Re: Differences

--============_-1248432697==_ma============ Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" Re: Differences

I am new to Unix and as such do not understand the differences (if any) between Linux and the different BSD distributions.

Depends, do you mean technical or political differences? <grin>

There's lots of small differences, but we can pretty much ignore them and go straight to the big four: (I've undoubtledly made some mistakes here -- more knowledgeable people can fill in what I've goofed)

1. Ancestry:

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FreeBSD (and OpenBSD, and NetBSD and BSDI's BSD/OS, etc) are all direct ancestors of the original, real UNIX. This used to be more important than it is now. Basically, BSD slightly more true to form if you're a programmer, but less so if you're a casual user.

Linux is a UNIX work-alike. It was developed from scratch, without any roots in the original UNIX code. Its not UNIX -- in many low-level ways its fairly different from the traditional UNIXes. Again, if you're not doing hard-core programming, this won't matter much.

FreeBSD is ostensibly older, more stable and a little faster (in some ways) than a Linux distribution based on the current v2.2.x Linux kernel (like RedHat 6.2) but your mileage may vary: some things run better on Linux than FreeBSD and vice-versa.

2. Bundling:

FreeBSD (and Open, and Net and.... ) are distributions (much the same way RedHat, Debian, Slackware and Corel are). A distribution encompasses the kernel (the underpinnings of the operating system responsible for talking to the hardware and providing ways for other programs to access said hardware) as well as all the additional programs (anything from 'ls', which lists the contents of a directory, through to Netscape Communicator). Practically the entire BSD distribution is written and packaged by the distribution maintainers. For example, the FreeBSD people know about (and have written) everything that's part of the FreeBSD distribution.

Linux is just a kernel. RedHat, Debian, Corel, Slackware, Mandrake, SuSE (and more) just wrap a bunch of programs (like an 'ls' utility, Netscape, X-Windows and more) around that kernel and call it their distribution. That's why there's no Linux as such - there's RedHat Linux, Debian GNU/Linux, Corel Linux. The additional programs that come bundled with the Linux kernel often aren't written by the organization. For example, RedHat bundles the GNU file utilities (which includes ls and other small programs) as well as many other programs.

Basically, FreeBSD fits together a lot better than Linux. You tend to get less broken stuff. Plus, most programs follow FreeBSD's standards of behaviour, so they're easier to use once you get used to the whole system. Linux's tools are a bit of a mish-mash. The plus side is that a basic Linux system has a broader array of stuff (although FreeBSD makes this up if you start adding things from the Ports collection -- but software from Ports is not as tightly controlled by the FreeBSD people)

3. License:

I'm not getting into the details here -- I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not qualified to give a good interpretation. Plus I don't care one whit about licensing.

Linux (the kernel) is licensed under the GPL. Linux distributions are a mix of various licenses (because the tools are licensed differently). BSD is usually under the BSD license, while add-on software (like the aforementioned ports collection) is a similar mish-mash.

4. Popularity:

Linux has more software and hardware available for it because its more widely used and has more hype behind it. Most free software packages are available for both platforms, and FreeBSD (and OpenBSD, and NetBSD) can run most Linux applications. If there's something that doesn't work or isn't available for BSD, just wait a bit.

Note that, in a lot of cases, commercial software written for Linux is written for Linux on Intel x86 hardware. This means that it won't run on Linux for Alpha, SPARC, MIPS or PPC (or FreeBSD Alpha, or any of the the non-x86 versions of OpenBSD and NetBSD). This just plain ticks me off.

--
--dennis <mailto://dennis.favro@utoronto.ca>

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