Migrating from Linux to FreeBSD

Eugenia writes: "OSNews published a guide that could help users migrate from Linux to FreeBSD by spotting the main differences between the two popular systems. Interesting read & relevant to the recent FreeBSD 4.5 release a few days ago."

Comments

Re:Followed by

[WasterDave]

Also they fail to mention why you want your system up to date

Security and stability fixes, primarily.

Do you really want the latest kernel if it is untested on a production system?

Ahhh, solved. FreeBSD has branches, -STABLE for code that has been tested, and -CURRENT for code that hasn't. By updating along the -STABLE track you can be sure of no nasty surprises. (5.0-CURRENT is having lots of nasty surprises, right now).

They fail to mention any real advanatges of why should one want to go from Linux, which they clasify as the 'kernel', to FreeBSD,

FreeBSD is distributed as an entire OS - there is no "distribution" concept, it arrives and works. The advantage is in the reduced amount of fragmentation, and ultimately a reduction in the time it takes to get anything working.

While the mention the linux compatiblity layer, they fail to point out a list of all the programs that run just on Linux and which ones ARE compatible

It'd be a big list! But, yes, some highlights would've been good. A good example would be Oracle, which aparrently can be made to run under Linux emulation, but it's a bit of a fight. Probably easier to just use Linux :)

rpm is also a open source program that if one wanted they could probably install it under FreeBSD and get it to work.

You certainly could, and in fact the Linux emulation layer does include a bunch of symlinks to make the FreeBSD file system look distinctly like a Linux one. Anyway, there's nothing wrong with the ports and packages systems.

Does FreeBSD have a journaling file system?

Kind of, it has a system called soft updates. To cut a long story short it runs the advantages of a journaling file system without the journal. There is only one of them.

(Video is done mostly through XFree so both are about equal in that respect).

Yes and no. It's only recently that FreeBSD has started to ship with XFree4.x.x (due to deeply conservative release engineering). Also FreeBSD does not have access to closed source video drivers, i.e. closed source nVidia drivers. Linux is ahead in video, but then so is Windows.

Dave