*BSD News Article 68068


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From: bet@mordor.com (Bennett Todd)
Subject: Re: FreeBSD vs. Linux
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Date: Thu, 9 May 1996 00:03:21 GMT
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On Wed, 08 May 1996 03:43:07 +0800, Law Chi Ming <lcmlaw@hkstar.com> wrote:
>	Can you tell me, 
>		FreeBSD is better?
>	    or	Linux is better?

Nope. Nobody can. They're both excellent. If someone takes the time and effort
to do a detailed comparison of the current versions, they can say accurately
that FreeBSD does some things better than Linux, and Linux does some other
things better than FreeBSD. The next major release comes out and these lists
of things are all different; when Linux is better at something, the FreeBSD
folks generally fix whatever is broke in their OS, and vice-versa. They act as
_wonderful_ goads for each other:-).

Today, they are both so solid and mature that it's safe to say use whichever
you like better.

Your best bet will be to try both, and see which you like best, then use that.

If you can't do that, then use whichever is used by more people that you know
locally, and can ask for help.

If you don't know people locally to ask for help (or if they are perfectly
balanced on the question:-) use whichever you can get more easily.

But your best approach is to try them both, because while they are very very
comparable, they've got a strongly different feel. FreeBSD retains a strong
feel of Berkeley Unix. Linux comes out with a feel all its own, acquired by
working off the Posix spec, using the GNU utilities, and accumulating an OS
with the best pieces available from here and there.

It is probably still the case that FreeBSD enjoys an edge if you are setting
up a router, or a really dedicated network server, because the reference
implementations of many protocols were/are born in BSD.

It is probably still true that Linux will feel more snappy for interactive
use, as a single-user workstation, because it's been tuned to optimize for
that from its birth.

-Bennett