Date: 20 Feb 1999 02:29:36 +0100 From: Simon J Mudd <sjmudd@bitmailer.net> To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Very Common Question Message-ID: <lwr9rlooan.fsf@phoenix.ea4els.ampr.org> In-Reply-To: "^'*'^"'s message of "20 Feb 1999 01:58:15 %2B0100" References: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9902200217400.1078-100000@sandminer.com.au>
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"^'*'^" <supervoc@wingdriver.com.au> writes: > On Fri, 19 Feb 1999 root@isis.dynip.com wrote: > > that "unix" alternatives even exist. if someone is tempted enough to try > out Linux then chances are they will hear about FreeBSD sooner or later. I guess I'm one of these guys. I started with linux, and at the office now use SunOS, Solaris, and AIX for various applications. Now I'm looking at FreeBSD, although I bought 2.2.5 release which I never really tried out. > ...and curiousity is a wonderful thing. I'd wager that a high percentage > of people who have tried FreeBSD or Linux have also gone on and tried the > other, just to see for themselves what each system is like. Linux > popularity can therefore effectively be beneficial for FreeBSD when you > really think about it. I've also ordered 3.1-release which I hope will arrive soon. People say FreeBSD is better, others say FreeBSD misses a lot of things, and certainly linux does seem to have a head-start and a bigger user base. It also has an advantage of competing distributions, even if this can confuse people initially. I'm not too sure of the licensing situation with FreeBSD, although from the comments I think it's not GPL. this may be an issue for some people: I'm not sure. RedHat have a lot of good things going for them, but I think what has made them money is rpm (their package manager), also now being used by SuSE, and Caldera. The facilities for managing packages are very good, including upgrading while running (I've upgraded libc with no trouble this way), and of course the upgrade from one release to a later one. The advantage of doing this shouldn't be underestimated. I don't know how FreeBSD fares, but it certainly _seems_ to have a simpler system for managing packages. With any OS going through constant change, it's easier to install or upgrade a binary package rather than build your own, though there are merits in doing both things. On production machines this is even more so. This "package" thing is a big plus and while rpm has some shortfalls (I think) it and debian deb packages seem to take the pain out of maintaining a system. If you are at the bleeding edge you probably don't want packages, but many other people do, and few people are bleeding edge in everything they do. I look forward to playing with FreeBSD and certainly hope that the 2 camps (linux and FreeBSD) help each other, thus saving time, and that both learn from their competitors. Both systems will improve and I wouldn't be surprised if both compete for some time. This is good for unix generally, and while linux may not be "officially unix": if it looks, feels and behaves like unix, I think you might as well call it unix too. Simon -- Simon J Mudd, Madrid SPAIN Tel: +34-91-559 2854 email: sjmudd@bitmailer.net [short messages - from radio hams only] ----> ea4els@ea4els.ampr.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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