Date: Wed, 02 May 2001 13:29:03 -0700 From: "Charles Burns" <burnscharlesn@hotmail.com> To: keith_proffitt@yahoo.com, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD vs Lenix (Warning: Long) Message-ID: <F86EM7RAluo3npvqnJN00002aca@hotmail.com>
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First of all, welcome to the wonderful stable world of Unix. For starters, you have to understand that if you ask a question like this on the FreeBSD mailing list you will invariably get mostly pro-FreeBSD replies. If you ask such a thing on a Linux mailing list, as I did in the past, you will get a mix of "What's FreeBSD?", "I've never used BSD but I am sure Linux is better", "FreeBSD isn't as widely used as Linux so is therefore less useful to know" and many other replies that have both good and bad (and non-existant) points made. I will try to be as neutral as possible. First of all, you need to identify your goal. If your goal is to obtain experience so that you will be hired as an administrator or some other job that deals with Unix in a corporate atmosphere, your best bet is probably RedHat Linux. There are MANY different distributions of Linux. Redhat is the only one that is really important in the corporate world. Generic Linux experience (any distro) would be a close second. Redhat is often (not always) disliked by Unix users that really know Unix. Some of the many reasons: RH is "dumbed down" compared to, say, Debian or BSD, RH is far less secure than many other distros because of its default configuration which can be changed, RH is highly commercial whereas most distros and all BSDs other than BSDi are quite free, and a few other reasons. This is by no means a complete list nor will everyone agree. That said, here are a few tid-bits. In general FreeBSD is more stable than Linux, though Linux is getting quite stable. FreeBSD has a better application installation system than any Linux distro has, called the "ports collection." This is widely regarded as the best, easiest, safest, and most intelligent way ever devised to install software on Unix machines. FreeBSD has far less users than Linux. While it is impossible to get exact figures, I would estimate that FreeBSD is less than 15% as popular as Linux. This is for many reasons, few of which are negative. Linux is more popular with small servers, though FreeBSD is more popular with large servers. Again, *BSD is more stable and has been proven to handle much greater loads than just about any other operating system available for x86 processors. There are more stable and more invincible OS's, but not for AMD compatible hardware. FreeBSD runs most of Yahoo's servers, for example, and many EBay servers and is the primary platform of the world's largest internet backbone: UUnet. It is also the only OS used on the world's most used FTP server, CDROM.COM (or whatever it is called today). CDrom.com, by the way, uses only a single CPU. :-) Linux is getting up there, though. Linux, for example, is the primary server OS of Amazon.com, the second most popular commercial web page besides EBay. FreeBSD allows you to easily optimize your entire system (ALL applications, ALL libraries, EVERYTHING) for your specific computer. While this is technically possible in RH Linux, it would be quite a feat. (You would have to manually recompile most of the binaries on the system) FreeBSD allows me to update the source code of the entire system with one command, recompile the entire system with another command (optimized to my taste), and then recompile and install a fresh new kernel with two more commands. This can all be done without knowing a lick of programming, though knowing C and x86 asm is quite useful in the Unix world. The source code of FreeBSD is generally accepted to be more professionally written than that of Linux in general. FreeBSD has one unified distribution. There are several BSDs, each with their own focus: FreeBSD: Stability, huge loads: especially on AMD/Intel hardware OpenBSD: Security by default NetBSD: Compatibility. NetBSD runs on just about anything with a processor and RAM. Including the Dreamcast. >What is better for a person new to the *nix world, >Linux or FreeBSD? If you are just getting your feet wet, Linux is definitely the way to go. You are more likely to find friends that use Linux, or people in your area in general that can help out. (Sometimes mailing lists don't work for certain problems) In addition, distributions like SuSE Linux (www.suse.com) and Mandrake (www.mandrake.com) have extremely professional and easy installation/configuration tools and will help you ease into Unix. Make no mistake, if you are coming from the Windows/DOS world as I did, Unix is usually a very alien and remarkably different world. Unix is so different from Windows and DOS that comparing the two is like comparing apples and nuclear reactors. I, for one, started with Microsoft stuff and went to Slackware Linux. After using and liking Linux for years, I tried FreeBSD and have never gone back. I am sure that there are similar stories about people starting with FreeBSD and moving to Linux, but I doubt they are as common as mine. >I spoke with a friend (AIX and Sol SysAdmin) about my >project and he suggested I drop FreeBSD and go with >RedHat Linux. He said more companies migrating over >to the RedHat Linux than any other OS and that RedHat >Linux is close in understanding to AIX. First of all, note that you can try Solaris on your x86 computer. Sun does make an x86 version. I have never been able to get the free CD images to burn properly, but I have downloaded them for free and know that they do exist. Second, ask your friend if he has used FreeBSD. I doubt he has used it more than in passing. AIX is more similar to FreeBSD than it is to Redhat. I would almost say that Redhat is the "Windows of Linux.", seeing how it is very GUI oriented. (The real power of Unix is in the command line) AIX may have changed recently, but it is one of the earlier Unix systems (I had a 1986 AIX manual here a few weeks ago, and it wasn't even for an early version), and is much more like the original BSD than Redhat is. Redhat seems more like System V to me, actually. Anyway, in the X86 world most "serious" servers (if you can call an x86 system a serious server) use FreeBSD because it has proven rock-solid. Look at Netcraft's list of servers with the world's greatest uptime. FreeBSD on Intel machines dominate the charts. No Linux machines are to be found (though that is not to say that new Linux builds are unstable). Oh, obviously no Windows servers are there either. }:> If you are interested in enterprise class operating systems, get to know FreeBSD, Irix (which is actually dying, oh well), Solaris, and anything currently used by high end IBM systems. If you are REALLY hardcore, you can try Unicos if you happen to have a Cray or two lying around. (Who doesn't?) Linux is getting there, but it really isn't enterprise class. Oracle agrees, as does IBM and a few other biggies, but they are trying in one way or another to improve it so it will get there someday. (I would actually say that FreeBSD isn't super-high-end either because of its so-so multiprocessor support--but it can really cook with one CPU) Well, I hope that my disorganized and painfully long message didn't put you to sleep. If you have any problems trying FreeBSD, any of us here would be glad to help I am sure. Just let us know what the specific problem is. Charles Burns _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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