From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Jan 12 1:15:49 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from femail2.sdc1.sfba.home.com (femail2.sdc1.sfba.home.com [24.0.95.82]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8183337B402 for ; Fri, 12 Jan 2001 01:15:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from C1052484A ([24.5.25.254]) by femail2.sdc1.sfba.home.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.00 201-229-121) with SMTP id <20010112091512.OBBZ21955.femail2.sdc1.sfba.home.com@C1052484A>; Fri, 12 Jan 2001 01:15:12 -0800 Message-ID: <002201c07c78$39664fa0$0100a8c0@mshome.net> From: "David Schultz" To: "Paolo Landolina" , References: <000801c07c25$79838330$0a04a8c0@felix> Subject: Re: difference with linux Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 01:15:36 -0800 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > What is the difference with Linux? I'm a fairly recent FreeBSD convert, having used several flavors of Linux in the past. Hopefully I can offer some insight. > I've a x86 system (pentium 133 mhz; 32 mb ram; 2,3 gb hdd) and i would use it as router (via modem isdn) > and proxy server to share internet into my little Lan. I would like use it as mail server too. It sounds like you just need NAT and sendmail, which you could do in either Linux or FreeBSD. Linux's implementation of NAT is called "IP masquerading," whereas FreeBSD uses "IP forwarding." It is a bit easier to set this up in Linux; FreeBSD requires that you rebuild the kernel. There is sufficient documentation to do so, but expect to spend a little while reading it. > At present i've installed Linux Red Hat 5.1 but it seems little speed and Netscape browser crashes always. Linux tends to be a bit buggy, but RH is particularly poor when it comes to stability (except compared to Windows, of course.) Browse through the kernel source a bit and you will eventually see why. RH 7 is one of the reasons I switched to FreeBSD. Linux tries to support the latest hardware and technologies, but it doesn't always do a good job of it. FreeBSD takes a more conservative approach, but is solid as a rock. You might also consider other Linux distributions, such as Slackware or Caldera; I think they do a much better job than RedHat in terms of reliability. > With FreeBsd is best for my hardware? If you have any oddball devices, they may not work with FreeBSD. Check the hardware compatability list to be sure. If you have trouble with FreeBSD as a result of unsupported hardware, just try a different flavor of Linux. I've found that FreeBSD makes more efficient use of older hardware than Linux does, at least on my P120. For a single-user system, however, the difference probably won't be too significant unless you really put the machine through its paces. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message