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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!news2.acs.oakland.edu!news.tacom.army.mil!news.webspan.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!cs.utexas.edu!news.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!uunet!in2.uu.net!news.cybercom.net!ksmm From: ksmm@cybercom.net (The Classiest Man Alive) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: FreeBSD and Linux Date: 25 Sep 1996 17:56:37 GMT Organization: Cyber Access Internet Communications, Inc. Lines: 32 Message-ID: <52brol$2gg@orion.cybercom.net> References: <3246f8e0.1466924@news.telepac.pt> NNTP-Posting-Host: shell1.cybercom.net X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Luis Sismeiro (luis.sismeiro@mail.telepac.pt) wrote: : I am interested in knowing the differences and the advantages of : FreeBSD compared with Linux. In my (limited and humble) opinion, FreeBSD shines when it comes to stability. The system has been in use for years in lots of different incarnations; it's tried and true. Another advantage is the fact that it shares the same lineage as lots of commercial Unixes, e.g., BSDI, DEC OSF, and SunOS. That makes it easy to learn and apply knowledge from manuals written for those other systems. Linux is usually easier to set up and use. The more open development model has the advantage that virtually every popular device (and lots of not-so-popular ones) are supported. Development proceeds at breakneck speeds, and most people have hardly configured a new kernel before it's made obsolete by the next minor version with new features. This isn't without its disadvatages, however, and every now and then some instability creeps in. Patches come out even faster than new releases, though, so problems are usually found and dealt with quickly. I think that more commercial and high-level software developers are paying attention to porting to Linux than FreeBSD. This may not be a concern because FreeBSD has binary compatibility with several other BSD-style Unixes. Linux is the closest thing to a "Plug-and-Play" Unix system that I've ever seen. Analogies between OS/2 and Windows come to mind, but I won't go into that for fear of having myself flamed off the newsgroup :-). There's not any reason (barring disk space, of course) that you couldn't try them both. I use them both regularly. Good luck with your decision, K.S.