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FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE Reviewed
ValourX writes "Here's a full review of FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE complete with screen shots, a short comparison with GNU/Linux, and some notes on migrating to FreeBSD from Windows and GNU/Linux."
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- EASY:Capable of being accomplished or acquired with ease; posing no difficulty
- SIMPLE:Having or composed of only one thing, element, or part
Not exactly alike, but they are synonyms. Maybe it is saying that keeping FreeBSD up to date is not simple, but FreeBSD is efficient? Or maybe understanding how to keep FreeBSD up to date is difficult, but actually doing it is easy?Why?
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Everything you said sounded good except:
"Besides, I think Gentoo's ports system is more robust than BSD's."
I use both Gentoo and FreeBSD and I would say quite the opposite.
The first thing I noticed was that when they describe the license, they talk about how Free it is, but don't mention the crucial difference between the GPL and BSD licenses: your option to not release the source when you include the code in another programs.
The next comment that caught my eye was "The installer is fairly intuitive and informative, and everything works perfectly as far as I can tell -- I've installed FreeBSD about a dozen times." If you've installed FreeBSD that many times, of course it will seem intuitive and informative. I've heard the install process is much more Debian-like than say RedHat like. More information on that would really have been helpful.
When he talked about the boot process he said: "The FreeBSD bootloader, while simple and unable to be manually configured, is one of the best I've seen." He makes a good point that this means that no reconfiguration is needed when a new bootable partition is added... but "unable to be manually configured"? Does this mean you can't set a default OS to load? You can't set a default timeout? Seems odd to me, and needs more explanation for that comment.
The potshots at Debian, Gentoo and RedHat's respective package management systems are not backed up at all, and don't match my experience in the slightest.
Finally, at the end, there's the bit about 'ee' beint better than 'vi', but no discussion about what 'ee' is or why it is better than a very standard editor that's on every Unix in the world. (I'm an emacs guy myself but I happily fall back to vi when appropriate). He also says a lot of other FreeBSD tools are better than their Linux equivalents, but without so much as a single reason why.
I'd love to hear an article on a BSD saying what the differences really are, why the author prefers one version to another, etc. This one seems, at times, to be a review, but it isn't a review from someone who seems to have given both Linux and FreeBSD a chance.
At least it was enough for me to decide that FreeBSD isn't for me. I'm lazy, I admit it. I do certain things often enough that I want them to be simple. I prefer 'make xconfig' over manually editing a file to customize my kernel. I prefer a one-step package management command to a multi-step one. Sure, I'm familliar with CVS, and it's nice to know that's what you're doing with the BSDs, but I install and remove packages often enough that if I can save a few keystrokes every time, that will add up. FreeBSD sounds like it might make a better choice for an ultra-stable server which only ever has to be upgraded. If you're doing the maintenance over SSH anyway, configuring by editing files rather than a GUI is the way to go. But for a desktop system, Linux seems to be the better choice for me.
This is the first time I read this, but it kind of pisses me off (though I really am not trying to start a flamewar).
....
The BSD developers were inspired to make their code free software by the example of the GNU Project, and explicit appeals from GNU activists helped persuade them,
This is only true if you believe in the RMS/FSF conceit that only things defined by the FSF are truly free. BSD was releasing code to Universities the only places their AT&T license would let them) for many years before stallman even started at MIT. They spent the great effort to rewrite all of BSD (to get rid of AT&T encumbered code) and release it to the world. They even went to court (the Great Lawsuit, which even Linus admits he probably wouldn't have written Linux if FreeBSD wasn't stuck in legal crosshairs) to allow people to use BSD code. Just because he had a problem with the original license (ironically, because of the BSD License's advertising clause, yet he insists on GNU/Linux, a sort of GNU advertising clause) doesn't mean it wasn't free software.
I think Stallman has done a lot for computing, but as a zealot and a purist, he tends to focus only on his agenda, and tends to be a bit revisionist for things that don't follow his vision. I think this, and even the whole GNU/Linux naming thing show that.