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FreeBSD As A Workstation For UNIX Newbies
JT writes: "OSNews features an article introducing the FreeBSD operating system to newbies and Windows users. The article describes the installation, its GUI, application base and it has some more information about Unix and *BSD in general." Since Linux (at least the varieties with cute installation routines) is often presented as the *nix beginner's best choice, it's good to see articles like this one pointing out a broader range of choices.
Kudos to OSnews.com for promoting FreeBSD as a serious alternative to Linux for users looking for an alternative OS. FreeBSD is fast, stable and has a great many experienced users willing to help out newbies. Sysinstall is easy to get going (just 2 floppies), supports FTP downloads of software packages, and resolves dependency issues quickly. However it is still no where near as easy as the GUI installer for current releases of Mandrake and Redhat. FreeBSD can run practically anything written for Linux after installing the Linux Binary Compatibility Pack.
"The ports collection sure is great! I just wish that FreeBSD had some kind of package management that didn't require building from source."
It so happens that FreeBSD does have package management that won't ever invoke gcc.
Try the package management tools (man pkg_create(1), pkg_delete(1), pkg_info(1), pkg_update(1), pkg_version(1) for more specific info).
In fact, FreeBSD is so bad-ass that you can type something like "pkg_add -r mozilla" and the system will download and install the latest mozilla. Carefull though, some packages require that you specify the whole version (i.e. pkg_add -r lyx-1.1.6.3). This will get all the dependancies you need in most cases.
The only real reasons to build from the ports are:
"FreeBSD is less user friendly than Linux"
This is highly subjective. I taught a class this summer to a group of people at my University who had never installed Windows, much less anything else. By the end of the first week, they were able to install FreeBSD, compile a kernel, and successfully manage packages. By the end of the second week, they all had their desktops going with the productivity apps they wanted. By the middle of the third week, I couldn't hold their attention because they were having too much fun playing with the OS.
FreeBSD belongs to the "it just works" school of computing. I don't know how to describe it. I've never had to worry about whether or not FreeBSD would correctly auto detect my USB optical mouse during the install (I've had a number of Linux distros both succeed and fail). FreeBSD Just Works(tm). No dicking around. "Does your system have a USB mouse attached to it?" "Yes?" "OK, we'll make sure and load usbd." If I've had "device pcm" in my kernel config file at build time, my sound has always worked.
As a workstation, FreeBSD performs very well. I don't have benchmarks for you, but I've never had a FreeBSD machine that has felt slower than any Linux distribution on the same hardware. Incidentally, FreeBSD starts notably quicker than any Linux distro newer than Slack 2.0.
I feel really good about the state of FreeBSD. They have made things easy by design, not by GUI abstraction. If you judge ease as being a point and click installer, then Linux will win every time. If you judge ease as simplicity and consistancy, FreeBSD is a clear victor.
-Peter
Just my $0.02
. Penguins Surely Ca
The problem is Linux gets too much attention from the mass-media. My H'friends joke about me being the only one who uses FreeBSD. It's really hard to make someone feel, apreciate the "clean" feeling of FreeBSD, being built as _one_ project. That is why the dox are that good too. But for a newbie, who DOESN'T want to be a hacker, but only to understand the implications of "everyinthing is a file" (although he doesn't know it yet) and _maybe_ do some programming using sockets Linux is not much different from FreeBSD. Besides, the problems which arise with making a Linux box work smoothly get one to RTFM.
So FreeBSD is a good choice but not the best for newbies.
You no longer have to compile your kernel in order to support your sound card. Just add the kernel module. You can usually get along fine with the GENERIC kernel unless you want to make use of apm, but being able to build a more compact kernel than the GENERIC one is one of the triumphs of open source unix. The rc startup files are organized in a sane fashion too, so configuration's simpler. But the best part about FreeBSD is that they actually try to keep the man pages up to date so that you don't have to always run off to that gnu info monstrosity or various well-hidden HOWTOs and FAQs.
I tried installing Slackware but gave up in disgust. It's disorganized as hell, but at least it only needed 1 cdrom for the (re)install. For some reason it had trouble finding and/or mounting my plextor cdrw that I use regularly with freebsd without a hitch.
Unix is not for people who want to be spoon-fed everything.
I won't deny that not have a FreeBSD user around to help answer questions can be very agrivating. I happened to be enlightened by a co-worker to the finner unix points of FreeBSD. I moved from RH6.2 -2.2.19 to FreeBSD 4.3-Release. I have since removed Windows completely from my computer except for a VMWare window of 98. (Windows was meant to run in a Window(TM)). Besides, with the improved jail capabilities of FreeBSD we have all but moved our entire unix OS's to 1(one) box. It actually runs about 7 virtual OS's, namely dns, imap, dynamic-www, smtp, database, information processing. The ideas that sold me on FreeBSD over Linux were, ports/packages, 1 distribution, stablility.
/stand/sysinstall. Once the OS is installed just browse for the package of your choice. The package is a snapshot of the current packages at the time of release. You can even change the settings in sysinstall to fetch older packages, if you want. The ports are great because you can search through a selection of software that you can be sure will work in freebsd. FreeBSD works on it's Linux compatibility, not getting people to code on FreeBSD unless they develop exclusively on FreeBSD. If you can run it on Linux, changes are it will be available on FreeBSD in a little time. BTW, the ports directory/tree is created every day at 9AM EST. New changes everyday.
Starting with 1 distribution, the OS has benefits out of the box. All kernel code is under peer-review. One person can't just say I want this to be this way. Any major additions are under peer scrutiny. Also the members of the core development team only got there because they have been and were submitters to FreeBSD for a long time. With have 1 distribution all the channels of the distribution talk to on another. You don't see Suse talking with RedHat. I didn't think so.
The stability issue is tied into the 1 distribution also. I feel sorry for Linus. He make a great kernel, but he can't do squat to make the surrounding distribution work if it breaks. The distro is only as good the surrounding subsystems. In my opinion FreeBSD leaves newer features in the CURRENT tree structure a little longer than Linux. Thus when a release version is created the release versions tend to have less problems.
Finally the ports and packages. It took me a few months to fully understand ports versus packages. I actually install the bash-2.05 package on any new installation so I can use the shell from the start. The packages can be accessed from
"You must unlearned what you have learned!" - Yoda
What I am I once was. What I now become I long to be. Life is a journey not a destination.
I love freebsd, but I'm putting it on hiatus until 5.0 comes out. It's not a good choice for a laptop workstation, that's for sure, unless you have the blandest of vanilla laptops. I demand cardbus. :-)
One thing not many people have mentioned is how clean and simple the base installation is (after you've installed it). Core system with X windows, add what you need afterwards. This is a clean methodology, it allows a newbie UNIX user to find out exactly what the system *is*. if they went for a default linux install, however, they'll end up with 500+ packages to deal with. I have problems telling what is a 'system' package and what is an 'add-on' package on my linux laptop. If it wasn't for up2date or ximian's red carpet, a user would be screwed, security-wise.
mike
Really? What modem do you have? I've got the ActionTec Call Waiting PCI modem and it worked fine.
Check your dmesg (dmesg |more). Look for something like the following:
sio0: [ActionTec 56k FAX PCI Modem] port 0xdc00-0xdc07,0xd800-0xd8ff,0xd400-0xd4 ff mem 0xe2001000-0xe20010ff irq 11 at device 7.0 on pci0
sio0: moving to sio4
sio4: type 16550A
Actually, a good place to start would be to type "dmesg |grep sio" at the command prompt. I bet that FreeBSD has probably found it already. Remember that the serial interface "sio4" corresponds to
I hope this helps. If not, you can always send an e-mail to questions@freebsd.org. They are generally quite helpful.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
Yes, the binutils are surprisingly different from the GNU ones:
(No, that hasn't changed in later releases.)
Yes, it's not GNU/BSD in the sense that most of the utilities are not GNU utilities, but the BSDs do use the GNU toolchain.