*BSD News Article 74305


Return to BSD News archive

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?      |