Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004 23:21:59 -0700 From: Joshua Tinnin <krinklyfig@spymac.com> To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Subject: Re: General Unix Learning Message-ID: <200409112321.59332.krinklyfig@spymac.com> In-Reply-To: <200409072315.i87NFbcx005721@in.flite.net> References: <200409072315.i87NFbcx005721@in.flite.net>
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On Tuesday 07 September 2004 12:15 pm, "hide110" <hide110@us-it.net> wrote: > Please forgive me if this is not the right place to turn but, I > figure you all would be able to share your wisdom with me. > > I am a Windows user and I've hated it for the past few years. I can relate, though I still keep it around for games and sometimes sound production stuff (which is really better on a Mac ...). I don't like Windows, but it still has its uses for me. > The > Unix experience I have accrued has mainly been working from a shell > account; nothing really in detail about the actual operating system > or installation. I have considered FreeBSD & Linux, but really, for a > desktop system do you guys think it's viable for a nearly pure unix > newbie to tinker around with BSD? Or would it be easier to start > with Linux & eventually port over to BSD? Well, I never took to Linux like some people, though I used it occasionally over the years and basically understood it, but when I discovered FreeBSD, everything was suddenly so much more logical - it made so much more sense. It's not as "user-friendly" as many Linux distros, but the way everything fits together - from the complete system approach to the ports system - makes it much easier to maintain and less hassle all around. Even Linux made more sense after I started learning FreeBSD. It does require some commitment on your part to learn it, but it's time well spent. Like others have mentioned, FreeBSD is more of a "pure" Unix-like OS than Linux is, but this means if you learn it you'll understand Unix (and by extension other *nixes) much better. > Normally I'd take my own advice (if you want to use BSD, use BSD, if > you want to use Linux at the end of the day, use that) but I'm just > trying to be practical with all learning curves taken into > consideration. Try both - seriously, and you should try more than one Linux distro, too. I have Slackware, Win2k and FreeBSD on one machine - FreeBSD gets the most use, though Win gets fired up when I want to play a game (some good games have been written for *nix, but Win is still the only serious gaming platform). When it comes down to it, if you're going to use a window manager or desktop, it will look pretty much the same on any system - KDE on FreeBSD looks the same as it does on Linux, but what's underneath is what counts. Linux does have an edge with hardware support, but quite a lot of hardware works on FreeBSD. I'm running on a 2GHz AthlonXP on an Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe with an 8xAGP ATI Radeon 9600XT. For a while, I didn't have 3D support in FreeBSD (though it worked in Linux), but after upgrading to 5.3 beta3 I now have it - this was not a big deal even when it wasn't there, as I don't play many games in *nix. As far as Linux, if you want to go the easy route, try Mandrake or SuSE. If you want "pure" Linux, try Slackware, and some of the other hardcore people tend to distros like Debian and Gentoo - the latter is interesting, as it uses an installation helper called portage, which was inspired by BSD's ports. Although some people swear by it, I'd avoid anything-Red Hat (e.g., Fedora). RPMs are a nightmare. And after you've tried at least a couple distros of Linux, try FreeBSD and compare. It may not be right for you, but you might not want to use anything else after you do ... hey, happened to me ;) > My deepest apologies if I should not be asking something like this > here. But any replies would be terribly appreciated. No, this is great - we finally have some on-topic conversation! W00t! - jt
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