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From: chris@vindaloo.com (Christopher Sean Hilton)
Subject: Re: Linux or FreeBSD
Organization: Vindaloo communications
Message-ID: <1995Aug30.021659.23498@vindaloo.com>
References: <409iah$inf@galaxy.ucr.edu> <41t8ei$bsv@bell.maths.tcd.ie> <41u464$nbs@park.uvsc.edu> <41vjp1$bin@hamilton.maths.tcd.ie>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 95 02:16:59 GMT
Lines: 84
In article <41vjp1$bin@hamilton.maths.tcd.ie>,
Timothy Murphy <tim@maths.tcd.ie> wrote:
>Terry Lambert <terry@cs.weber.edu> writes:
[snip]
>Well, _are_ they available on the Net ?
Yep, email if you'd like the url. They are on one of the berkeley.edu
machines. The url is written on my whiteboard at work.
>
>Actually these books (most of which I have) are not in fact equivalent,
>or nearly equivalent, to the Linux LDP books I mentioned,
>None of them would tell me how to configure X for my video card and
monitor.
This is because BSD is not specific to the PC platform. The Linux
documentation that you are speaking of is specific to XFree86 and
most of that information is in $X11/lib/X11/doc. The three important
files are:
Moniters
Devices
VideoModes.doc
From there it's pretty much cut and past to create an XF86Config file.
Eric Raymond's text is a bit technical and takes a couple of reads but
once you understand the process you'll never have need the crutches
again.
>None of them would tell me how to configure getty.
This is in the programmers manual, section 5 on the organization
of the ttys file. There should be a reference to it from section 8 in
the system managers manual under getty. You can get to the first of
these references by typing:
man getty
at any shell prompt.
>None of them (I think) would tell me how to get DIP/SLIP to run.
The slip information is in /usr/share/FAQ on an installed FreeBSD
system. The name of the file is Slip.FAQ. I followed this information
step by step and had slip running in 30 minutes.
I'm not sure if FreeBSD has DIP yet (Does it?) It would be nice, I'm
building a gateway to my provider on my third FreeBSD box and I'd like
to be able to stay with slip if possible.
If there is no DIP then demand dialing is in PPP. The docs are in the
ppp man pages and in /usr/share/FAQ/PPP.doc
>
>However, if you think FreeBSD documentation is good, so be it.
I've never had a problem with the documentation in FreeBSD and have
always found it to be more than adequate. I know that you don't share
that experiance and I'm sorry this FreeBSD is giving that much
trouble. If you are saying that Linux's documentation is more helpful
to novices I agree with you. FreeBSD isn't slanted as much towards
coddling the novice user as it is towards getting good performance and
stability out of PC hardware. However, from what I see here this
situation is changing for the better because of lots of hard work from
the Core team.
Rather than banging your head against the wall about it you may want to
continue using Linux. I ran them both side by side for 3 months. When
FreeBSD 2.0 came out, I decided that FreeBSD was best for me. But you
don't have to make the decision the same way. I would try to keep an
eye on the development of both systems as they both have their
strengths and weaknesses and if the documentation is your only
complaint you should understand that it's changing.
Chris
--
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