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FreeBSD under the Penguins Shadow
An anonymous reader sent us an article about
FreeBSD, and
life in Linux's Shadow. Interesting article about
the culture difference between Linux and FreeBSD users.
Its a good one for you FreeBSD fans and you curious
Linux users alike. I wish more BSD stuff came down the pipe
here, but Linux just has the vast majority of the submissions
here too.
I'm using Linux on my workstation because Linux had support for the most outlandish hardware. Linux is much more bleeding edge ( suprise) and (in my opinion) has a number of very good devicedrivers (take Donald Beckers line of NIC drivers). If there is a little tweak that will make a device go 5% faster, than it will be used. It does make the Linux kernel a bit less stable. However, if you stay away from 'new' and 'experimental' kernel options, that is usually not a problem.
I use FreeBSD as a server. The kernel is more modular (especially NetBSD/OpenBSD) and the source is easier to understand. FreeBSD is usually more a coherent mass (like the article states). A small example: glibc 2.0.7 implements writev(2) with write(2), while the linux kernel supports writev(2). Not very efficient. However, this is more of a small problem with glibc than a problem with the linux kernel. (Maybe the Hurd kernel doesn't implement writev.)
Mathijs
FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, etc.. They are all free and seem pretty similar at first glance.
;)
That's because they are, especially NetBSD and OpenBSD. Most of the source for OpenBSD comes from NetBSD. (OpenBSD is kind of a paranoid version of NetBSD.)
FreeBSD runs on Intel and Alpha CPU's and is probably your first choice if your using a x86
machine.
NetBSD and OpenBSD run on just about any CPU, so if you've got hardware like a SGI Indy or a nice Sun, you want to get one of these.
The difference between NetBSD and OpenBSD is mostly that OpenBSD is more security minded (hope Theo doesn't see this
FreeBSD has a bit better support for x86 hardware than NetBSD/OpenBSD.
In the end, these BSD variants have more similarities than differences. It doesn't really matter which one you choose. It's more a matter of taste, I guess.
If your using x86 hardware, go with FreeBSD. If you're really 'paranoid' (are is that 'sane'?), go with OpenBSD, since it tends to be more secure.
Hope this helps.
Mathijs
... that there's only one "distribution" of FreeBSD compared to a lot for Linux (RH, SUSE, etc), also FreeBSD is a BSD standard, program written following the BSD rules always compiled fine under FreeBSD. Some years ago i remember at university we installed a network of FreeBSD to have a standard, and also because we could find tons of books about BSD standard and nothing about linux (not true today :o). Anyway i used a lot HPUX from 8 to 10 and it's a mix about all standard...a -morron" :-( :o)
what i regret also about linux is that linux users sometimes are "LiNuX-is-better-than-your-fucking-OS-so-you-are-
let's live in a free os community
i don't want to start a war between FreeBSD and Linux, use what you prefer! you? MacOS, great! you? BeOS, great! etc
--
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Wow, you're badly informed. FreeBSD certainly has plenty of hardware support. I have an SB AWE64 which works fine with a joystick connected (I don't use it for anything, but is there as /dev/joy0). Quickcam has been supported for quite some time (qcam driver). I have a Hauppauge WinTV card that is very well supported; even made some MPEG movies using it. As for companies "stealing" code, what business is it of yours? How do you know companies aren't swiping GPL'd code and not telling anyone? Several companies have used FreeBSD code in their products and have even given back code to the project (Whistle, for one). I know rabid GNU cheerleaders tend to pretend that this doesn't happy, but sorry folks, it does. You don't need a license to force people to dump code back into a project.
That said, BSD is going to be with us for a while longer, if only because of the ease with which GNU/Linux binaries can be run on BSD and the ease with which device support can be migrated over (I won't address licencing issues here).
I haven't seen the Matrix movie, but I did hear on Systalk that FreeBSD was central to the production of said movie.
Cheers,
Joshua "Still running OpenBSD on one PC" Rodd
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
There's also a splash screen available from:
splash screens
It seemed mostly like a fluff piece. But I agree with the premise that the *BSD folks haven't done too well in terms of evangelism, and that the rabid Linux advocacy movement is primarily driven by younger folks now.
BSD people rave about the quality and cleanliness of theor chosen flavor. Linux people rave more often about its social aspects.
I wonder just how much of the usage gap is publicity-driven, and just how much of it really is free choice... It's an question for which I can't even begin to posit an answer.
On my desk at home, I have systems running FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux. For quite a while, I was a big fan of Linux, until the day when an employer of mine asked me about FreeBSD. At the time, I knew nothing more than that it existed. So I looked at it. I installed it. I *liked* it. A lot. I loved having unified source distributions for the whole OS (kernel and all standard programs)...made installing patches and upgrading to newer versions much smoother in my opinion. I still like Linux, still think it's a :)
great OS. I'll even concede that for a desktop system it kicks FreeBSD's butt in a lot of ways. But when it comes to making one hell of a server, I'm FreeBSD all the way. Just ask www.yahoo.com and ftp.cdrom.com...they'll tell you why
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
And contrary to some comments I've seen saying otherwise, FreeBSD's install is really slick. Redhat and other Linux distros have only recently caught up to where FreeBSD has been for some time in ease of install. Furthermore, the Ports system rocks! Linux needs something like this.
BTW, Jordan Hubbard seems like a rather nice guy. He provided me some very useful feedback on a project I'm working on. Comparing him to Linus, I'd be hard pressed to say which one is more cool. ;-)
Thad
The Bolachek Journals
Well, there are no serious technical reasons. Both will experience minor temporary advantages in one direction in some parts of the system at different times. But due to the high exchange between systems I dont think any such difference will last, and most claims in either direction are usually just advocacy.
I've had both keel over at high loads. But I expect any system running at 60 loadavg to keel over eventually, and in any case you have a serious sizing problem (not to mention response time problem) if you have a sustained loadavg around 60.
So in the end it comes down to a few practical, political and personal preference issues.
SysV. I do not maintain just BSD based systems. Since I have to maintain AIX, Solaris and HP-UX which are all more or less SysV style, any time I get to a BSD based system it's an annoyance. This is an annoyance with Linux too, at times, but at least it's a little more SysVish (we can argue the merits about that...).
GPL. Some BSD supporters argue about the extra freedom of the BSD license, but in my opinion, if BSD should make major inroads and raise corporate interest then we'd just get another... SunOS, HP-UX 9, etc. The BSD license is more free than the GPL, but the price of that freedom is proprietarization, code forking and yet another round of incompatible embrace-and-extend corporate wrangling around. No Thank You. We Have Done That Already. BSDI has a tendency to play nice, but the others dont.
A realistic view on the market. BSD appears to be willing to concede the desktop to Windows, and be content with being a very good server platform. While that may be a possibly realistic view, it isnt in my opinion an acceptable one. Because Microsoft will not tolerate either BSD or Linux as a server platform, and they'll do everything they can to make sure that the Windows clients wont work with anything but NT, or that there are major proprietary advantages of using NT. Giving up the client market means, IMO, giving up any chance at existence at all. It wont matter how good you are if Microsoft has total control of the clients. And most of the major advances in Linux have come as far as they have because the people behind them were not realistic.
And finally, for various reasons,I actually prefer the more componentized and anarchistic development of parts of the Linux systems. I'm happy to leave the integration to the distribution makers, but I like the lack of central control.
Yep. And as a system administrator supporting HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, IRIX, BSDI, SCO and some things I forget, and a sometimes cross-platform unix programmer in my free time, I'm finding at times that I'd be happy to sacrifice some of the 'better' for more of the 'same'. It usually just results in having to use 'the worst common denominator' and/or writing dirty kludges anyway.