*BSD News Article 49377


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From: chdemgt@state.systems.sa.gov.au
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Linux or FreeBSD
Message-ID: <1995Aug24.222509.28085@state.systems.sa.gov.au>
Date: 24 Aug 95 22:25:09 +0930
References: <409iah$inf@galaxy.ucr.edu> <40alp5$psg@agate.berkeley.edu> <413bkc$3t2@kadath.zeitgeist.net>
Organization: Southern Systems, South Australia
Lines: 57

In article <413bkc$3t2@kadath.zeitgeist.net>, "Amancio Hasty, Jr." <hasty@rah.star-gate.com> writes:
> nickkral@parker.EECS.Berkeley.EDU (Nick Kralevich) wrote:
>>In article <409iah$inf@galaxy.ucr.edu>,
>>jignesh bhadaliya <jignesh@corsa.ucr.edu> wrote:
>>> I know this question must have been asked before.  Which is better
>>>Linux or FreeBSD?  
>>
>>Linux.
>>
>>>What's the difference?  
> 
> 
>>Linux is better.  :-)
> 
> Nah, is just more fashionable to run linux 
> 
> Well, if you are good are catching flies then you do extremely well 
> with linux;however, if you are cool and like to sit back and update
> your system like this:
> 
> sup standard-supfile
> cd /usr/src
> make world
> 
> Then freebsd is for you !
> About docs? You really need a lot of docs for linux :)
But then, there is a lot of Linux.
> FreeBSD is BSD-4.4-lite which is well documented...
> 
Someone said FreeBSD handles swapping better.  Linux slows to a near-
standstill when it starts to swap.  That does not happen with FreeBSD, which
can handle a larger number of concurrent logins without taking a noticeable
performance hit.  That is what I have been told and I have no reason to doubt
it.  The swap slice on FreeBSD is typically much larger than the Linux
swap partition.  Shadow passwords are standard on FreeBSD but an additional
thing that on Linux you have to compile and install in place of the non-
shadow programs (e.g. login) in the distribution.  At least, that was true
of Slackware last time I looked.

On the other hand -- FreeBSD make is broken: it chokes on some GNU makefiles,
and you even have to edit that of GNU make to compile it; -- FreeBSD sh is
broken: it can't handle some install scripts - I think I noticed that when 
installing INN.  But FreeBSD with GNU make, bash and the colour ls is starting
to look like a decent system.  The inconsistency of options is annoying - I
still don't know the BSD for ls -m but it doesn't matter any more.  I assume
there is an equivalent of find -iname and hope to find out what it is.

I should say that my download of FreeBSD crashed and I only have half a system. 
Possibly I am downloading sources and compiling programs that are already in
the FreeBSD distribution.  But that brings up another point - the opacity of
the FreeBSD distribution - there are split giant files, so that you can't see
what's there and have to take the lot.  To do a basic Linux installation you
have to download the contents of 5 or 6 floppies, and after the first two you
can inspect the files there and make a selection.  In this respect FreeBSD is
off-putting, especially if you have to do it over a 9600 bps link.

-- Michael Talbot-Wilson