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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mira.net.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.hawaii.edu!news.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!news.dacom.co.kr!news.kreonet.re.kr!news.nuri.net!imci2!news.internetMCI.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!info.ucla.edu!library.ucla.edu!nntp.club.cc.cmu.edu!usenet From: "Yun-Ching (Allen) Lee" <yunching@Ami-chan.res.cmu.edu> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Linux vs. FreeBSD ... Date: Sat, 11 May 1996 05:47:25 -0400 Organization: Ami-chan-holics Anonymous Lines: 105 Message-ID: <3194622D.41C67EA6@Ami-chan.res.cmu.edu> References: <3188C1E2.45AE@onramp.net> <4mnsc5$6qo@sundial.sundial.net> <4mr1pk$cdi@dyson.iquest.net> <4n0dhd$cff@agate.berkeley.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: ami-chan.res.cmu.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-2022-jp Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.01 (X11; I; FreeBSD 2.1-STABLE i386) This is a real life test report from a user of both operating systems. Hope this will inject more facts to the discussion. I used to run Linux from August, 1995, to March, 1996, and now I am a firm supporter in FreeBSD since March, 1996. All of the comparisions below are made between FreeBSD-2.1-RELEASE/STABLE and Red Hat Linux 3.0.3 kernel 1.2.13. First of all, I prefer FreeBSD's one-disk network installation method over Red Hat's 3-disk installation. Red Hat's installation also requires 8 MB RAM for network installation (quoted from a Red Hat representative on the net). It wouldn't install on my friend's 486 with 6 MB RAM. FreeBSD was fine. The only problem I had with FreeBSD installation was it conflicted with my Promise EIDE MAX's BIOS. As I was troubleshooting the problem, I found out I really didn't need the card to get maximum performance out of my 1 GB drive, so it didn't matter to me. Partitioning: I like the BSD slice with sub-partitions a whole lot better than Linux's. I understand Linux can achieve similar results with a DOS-like extended partition, whereas BSD's approach is better integrated. Linux doesn't seem to be able to handle bad blocks on my hard disk at all. I did mkfs.ext2 with the blocks check option, yet it didn't prevent Linux from accessing the blocks, and the system crashes when it does. FreeBSD's bad144 marked the blocks bad on the first test. Also, Linux doesn't advise the user to follow safe partitioning practices, i.e. have separate root and usr partitions. FreeBSD does and warns the user if the partitions are not set up that way. Once, Linux crashed on me. I resetted and the superblock of the main partition was corrupted, and the kernel wouldn't mount the root device at all. If this had happened to FreeBSD, the only partition that gets damaged will likely be /usr, so I will still be able to go to single-user mode, mount / and fsck all partitions. I have not found a way to go into single-user mode at will in Linux. FreeBSD's boot/kernel loader combination is far more advanced than Linux Loader (LILO). FreeBSD has a visual mode configuration editor that allows the user to configure the drivers before they are loaded. It is due to this feature that FreeBSD was able to have one-disk-for-everything installation, versus 71 flavors of RedHat 3.0.3 boot disk images. FreeBSD's EasyBoot is simple and straightforward to use. LILO requires some complicated setup and passing obscure parameters if the hardware is non-standard. LILO is also sensitive to change in drive configuration that if the drive setup should change, LILO will hang with the "LI" prompt, leaving the novice user stranded. As for me, my boot loader is OS-BS, which is roboust and yet simple to operate and configure. All boot loaders require the kernel to be in the BIOS accessible region of the IDE hard disk. Package Management: Both FreeBSD and Red Hat installation process are comprised of sucking packages off the ftp site and install them. Red Hat uses RPM's, which is supposedly better than straight .tar.gz files. However, I cannot figure out the way to list installed packages with the "rpm" command line utility! FreeBSD uses .tar.gz files with special files to describe the packages, and store them in a very logical place (/var/db/pkg). I can always peek into there and quickly see which packages and ports are installed. Currently, FreeBSD does not have the recognition by the commercial software companies like Linux does, but FreeBSD can run more different OS's binaries, including Linux. A merit of FreeBSD's centralized development, it is far easier to obtain the source to FreeBSD system files than hunting for source code to programs that came pre-compiled on a system. I have used SUP to update my /usr/src tree, and boy, nothing can be easier than this. Performance: Since I only have a 486DX 33 with 20 MB of RAM, I want to squeeze every last bit of performance out of it. When I was using Linux with 35 MB of swap, I have never let the swap usage go above 20 MB when running X. Because, around that number, the disk swapping becomes horrendously slow. When using FreeBSD, I can hardly feel the lag caused by swapping, but the processes take more real and swap memory. I have had times was 35 MB was not enough swap space for me. Right now I'm running XF86_Mach32 in 16 bpp with a lot of windows open and a lot of daemons running. The current swap usage is 34 MB out of 60 MB, and I am still zipping along. My problems right now are: 1. There is no packaged/ported X cd players that works with my SONY EIDE/ATAPI CD-ROM. The kernel works with the drive perfectly, and cdplay works. Neither xcdplayer or workman work, though. 2. Too many wd interrupts can kill the %cpu functionality in ps and top, and causes systat -vmstat not work. Is it a libkvm problem? 3. Some quirkyness in packages-2.1... jp-ptex + jp-platex + jp-xdvi doesn't work. tex + latex + xdvi doesn't work. jp-ptex + jp-platex + xdvi works. It was some problem with the font path. The extent of foreign language support in Red Hat Linux 3.0.3 ends with Kterm and pre-installed X11 fonts. FreeBSD has a whole packages section devoted to Japanese programs. So my recommendation is, if the user wants good performance, multiuser system, and possible experimentation with the OS, get FreeBSD. If the user is only going to use the system as a personal workstation, either OS is sufficient. Any constructive comments welcomed. (And if you can solve any of my problem above, I'll be very happy. :) ) -- Yun-Ching (Allen) Lee (yunching@Ami-chan.res.cmu.edu), CMU SCS http://Ami-chan.res.cmu.edu/~yunching/home.html