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Good PC-BSD Guide Available
Anonymous Coward writes "A very good and worth reading PC-BSD guide for the aspiring newbie is available at from a small site. We definitely need several of these to promote alternate OS. Well done."
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Here's an excellent book I like to use as a reference. It deals comprehensively with all the BSDs, regularly updated etc. (Not affiliated with the author in any way btw)
..the best guide I ever found for a new [Free]BSD user was the handbook
It's everything, all of it. I've a printed copy still sitting, bound on my shelf. It's also one of the top 10 words uttered in most #freebsd s:
[newuser] So how can I uh...
[guru] YOU CAN CHECK THE HANDBOOK
It's an exciting era in the Berkeley Software Distribution world; indeed, things started off with a litigious bang over a decade ago, but now BSD solutions are more varied than ever before and offer the user heretofore unprecedented choice and power. So many are the options today that it's time for a roll call from the various distributions. Each of the four major BSD projects are pushing forward with development and experiencing growth, diversifying the Open Source playing field's offerings Let's take a look at what each project is up to these days.
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is in a precarious state. While it's almost hit critical mass in the corporate world, their latest growing pains have left potential adopters confused. The new FreeBSD 5 branch offers some exciting technology, generally regarded as comparable with or superior to what is offered in Linux. The FreeBSD foundation is still upgrading its FreeBSD 4.x line and suggesting its use for production environments over FreeBSD 5. The reasons for this are very simple FreeBSD 5 won't be ready for prime time until FreeBSD 5.4 or 5.5 but users are left confused and timid.
FreeBSD's last major release, which now sits highly optimized at version 4.10, works just as well as always. For systems already running with FreeBSD 4.x that see no need to adopt the new technology in FreeBSD 5 or jump to Linux, this operating system is a godsend in stability and continued support. FreeBSD 4.11 is scheduled for a February '05 release, while plans for FreeBSD 4.12 are on the backburner should FreeBSD 5 not achieve -STABLE status by the fourth quarter of 2005. But what if you need the technology available in FreeBSD 5 and don't want to jump to Linux?
FreeBSD 5, currently available at FreeBSD 5.2.1 with FreeBSD 5.3 in late beta, tantalizes the BSD world with the culmination of several year's hard work and narrow escapes. Back in the late Nineties, when WindRiver bought BSD/OS (a closed-source BSD operating system owned by the now-defunct BSDI), FreeBSD users were promised a next-generation BSD made possible by crossing the ultra-robust corporate OS with its Open Source counterpart. While WindRiver let go of its plans leaving the future of FreeBSD in peril, the realization of its goal is almost here thanks to the FreeBSD community and Apple Computer, Inc.'s contribution of FreeBSD code.
That almost is a killer, though, in that it now causes potential users to look elsewhere for modern operating system features elsewhere until FreeBSD 5 is blessed as stable. Given FreeBSD's track record and the corporate sponsors now behind its operating system, however, it has a bright future ahead of it despite these stumbling blocks. Sadly, the same can't be said for its two little brothers, NetBSD and OpenBSD.
NetBSD
NetBSD's claims to fame aren't its optimization or secure code it's instead known for running on a wider variety of platforms than any other operating system out there, including Linux. NetBSD's binary releases include support for an amazing 40 platforms and an additional 12 platforms in the source code. In other words, it runs on everything but the kitchen sink. NetBSD forked from the 386BSD/4.4 BSD merger in 1993 and continued on its own in parallel to FreeBSD since then, albeit at a slower pace. It's currently at version 2.6.1, with aggressive testing on the new NetBSD 2.0 promising fruition by the first half of 2005.
Those familiar with NetBSD swear by it, though its use in serious environments is limited. It is not secure and device driver support is paltry at best. NetBSD's true usefulness comes in providing developers of other operating systems such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux with hardware support to base their own new ports off of. For instance, much of the code for the PowerPC FreeBSD port comes from NetBSD. OpenBSD implemented support for AMD64 by means of hefty imports from the NetBSD source tree, and Linux runs on Motorola's ColdFire processor family thanks to the work previously for NetBSD
If someone can come up with a good reason to use BSD vice Linux, let me know.
/etc/rc.d system better than the different sets of scripts I've encountered on a Linux system.
.sig here, I believe).
Some of the reasons I prefer FreeBSD to Linux:
- Ports - No Linux package management system can compare with the beauty that is the FreeBSD ports collection
- Clear separation between base system and add-on software
- License - I prefer the BSD license to the GPL
- init scripts - I like the
- filesystem layout - I've found the layout of the filesystem to be more logical than most Linux distros. This kind of ties in to my "separation of base system and add-on software" point above.
- stable, secure.
- easy updating with cvsup and make *world
- I like the kernel configuration better. Linux' make config, make menuconfig, make xconfig are a pain. I'd rather just edit a text file, and go.
Many of these things are just personal preference. Give FreeBSD a serious look sometime, you may like it better than Linux.
Linux provides all the anti-MS geekiness I can stand at the moment.
That's not a reason to use anything. "Linux users hate Microsoft. FreeBSD users love UNIX" (Shamelessly stolen from someone's