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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!zombie.ncsc.mil!newsgate.duke.edu!news.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!howland.erols.net!EU.net!sun4nl!news.eur.encompass.com!Leiden.NL.net!dwerguil.usoft.nl!news From: Willem Wals <walsw@usoft.nl> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: FreeBSD and Linux Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 14:26:13 +0200 Organization: USoft The Server/Client software company Lines: 52 Message-ID: <324924E5.49B6@usoft.nl> References: <3246f8e0.1466924@news.telepac.pt> NNTP-Posting-Host: nlpdfw01.usoft.nl Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0Gold (WinNT; I) Luis Sismeiro wrote: > > I am interested in knowing the differences and the advantages of > FreeBSD compared with Linux. > So am I. I had tried Linux (different distributions Slackware/Debian etc) and FreeBSD 1.something (5?) and 2.0 before and found Linux easier to configure and performance just as good. Last year I started maintaining a Linux box that was running as webserver and 'entertaining' several users (avg. 4 concurrent) via X-terminals. They where mostly running Netscape and performance was very lousy often the machine just crashed without clear reason. Mostly while beeing unable to provide enough resources for user processes and system processes needed to keep the system running. Now I've upgraded to RedHat 3.0.3 with 2.0 kernel patches (a Linux dirstribution) and do not have any crashes for a while. RedHat has a very easy installation (either terminal based or X-based) but more importantly has a tool (rpm) that allows easy install/uninstall/upgrade! for any package on the system. About a week ago I installed FreeBSD 2.1.5-RELEASE and had a lot of trouble getting it running. For instance the X enviroment was not installed and I had to install it manually (tar -zxvf ; ln -s xyz etc..) The performance of the system is much better. Compiles of my own source code are extremely fast compared to the RedHat box. Now I am searching the ftp archives for the packages I used on RedHat. There are a lot of programs that I cannot find. Under real heavy load the FreeBSD doesn't get into problems like Linux did. This leads me to the following conclussions: -No OS is better. It really depends on what you want to do with it. -FreeBSD performance seems better (caching?) -FreeBSD is not for beginners (you have to have knowledge of UNIX to install/work with FreeBSD, say have a complete system) -RedHat Linux is installed easy and maintained very easy. -Package collection (number of availeble programs) is larger for RedHat. Although sources are availeble for most of them so you could port it to FreeBSD, this is not an option for beginning (or non-programming) users and for those users without the time to spend on porting. So what I am saying is this if you are: a starting UNIX user-> use RedHat a programmer who want to program -> user Linux or FreeBSD (SYSV or BSD). somewone who wants a complete OS fast -> use RedHat wants fastest OS -> use FreeBSD Hope my remarks/hints help, Willem Wals