoted by Mindwarp–
I swear to god you freebsd trolls are doing great injustice to freebsd. If you just promoted its features without ever bringing linux into the picture maybe you would piss less people off.
–/quoted by Mindwarp–
Troll? No, wrong nobody is trolling, which they are telling their own opinions. You said Linux is better than BSD. We said BSD is better than Linux. Now, you only blame on BSD folks instead yourself? Please, clean up by yourself.
Features? In fact, Linux has some better stuff and features. BSD has some better stuff and features.
BSD’s RAID, CD-R/RW, mount NTFS and few other stuff are better support than Linux does. BSD’s firewalls are pretty amazing than Linux’s ipchain/iptable. It’s a lot more secure, control the packets better and etc.
Linux has better USB, more apps, more hardwares and etc than FreeBSD. Yeah, I have tried OpenLinux, RedHat, Mandrake, Debian and Slackware. But, I have forgetten what Linux is better than BSD in some way. I never turn back to Linux again, because BSD has much more powerful and muscle.
FreeBSD 5.x is going to much more boost.
That prove that you haven’t tried nor know a lot about FreeBSD. Awful a lot of Linux folks trolling on BSD without give BSD a try. Again, just clean up by yourself.
I’ve been using Linux forever, but some months ago I was ready to trash it. RPM/apt/whatever problems, breakage when I tried to compile packages from source, slow updates from the distro guys… I was fed up. I tried many distros, but they weren’t helpful.
I installed FBSD on a spare box, and started to get familiar with it. Then I heard about Gentoo, and installed 1.0rc6, and I haven’t looked back since. Currently I’m running a bleeding edge system; everything’s compiled with GCC 3.2, I’ve got the latest patches to the kernel before they are accepted into mainline, and a beautiful tool called emerge that lets me keep my system lean and mean.
I much prefer Gentoo to FBSD. I’m making the distro – I decide what’s in and what’s out. There’s been a total of 3 packages I’ve wanted without ebuilds, and it’s trivial to make your own ebuild if you want – not like the torture of spinning your own RPMs. And the updates are amazing – there are no other commercial OS’s currently available that use GCC 3.2.
To all the BSD guys who complain that Linux zealots are close-minded, how about you give Gentoo a try. I think it’ll surprise you. Not that I want to kill BSD of course, I think that competition is always good (in the free *NIX world and elsewhere). But knowing what else is out there will only help FBSD get better – certainly FBSD easily beats RedHat & co.
you guys are right. apologize.
if you read my post (and understood it)…then you might have realized that i was not railing against bsd itself, but against the users.
i have personally used freebsd (4.6), went through a crash course, spending many late nights with edocs and that fat bood “freebsd unleashed”…after countless hours spent learning a new way of doing things…i was impressed.
i’d partially agree with a lot of the technology arguments stating bsd’s superiority.
i liked the whole ports idea, used it extensively to get my kde/pan/mozilla etc running.
soooooo, my whole earlier rant was that a lot of bsd users are assholes. (implying linux users were not)
well after reading more of the posts on this forum…i’d have to say that i was WRONG.
THERE ARE JUST AS MANY LINUX ASSHOLES AS THERE ARE BSD ASSHOLES.
and thanks for the grammer lesson. never been good at remembering then/than usage.
everyone have a great weekend.
>>> I much prefer Gentoo to FBSD. I’m making the distro – I decide what’s in and what’s out. There’s been a total of 3 packages I’ve wanted without ebuilds, and it’s trivial to make your own ebuild if you want – not like the torture of spinning your own RPMs. And the updates are amazing – there are no other commercial OS’s currently available that use GCC 3.2.<<<
I use FreeBSD as my workstation, but have some pals that use Gentoo. I have heard a lot good stuff about it, especially their ports system (called portage); however, when I ask if this is good distro to use as a server, I get a resounding “NO!”. I do intend to test it out on a spare machine as a desktop one of these days, though.
>> THERE ARE JUST AS MANY LINUX ASSHOLES AS THERE ARE BSD ASSHOLES. <<
Thats the f’in truth, and trust me, I have run into quite a few BSD assholes; but that has not turned me away from using it. It makes me want to be a nicer BSD guy, plus I owe it to all the folks who helped me get past the steep learning curve.
Personally, if the BSD teams can get nVidia and ALSA driver working, I think this might warrant a try and switch. Since I need to work a lot on media and audio apps. But perhaps server is still the dominant use of FreeBSD I suppose.
That’s the problem with the assholes. If some ‘anti-MS solution’ gains popularity, the assholesque folks don’t wait to join the project. And most of them can’t really use the *NIX aslong there is no fancy installer and a GUI that does the work for them. That is sad.
Although it appears Anonymous (IP: —.ks.ok.cox.net) and I must have suffered some sort of interpretation problems as to what my statements meant, I do infact run freebsd. My main firewall runs freebsd with ipfw and natd (just upgraded to 4.7) and I have 2 sparcstation classics running openbsd.
I think freebsd is a very good operating system, and for servers I generally use it. But for my desktop machines I just prefer linux due to the usb support and graphics card support.
As for gentoo, I wouldn’t think it is a valid alternative to freebsd as it changes far to fast to be stable.
[i]THERE ARE JUST AS MANY LINUX ASSHOLES AS THERE ARE BSD ASSHOLES</>
Statistically speaking, because there are more Linux users than *BSD users, then there should be more Linux assholes than *BSD assholes. Of course, there might be the same *percentage* of assholes in each camp.
But I’m just nitpicking…