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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.mel.connect.com.au!news.mira.net.au!inquo!in-news.erinet.com!newsfeeder.sdsu.edu!sgigate.sgi.com!uhog.mit.edu!news.mathworks.com!hunter.premier.net!news1.erols.com!newsmaster@erols.com From: Ken Bigelow <kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Linux vs. BSD Date: Sat, 20 Jul 1996 20:34:39 -0700 Organization: Erols Internet Services Lines: 40 Message-ID: <31F1A54F.2CFC@www.play-hookey.com> References: <4sgt8v$31t@informer1.cis.McMaster.CA> NNTP-Posting-Host: kenjb05.play-hookey.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.02 (Win16; I) Derek Jenkins wrote: > > I know that this has probably been bounced around > here a million times, but as a partially disgruntled > Linux user, I would like to know from current BSD > users why FreeBSD would be better for my PC-Based > UNIX system than Linux. If there is a FAQ that has > the anwers to this, could somebody point that out as well> > The following contains my own reasons only. There's lots of room for discussion and disagreement, but from my own perspective... One of my co-workers started with Slackware Linux. It worked pretty well, but had a few problems in its implementation, for what we had in mind. So, he got Caldera Linux and tried that. It also worked pretty well, but had some serious incompatibilities with the Slackware release. Some binaries would not transport directly, the directory structure was different, etc., etc. Little things, but annoying. After a little direct checking, it seems that Linux is basically just the kernel, not the whole system. A number of groups have built systems from the Linux kernel, but they're not fully compatible with each other. So, you have to adjust packages and ports for your specific version of Linux, not just for Linux in general. FreeBSD, on the other hand, *is* a complete system in and of itself. It has a coherent development team and a practical, unified set of add-on ports and packages. And more importantly, its development team makes a tall effort to identify and remove bugs as quickly as possible, and to keep its users fully updated. I find it practical and preferable to stay with FreeBSD. -- Ken Are you interested in | byte-sized education | http://www.play-hookey.com over the Internet? |