BSD>Linux: Why beginning users should learn on BSD instead of Linux.

[Recursion]

This is a Term paper of mine from a CSE class, I thought id post it because well its helped a few people i know and maybe it can help a few others. For a Full copy pm me. Id really not try to hand this in as you will be garenteed to be caught its already in the system.

The operating system is an interface between hardware and software which allows the user to operate a computer. The operating system or sometimes called “OS” is what all the other programs of the computer rely on. In 2006 we can see the majority of users using Microsoft operating systems such as Windows XP. [9] Operating systems like Windows XP are the more popular because they provide the ease of use, compatibility and simplicity that today’s users seek. Though these operating systems are great at what they do for the standard home user, there are not just Microsoft operating systems in the world. There are actually many different types of operating systems all which have their own variations. Specifically there are two main operating systems which have been increasingly used in educational institutions and businesses. The operating systems in which I am referring to are the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) which was developed in the early 1970’s, and is a direct descendant of UNIX, and Linux which was developed under GNU in the early 1990’s.



UNIX was developed by Bell-Labs. UNIX is “one of the most powerful, versatile, and flexible operating systems (OS) in the computer world. Its popularity is due to many factors, including its ability to run a wide variety of machines, from micros to supercomputers, and its portability”. [7] UNIX comes from the development of “Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) mainframe timesharing system” [7]. Multics was developed by M. Hill, K. Thompson, D. Ritchie, D. McIlroy, J. F. Ossanna and others from Bell Labs. [7] In 1969 “Bell Labs withdrew from the effort” of the development of Multics and the computer scientists listed above developed UNIX. Development of UNIX took some time and was a lot of hard work. It was developed for future implementation and expandability. UNIX had taken off by the 1970’s and
“A ripple effect had come into play. By now the under- and post-graduate students whose lab work had pioneered these new applications of technology were attaining management and decision-making positions inside the computer system suppliers and among its customers. And they wanted to continue using UNIX systems” [4].

UNIX has continued to grow into one of the most dominant operating systems of today. [8]


Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) was developed in the 1970. It was a direct derivative of the UNIX OS as mentioned above. BSD was “originally a set of patches and extra add-on utilities for the official Bell Unix system”. [1] BSD was developed by the University of California, Berkeley when
“Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie presented the first Unix paper at the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles at Purdue University in November 1973. Professor Bob Fabry, of the University of California at Berkeley, was in attendance and immediately became interested in obtaining a copy of the system to experiment with at Berkeley”[6].

University of California, Berkeley then released its first version of BSD called “1BSD” in 1975 which was a direct descendant of the UNIX v.6 timeshare. BSD today has taken many forms; some of these forums include FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD. The University of California, Berkeley no longer works or supports the BSD model; it is now a fully open source and user made entity under the BSD license.



Linux was developed by a Finnish software engineer name Linus Torvalds. Torvalds didn’t solely develop Linux. He at first only developed the kernel in which Linux ran on. A kernel is software that allows the interaction between the hardware and the overlying software which will be used. It is safe and secure ways of making the system do what it needs to do. The kernel which Torvalds built was then used world wide to make Linux what we know it today, sixteen years later. Linux has been “beat up, punched around, tweaked, poked, prodded, managed, digested, spit out, stomped on, chewed up, tossed out, brought in, and otherwise manipulated”[1] by a huge number of people. Linux, unlike BSD, is not a UNIX variant. It does replicate the majority of the traits of UNIX, but in no way is it connected to UNIX. The Linux OS as we can see today such as (Red Hat, Mandrake, UB-Linux, etc. . .) are actually based on the GNU project which used Torvalds Linux kernel. The Linux operating systems should be classified properly as GNU/Linux. Linux is the popular open source operating system, it has many users world wide and the numbers continue to grow. Reasons for this growth are due to friendly user interfaces and better support.


Since we now have decent understanding of what the Berkeley Software Distribution and Linux are and where and why they were developed, we can now see a comparison of the two. I would first like to bring up the popularity comparison. As mentioned earlier Linux is more popular with the end users, because of its ease of use and support. [5] BSD is not as popular for the opposite reasons, even though the majority of servers and computers for high intensity tasks use a form of BSD (FreeBSD). As shown here in a article from serverwarch
“Now, to be fair to Microsoft, the software giant does use Windows NT and IIS for most of its corporate site's Web servers and the usage of FreeBSD and Apache represents only a small portion of the Microsoft Internet Empire. Still, if FreeBSD is good enough for Bill Gates (on some small level) and the folks at Yahoo (on a much larger scale), it should be good enough for your Web server”. [8]

Even here at the University at Buffalo, we use FreeBSD on Cold play. BSD may not appeal to the popular computing crowd, but it surly does appeal to those running business critical tasks.



Performance and reliability are huge factors in any user’s choice of an operating system. You always want the best performance possible with the least downfalls, and you want that performance to be reliable and safe. Performance wise BSD rains supreme, due to its “minimalist base system". [1, 3] Linux on the other hand, is more popular due to the ease of use. The ease of use is due to the fact that Linux distributions “keep something of a line between what's necessary to get the system running” [1]. Linux distributions come with what you need to run the system, but just like Windows, these systems tend to be very bloated. Linux is known to perform up to par from what the average user could expect. There is a downfall in a network environment where Linux suffers. BSD as said “FreeBSD is known for having one of the fastest TCP/IP stacks in the operating-system world”.[5] As said earlier in the popularity paragraph, corporations and system administrators alike choose a variation of BSD for their system intensive work.



Compatibility is one of the biggest concerns of the users. We have hardware and software that needs to run on our computers. BSD and Linux both have different capabilities of compatibility on each of their OS. As for hardware Linux tends to be more complete. BSD is a minimalist operating system. Each operating system supports different hardware arrangements. Linux being more popular with end users will have greater compatibility and support. BSD on the other hand
“Supports most common hardware you'd stick in a server, most common hardware you'd stick in a workstation, most common hardware you'd stick in a desktop. There are gaps, but the gaps change from release to release, just like every other system”. [1]

The compatibility is one of BSD downfalls, but we do have to remember that it is geared towards the minimalist, and the majority of its users are servers and workstations. Software is about the same, as Linux tends to have greater support and influence of software made for Linux. BSD on the other hand is left behind while most things are made for Windows and Linux. The good thing is that about 99% of Linux Binaries will run on BSD, as seen here “The FreeBSD Boot loader can load binary drivers at boot-time”.[2] Some of these binaries will even run faster and more efficient on BSD compared to Linux, due to BSD’s minimalist setup.



Security may not be the end-users main priority but it is for system administrators. BSD and Linux are open source, meaning that anybody with the skills can contribute to each project. It’s really great because you are getting a great product compared to a mediocre one, because the people who made it actually wanted to make it, and they usually don’t get paid for it. Even though the open source theory may sound great, we have to realize that anybody can contribute experienced and inexperienced programmers alike. Linux is open for anybody to contribute to it. BSD is also open source, but the BSD team audits and check the security of BSD constantly. The checking of this code is a security feature which is very important in the overall security of the system.



Users new to a UNIX-like operating system environment should evaluate their options. Those who are interested in learning the foundation and a thorough understanding of UNIX should go the direction of BSD. BSD is truly UNIX and Linux is not. Also BSD tends to have a better learning experience due top the fact that it forces you to learn the systems foundation, also because of the configuration needed. Linux tends to have all of this done for you, which is fine; it just stops you from learning. Those who are not interested in learning and just want an operating system, or for those who are nervous in leaving Windows, BSD is a great jump from a Window to a UNIX-like operating system. It is a good median for those who don’t want to learn or those who do but are not prepared yet to jump in.



I personally love BSD. I am a user of FreeBSD and think it is a phenomenal operating system. I have tried many distributions of Linux and have just never found them to be to my liking. I found BSD gave me a better learning foundation, and I also feel as if Linux babied me with fancy images and sounds. I also find BSD to be the best for getting the most out of computers.


As we have seen there are many operating systems around. These different operating systems all can help different people with different tasks due these tasks. UNIX as the King of the educational institution and business world is still the best at what it does. BSD which has grown along side UNIX since v6 is continuing to grow. Linux which is by far the most popular of the three candidates is in my opinion not the best setting for learning but does have its advantages for different people with different tasks.


Work Cited
[1]
BSD vs. Linux. 2006.
http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/bsd4linux1.php
[2]
FreeBSD vs. Linux vs. Windows 2000. 2006 http://people.freebsd.org/~murray/bsd_flier.html
[3]
MURRAY, STOKLEY. 2006. The FreeBSD Documentation Project 2004. The FreeBSD Hand Book 3rd edition.
[4]
The UNIX System. 2006. http://www.unix.org/what_is_unix/history_timeline.html, http://www.unix.org/
[5]
UNIX vs. LINUX. 2006. http://www.ltn.lv/~ac/UNIXvsLINUX.html
[6]
Twenty Years of Berkeley UNIX. 2006.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/kirkmck.html
[7]
The Creation of the UNIX* Operating System. 2006. http://www.bell-labs.com/history/unix/#
[8]
FreeBSD -- Is it the perfect Internet server operating system? As close as it comes. 2006.
http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/article.php/15915_1299361
[9]
OS Platform Statistics. 2006. http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

 

[odin8yoshi]

Looks like a nice paper, I agree completely with your arguement of BSD being a superior as a learning platform & most other server/workstation task. Currently I have 3 freebsd servers running here for different task

I'll take a full copy at [email protected] if its not to much trouble.

 

[petteyg359]

Nice paper, but I don't like the way you imply that things in Linux don't get checked for security... anything added to the GNU toolset or the kernel is checked, and if there are non-kernel/system programs that include security risks, they exist for BSD just as much.

 

[klingens]

VincentP should read the Cathedral and the Bazaar once I think,

 

[Gnufsh]

Or at least give gentoo a whirl. Some distros have very minamilist setups as well, and things like PC-BSD do not. There are also some performance advantages to the monolithic structure of the linux kernel (although there are other advantages to the micro-kernel approach).

 

[Captain Newbie]

Religious issues!

I agree mostly with the minimalist approach that BSD uses...but I still use Ubuntu. The fact is I find both systems to be POSIX compliant, both usable for enthusiast and business applications, and both to be great fun to work with. I do think a monolithic kernel is superior; please see the Tanenbaum-Torvalds flame war as I will not repeat it here.

Since it was already said for me --

Nice paper, but I don't like the way you imply that things in Linux don't get checked for security... anything added to the GNU toolset or the kernel is checked, and if there are non-kernel/system programs that include security risks, they exist for BSD just as much.

 

[brakezone]

I really like freebsd too; however, both freebsd and linux have advantages and disadvantages. Freebsd is as popular these days as any of the major linux distributions- its just not as popular as linux as a whole. So that means that perhaps there is just as much development behind the freebsd OS as there is behind any major linux distro; on the other hand, there is not quite as much of a workforce dedicated to the development of the freebsd kernel. In spite of this, the freebsd kernel development is tackled by some of the brightest and best. One thing that freebsd has on its side is the OS's excellent high level layout which simplifies development.

 

[su root]

Not a bad paper. I disagree with a few of the points (see the rest of my post), but agree with most of it. I must say, before I start ripping your essay apart that my first non-Windows OS was FreeBSD. I learned to love it, and still do. However, Linux has won over my heart for the time being. After writing this, I see that my response to the essay is longer than the essay itself... sorry.. some interesting points if you care to read it.

Specifically there are two main operating systems which have been increasingly used in educational institutions and businesses.

You forget Macs. Arguably, the better of all 3. They're based on BSD (Darwin), used widely for film, graphics, video, and multimedia. Hell, Microsoft uses a lot of them, even for development. With tighter integration with the hardware, it's easy to say that they are going to be the most stable, and security has never been a problem with them.

Linux has been “beat up, punched around, tweaked, poked, prodded, managed, digested, spit out, stomped on, chewed up, tossed out, brought in, and otherwise manipulated”[1] by a huge number of people.

I don't agree with that quote (and see no examples of how this can be bad in your reference to defend this opinnion)... This quote makes it sound like anyone can commit to their repositories and send out a new version of the kernel. Each version of the kernel gets assigned a chief maintainer, and a core working group, which audits all of the code going in for not only security, but bloat as well, and is responsible for a good chunk of the changes. Other changes, like drivers, bug fixes, and other informaiton is contributed by companies and individual people. True, lots of people have bits of their code in the kernel, but these contributions make it better. On the other hand, this same contribution is being done with the BSDs... they are even openning it up to Google Summer of Code.

Linux, unlike BSD, is not a UNIX variant.

BSD is truly UNIX and Linux is not.

BSD was a registered UNIX until 4.3BSD, but I'm not sure after that, I can't find anything to prove or disprove it. Linux was based on Minix, which was based on UNIX. Itself, it is not a registered UNIX, but I would call this arguable...

Linux distributions come with what you need to run the system, but just like Windows, these systems tend to be very bloated.

This depends highly on the distribution. Realistically, Linux is a kernel... the kernel itself can be factored down tiny, leaving unnecessary items out so it can fit on a floppy. The actual configuration of other applications is reliant upon how the distribution organizes it, and what it installs. Since most of the applications are simply ported between BSD and Linux, I call this an installer option and therefore moot.

It is true, however, that we have moved away from the days where you had to install and configure X manually, but a slim system is easy to come by. For all servers I install Linux on, I do a minimal install, then add whatever programs I need, which is the way it should be done. For a desktop, however, I take typical+X and go from there. The difference being that a lot of the applications I use, or could use are jammed in there for me. Sure, I don't use some things, like Kooka, which I uninstall, but the reverse of this is people complaining that they can't Scan anything and give up on Linux because of it. Regardless, the vast majority of the actual applications between the two are identical, and so are their required libraries (the only notable exception is BSD's own copies of /bin tools.. which add more confusion than anything because they are separately maintained).

WRT your comment on Hardware compatibility, I've found hardware that is supported by FreeBSD, but not by Linux, and I've found lots of examples to the opposite.

WRT your comment on running Linux Binaries on FreeBSD, it's not great, but it does work... Similar to WINE, it builds an environment with the required libraries and other files that Linux requires to run (and thus, requires extra memory and disk space). Porting it directly using the source is the best method, but doesn't always work with horribly written or closed-source programs.

Also BSD tends to have a better learning experience due top the fact that it forces you to learn the systems foundation, also because of the configuration needed. Linux tends to have all of this done for you, which is fine; it just stops you from learning.

I'd say Gentoo Linux would be better for this (or at least the original versions a few years ago... not sure of the newer ones)... you had to manually compile the kernel, system binaries, libraries, and all files manually, then for each major program you install, you usually have to edit the configuration files for it to work. This process introduced you to the kernel, compiling, libraries, and the configuration. With BSD, you press Install and it unpacks all of the system binaries, libraries and other information automatically.


A few items I've noticed on my own:

User friendliness - FreeBSD sucks at userfriendliness, especially for a new user. A lot of that is it's default shell (tcsh for root, csh for users).. installing bash makes a world of difference. Unfortunately, the shells use a different method for setting variables, which can be confusing when you switch from a Linux system to BSD system.

For the longest time, Java 1.5 was a huge pain to get installed on BSD, in fact, it was in Alpha all the way up until recently. I believe Sun now has an official binary distribution for FreeBSD, at least. Another beef I have with BSD is the "roaming disk" syndrome. Where Linux is HDxy (or SDxy) where x=the position on the bus, and y is the partition number... in BSD, it's ADxSyz, where x=the disk number, y=the slice number, and z=the partition in the slice. Although I prefer the BSD naming scheme and disk layout, it is disappointing that on a SATA system, if I add an IDE disk, it bumps the SATA disk(s) back a disk number (so ad0 becomes the IDE disk) an the system won't boot because everything was bound to ad0, leaving me to manually give it the kernel and root information. FreeBSD lacks the SYSV startup sequence though, which, IMHO, is better.

I do, however, like naming conventions used in FreeBSD. In linux, after installing a program, only god and the packagers know where it went, and it varies by system. In BSD, ports are installed under /usr/local. They could, perhaps, give the user a hint that they have to manually edit /etc/rc.conf each time they install an application and write in a line like APACHE_ENABLED=YES.

One interesting experiment I saw one time was two identical systems, side-by-side, one with FreeBSD 4.3, I think, and one with Redhat9ish (2.4 kernel), both with a basic install. On both, a command was run to loop 10,000 or so times, and each time, start up a new background process that cat'd /dev/urandom into /dev/null. The effect, of course, was that the system would get very busy. The FreeBSD box was very surprising, it was able to start up more processes faster than the Linux box, not only that, but it still remained responsive to user input, the entire way through the test. After we had seen enough, we tried to return the system to usable. We waited about a half our, but nothing typed on the Linux box would appear on the screen or run... on the Freebsd box, a kill of the 'for' pid stopped new thread creations, and a killall of 'cat' slowly (over about 5 minutes) killed them all off till the system was idle again. Now, the 2.6 kernel has a new scheduler and other options (preemptive scheduling), which could even this out again, but when it really came down to it, BSD started more processes and chewed through more given the same hardware and resources.

Finally, I hate to say this, but newbie Linux users are some of the worst.. I mean no disrespect to anyone here, but they all want it easier, faster, fancier, to support everything and do everything they could do in windows, and done right now... and they don't want to learn anything new. That's the problem with Linux. Not developers contributing, not security, it's the users. This is why Win2k never really took off... it was faster, better, more secure, and had lots more options than anything else out at that time (and even for the first while when XP came out), but XP was prettier, easier, and dumber than Win2k. In Linux and BSD, there IS a solution to every problem you encounter, every error message you run across, if you take the time to look up the ones that bother you, then you will learn Linux, and solve your problem.

Off topic: You have one point where you say that Microsoft runs BSD... one interesting thing I found a little while back was a study done on search engine companies, they monitored what IP blocks were doing searches where, and found that Microsoft uses Google for the vast majority of it's user's searches. Microsoft also runs (or at least ran..) a great deal of Macs.. and since I'm rambling, they use Akamai for their DNS and their website, which is Linux-based.

 

[klingens]

BSD is truly UNIX and Linux is not.
BSD was a registered UNIX until 4.3BSD, but I'm not sure after that, I can't find anything to prove or disprove it. Linux was based on Minix, which was based on UNIX. Itself, it is not a registered UNIX, but I would call this arguable...

BSD is a true Unix and has the blessings of POSIX and the Open Group. There was a debate of sorts when AT&T sued BSD, but that suit was very baseless on the part of AT&T: it was more like AT&T took BSD code than the other way around.

Linux is not a Unix and isn't allowed to wear that name. It's merely "mostly POSIX compliant". Considering that nowadays Linux blazes the trail and Unix, POSIX (and BSD too) merely mostly follow, it's very irrelevant in practice.

Btw: Apple OSX, while based on BSD is not allowed to wear the Unix name either.

 

[UnseenMenace]

Nice opinion, like all other opinions !!

I never quite understand threads such as these its like the reason why I should use Nvida or ATI, AMD or Intel, Firefox or Opera, BSD or Linux...

Its simply so easy to make any prefrence appear more desirable by high lighting the positive aspects rather than taking a general objective over look. if you did this you would have taken into consideration the quality of support and documentation for each platform, not to mention flexibility
The only people who care about UNIX in the true sence of the word is SCO as thats all they have left........

UNIX has continued to grow into one of the most dominant operating systems of today

Although this statement may be true you do not state dominant in what enviroment, desktop, server, cluster etc , this is without mentioning that the words 'one of the most' is vague as it give no indication as to what value or number allowing direct comparison. You also fail to observe that the Unix market is shrinking while clear evidence of such can be seen with the demise of once multi million dollar companys that depended on Unix such as SGI, you fail to observe that the markets once occupied by such companys are now being filled by Linux running on less expensive hardware. Dreamworks being once such example who have moved from Unix to Linux systems.

You suggest that Linux has been Linux has been “beat up, punched around, tweaked, poked, prodded, managed, digested, spit out, stomped on, chewed up, tossed out, brought in, and otherwise manipulated”[1] by a huge number of people. but fail to point out that things such as the Linux Standards Base ( LSB ) helps keep similaritys between distributions and effectively reduces major fragmenting between various system to such a degree that the market has issues - The very same issues that caused major compatibility problems between different Unix varients, a known problem for many years.

Your statements are vague and leading, such as the following :-

Performance and reliability are huge factors in any user’s choice of an operating system.

You make this statement without declaring 'what type of user' its well known that the server market has different requirements yet you are not specific.. I assume that this statement however does not relate to the desktop user as if this is the case, I would simply like to know how Windows 9x managed to obtain such market share while BeOS which has all the virtues you mention did not ?
The reality of the majority of desktop users is that they do not even know what OS they are running, they consider the desktop GUI to be the OS... ask any Windows 9x user what OS they are running and the majority will not say DOS with a GUI front end on it, the same can be said for OSX users if you put the same question to them, very few will say its a GUI running on top of an operating system called Darwin which is based on FreeBSD 5.0

if FreeBSD is good enough for Bill Gates (on some small level) and the folks at Yahoo (on a much larger scale), it should be good enough for your Web server”.

The above statement continues to paint BSD in a positive light by using examples such as these to indicate that bsd is suitable in high load enviroments, yet you do not point out that the most widely used search engine of all runs on Linux, not only this but Google also use Linux as a desktop OS internally... I may be mistaken but im pretty certain Yahoo do not use BSD on the desktop

Linux from scratch will teach you vast amounts and most certainly not baby you with fancy images and sounds unless you desire such

These are my opinions, nothing more !!

 

[brakezone]

I know this will sound ridiculously simple, but I believe it will help share my point of view.

There are many different operating systems. Just to name a few-

Dos, Unix, Windows, Mac OSX, the many linux distributions Linux, BSDs.

These various operating systems are all designed with different goals and philosophies in mind. They are designed by different people and have different abstract design. The most basic definition of a operating system may be far simpler than what the latest operating systems achieve. Many more high level functions are now implimented by operating systems than there was in the past. I believe that there are places where each operating system listed above becomes the best choice over all others. FreeBSD, in my opinion, can be the best choice, over linux, in many instances; however, there are places where Linux is the best choice. We all know how useful Dos can be even to this day in age. I honestly don't see what is so special about OSX, but I know that many people prefer it to all else. Windows is definitely the best solution for many people who value compatability and like to click next and finish as opposed to editing files on a console.

As far as BSD > Linux, I'd say that depending upon the situation BSD > Linux and BSD < LInux. I actually think freeBSD is far better than the credit it gets; however, I think its silly to argue which is better or worse. I think that FreeBSD is much more brilliantly designed than any linux distribution, that its philosophy is so very practiced and refined, that it is so much more whole than linux. I believe that these things are its greatest strengths! On the other hand, the greatest strength of linux is that it has no design, no philosophy, not whole, not a single thing! The things that make freeBSD strong are precisely the opposite of what makes Linux strong. See the metaphor, the cool penguin who is all easy goin vs the Daemon with a pitchfork?

 

[Recursion]

Thanks for all the opinions guys.

wasent Linux strictly from GNU, meaning not unix.

 

[Snugglebear]

User friendliness - FreeBSD sucks at userfriendliness, especially for a new user. A lot of that is it's default shell (tcsh for root, csh for users).. installing bash makes a world of difference. Unfortunately, the shells use a different method for setting variables, which can be confusing when you switch from a Linux system to BSD system.

I would disagree with that. The FreeBSD handbook makes very quick work of the shell issue should a user find him/herself without something that looks familiar. Personally, I do prefer bash and install it as soon as convienient (i.e. after cvsup-without-gui and a full build from source). Those few hours with the c shells aren't that bad, and any admin worth a pinch of salt will have multiple shell options available to the users.

However, the chief complaint with FreeBSD's friendliness is the installer. It does the job, sure, but man, does it ever need an update.

For the longest time, Java 1.5 was a huge pain to get installed on BSD, in fact, it was in Alpha all the way up until recently. I believe Sun now has an official binary distribution for FreeBSD, at least. Another beef I have with BSD is the "roaming disk" syndrome. Where Linux is HDxy (or SDxy) where x=the position on the bus, and y is the partition number... in BSD, it's ADxSyz, where x=the disk number, y=the slice number, and z=the partition in the slice. Although I prefer the BSD naming scheme and disk layout, it is disappointing that on a SATA system, if I add an IDE disk, it bumps the SATA disk(s) back a disk number (so ad0 becomes the IDE disk) an the system won't boot because everything was bound to ad0, leaving me to manually give it the kernel and root information. FreeBSD lacks the SYSV startup sequence though, which, IMHO, is better.

The Java issue is ongoing - patchsets are still required, though Sun finally licensed FreeBSD. For many years the rumor was that Sun was afraid BSD would take a serious bite out of Solaris if Java ran well on the BSD platform. I don't believe there's any evidence either way; more than likely it was a general licensing issue with how the entity behind FreeBSD is organized and the software licensed.

The disk issue is also a sore point on the BSDs. I've had a few problems over the years with disk failures on RAID1 arrays while using FreeBSD. If the machine is rebooted and the array not rebuilt, the OS most likely will not boot, as it is looking for arN and may not find it, or find the wrong array.

I do, however, like naming conventions used in FreeBSD. In linux, after installing a program, only god and the packagers know where it went, and it varies by system. In BSD, ports are installed under /usr/local. They could, perhaps, give the user a hint that they have to manually edit /etc/rc.conf each time they install an application and write in a line like APACHE_ENABLED=YES.

That's exactly why I refuse to go back to linux. A good UNIX variant will have a consistent layout and driving philosophy, be it Solaris, AIX, HPUX (well, HP is almost there), or the BSDs.

One interesting experiment I saw one time was two identical systems, side-by-side, one with FreeBSD 4.3, I think, and one with Redhat9ish (2.4 kernel), both with a basic install. On both, a command was run to loop 10,000 or so times, and each time, start up a new background process that cat'd /dev/urandom into /dev/null. The effect, of course, was that the system would get very busy. The FreeBSD box was very surprising, it was able to start up more processes faster than the Linux box, not only that, but it still remained responsive to user input, the entire way through the test. After we had seen enough, we tried to return the system to usable. We waited about a half our, but nothing typed on the Linux box would appear on the screen or run... on the Freebsd box, a kill of the 'for' pid stopped new thread creations, and a killall of 'cat' slowly (over about 5 minutes) killed them all off till the system was idle again. Now, the 2.6 kernel has a new scheduler and other options (preemptive scheduling), which could even this out again, but when it really came down to it, BSD started more processes and chewed through more given the same hardware and resources.

It would be interesting to see how this turns out today given that FreeBSD also has a new scheduler.

Finally, I hate to say this, but newbie Linux users are some of the worst.. I mean no disrespect to anyone here, but they all want it easier, faster, fancier, to support everything and do everything they could do in windows, and done right now... and they don't want to learn anything new. That's the problem with Linux. Not developers contributing, not security, it's the users. This is why Win2k never really took off... it was faster, better, more secure, and had lots more options than anything else out at that time (and even for the first while when XP came out), but XP was prettier, easier, and dumber than Win2k. In Linux and BSD, there IS a solution to every problem you encounter, every error message you run across, if you take the time to look up the ones that bother you, then you will learn Linux, and solve your problem.

Frankly, I think the whole linux community needs some lessons in civility. It's simply not acceptable to just tell people asking for help that their problems (even when presented with a detailed bug report) are their own fault due to administrative incompetence. After working with linux for a few years I moved to Solaris where the difference in communities was night and day. Linux seemed to attract people with the maturity of your average Counter-Strike player, whereas Solaris had engineers.

 

[asusradeon]

cool read most of it sounds good, i always thought linux 1 like 1 step further than unix... ive been proved wrong lol

 

[ponkan pinoy]

I do, however, like naming conventions used in FreeBSD. In linux, after installing a program, only god and the packagers know where it went, and it varies by system. In BSD, ports are installed under /usr/local. They could, perhaps, give the user a hint that they have to manually edit /etc/rc.conf each time they install an application and write in a line like APACHE_ENABLED=YES.

That's exactly why I refuse to go back to linux. A good UNIX variant will have a consistent layout and driving philosophy, be it Solaris, AIX, HPUX (well, HP is almost there), or the BSDs.

I can't speak for distributions that aren't Debian-, or otherwise dkpg/apt-based, but these distros definitely fit that bill. The thing is, linux is being treated as this megalithic thing when it's not. There's hundreds of distributions, each its own system and standards. It's like saying that FreeBSD is pretty equivalent to OpenBSD is pretty equivalent to NetBSD. They share the same common ancestor, they might share the same kernel (I don't really know, never having gotten involved in any BSD other than Darwin), but they've definitely diverged.

However, it is true that as a whole, the BSD systems were built around the idea of server use, where an administrator knows what he's doing, while some linux users are content to remove themselves from any real administering of their system, relying on tools to automagically do it for them. The most effective way to practice your administrative skills are on a system that does nothing automatically. At least without you first telling it how to do it, exactly

Each operating system has something it's good at, it's why it exists. Microsoft has support and familiarity. Nevermind that the former is basically brute-forced. Apple has image and user interface. BSD has integration and stability. Linux has the power of bazaar-style development and choice, tools which allow it to assimilate a lot of other good points, though I have to admit that integration might be a little difficult in a bazaar.

 

[daywalker03]

wasent Linux strictly from GNU, meaning not unix.

Most of the utilities are, and the Linux kernel is distributed under the GPL, but Linus doesn't work for Richard M. Stallman (Free Software Foundation founder).

 

[UnseenMenace]

Thanks for all the opinions guys.

wasent Linux strictly from GNU, meaning not unix.

NO This is most certainly not correct, the statement was made in the original announcement of the GNU Project, written by Richard Stallman in 1983.

"Starting this Thanksgiving I am going to write a complete
Unix-compatible software system called GNU (for Gnu's Not Unix)

The GNU project was intended to create a complete unix compatible system and part of this development included the GNU Hurd Kernel which even today is not suitable for production use. Fortunately, another kernel is available. In 1991, Linus Torvalds developed a Unix-compatible kernel and called it Linux. Around 1992, combining Linux with the not-quite-complete GNU system resulted in a complete free operating system. (Combining them was a substantial job in itself, of course.) It is due to Linux that we can actually run a version of the GNU system today.

This system is correctly called GNU/Linux, to express its composition as a combination of the GNU system with Linux as the kernel.

Linus Torvalds has never made the statement mentioned, it was Richard Stallman of the GNU and Free Software Foundation and as such has nothing to do with Linux itself

 

[Recursion]

so this picture from wiki is wrong

 

[UnseenMenace]

so this picture from wiki is wrong

To me the picture appears to be correct however I personally do not follow unix history, but it does display clearly the point where the Linux Kernel joined with the GNU applications.
This picture clearly shows that the GNU was developed a long time prior to the Linux kernel and supports that only the lack of a usable GNU Hurd Kernel created this joining.

Linus origionally only made refrence to the fact I'm working on a free version of a minix-lookalike for AT-386 computers. The actual reason that he started developing his own kernel was that Andy Tanenbaum who created Minix prohibited Linus from adding additional features, it was Richard Stallman who is credited for the 'gnu - not unix' quotes

 

[Snugglebear]

I can't speak for distributions that aren't Debian-, or otherwise dkpg/apt-based, but these distros definitely fit that bill. The thing is, linux is being treated as this megalithic thing when it's not. There's hundreds of distributions, each its own system and standards. It's like saying that FreeBSD is pretty equivalent to OpenBSD is pretty equivalent to NetBSD. They share the same common ancestor, they might share the same kernel (I don't really know, never having gotten involved in any BSD other than Darwin), but they've definitely diverged.

I don't believe anyone here is treating linux as a monolithic entity. My own chief issue with the linux ecosystem (yay! buzzwords++) is the diversity. Redhat does not run/look/administrate like Suse does not run/look/administrate like Mandrake does not run/look/administrate like Ubuntu. This makes it extremely difficult to go and navigate in amongst all the different distros when there are so few common threads holding it all together. It's nearly impossible to say one is a linux administrator without qualifying that with a list of distros. While I understand the forces and process by which distros evolve to fill the niches they do, there needs to be more in common with linux distros than a shared kernel (using the most common definition of linux - that of an OS using the linux kernel). There are simply too many forces pulling the distros in different directions and not enough keeping them together.

However, it is true that as a whole, the BSD systems were built around the idea of server use, where an administrator knows what he's doing, while some linux users are content to remove themselves from any real administering of their system, relying on tools to automagically do it for them. The most effective way to practice your administrative skills are on a system that does nothing automatically. At least without you first telling it how to do it, exactly

Each operating system has something it's good at, it's why it exists. Microsoft has support and familiarity. Nevermind that the former is basically brute-forced. Apple has image and user interface. BSD has integration and stability. Linux has the power of bazaar-style development and choice, tools which allow it to assimilate a lot of other good points, though I have to admit that integration might be a little difficult in a bazaar.

Bazaar-like scenarios do not scale well and do not integrate well. While I understand the linux folks want their diversity, I still maintain that more commonality is a desireable feature. The write once, test everywhere phenomenon that is Java needs to be avoided if unix is to break out of the niche of application development. Likewise, for administrator sanity, ease of use, and security, more of the system and userland components need to be cohesive amongst the distros. Granted, I'm not saying the BSDs are a cohesive force, as they've started to fracture some given the advancements in the FreeBSD kernel as compared to Open, Net, or Pico, they're still sufficiently similar in the system & userland levels to move amongst without much ado.