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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!yarrina.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!news.mindlink.net!van-bc!ddsw1!news.mcs.net!usenet From: Craig Bergren <cbergren@mcs.net> Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.advocacy,comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit Subject: Re: Linux vs FreeBSD Date: Wed, 29 Nov 1995 21:33:43 -0600 Organization: MCSNet Internet Services Lines: 49 Message-ID: <30BD2617.23585C28@mcs.net> References: <489kuu$rbo@pelican.cs.ucla.edu> <48ajue$3h6@muirwood.convex.com> <poulosioDI20sJ.5vz@netcom.com> <48buod$cue@solaria.cc.gatech.edu> <poulosioDIFAnC.ECw@netcom.com> <4972bn$psq@bell.maths.tcd.ie> <49ijf9$9rc@tombstone.kent.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: cbergren.pr.mcs.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.0b3 (X11; I; Linux 1.2.11 i586) To: Butler Gerald E <gbutler@Phoenix.kent.edu> Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.advocacy:28474 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:9470 comp.unix.advocacy:11454 comp.unix.misc:19694 comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit:8890 When this thread started out, it was so promising. I thought I might get some insight into the design differences that distinguish FreeBSD from Linux. Unfortunately this discourse has rapidly degenerated into noise. Before I decided to run Linux, I was also considering FreeBSD, but I couldn't find enough information about it to have a good idea of what I might be getting myself into. I'm still interested in some reasons why I might want to run FreeBSD instead of Linux. Is there any way to bring this discussion back to a comparison of the differences between Linux and FreeBSD that might make one choose one over the other? I decided to run Linux for these reasons; none are very technical. It all boils down to a support issue for me: 1) There was a book with a CD ROM in Barnes and Nobel that I could buy on impulse. There were no such books on FreeBSD, nor CD ROMS. 2) There was tons of traffic on the Linux usenet news groups. For the most part the discussion seemed to have a high signal to noise ratio. This was in August before all the undergraduate riff-raff came back to school. 3) The FreeBSD news groups appeared disearted. 4) Reading the Linux news groups I got a good idea of what hardware was supported (before I bought my new Micron). 5) The information I could get from web pages from Caldera, Red Hat, Info Magic,Pacific HiTech and the Linux Documentation Project gave me a good enough feel for what Linux is and is not for me to feel comfortable purchasing a CDROM in a bookstore. Why am I still running Linux? 1) There was plenty of help on usenet and the web for me to know enough to dump the SAMS CDROM and book (it was really old and not too useful for such a thick book), and purchase one from InfoMagic (4CD set). At the time, it was the only one I could find on-line that had XFree86-3.1.2, which I needed to get my Diamond Stealth 64 Video VRAM PCI card to work with X. The RedHat distribution on the set was an added bonus that I didn't even expect. The Slackware on the set didn't work very well, Red Hat made re-install of Linux easy. 2) All the good help I was able to get from people in the comp.os.linux news hierarchy. Thanks guys and gals. CB