Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 09:16:24 +0100 From: Roman Neuhauser <neuhauser@bellavista.cz> To: James Hicks <ytwok_karate@hotmail.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: freebsd curiosity Message-ID: <20030110081624.GK1196@freepuppy.bellavista.cz> In-Reply-To: <F141Ud9mTP2vZXqimrM00000d34@hotmail.com> References: <F141Ud9mTP2vZXqimrM00000d34@hotmail.com>
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# ytwok_karate@hotmail.com / 2003-01-09 21:26:10 -0800:
> I have been doing a lot of reading in magazines like pcmagazine and
> sought info online using sources like the freebsd homepage, zdnet,
> cnet, etc. I'm hearing alot of your UNIX os. I have a few questions
> about the system. First of all, is freebsd a real UNIX? By that I'm
> asking whether or not there is real UNIX code in it or is it a clone
> just like linux is?
I'm not competent enough to give you an answer, so here's an url:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/explaining-bsd/
> Second, what type of file system does it use?
ufs/ffs. i'm a bit confused as to which name is right, and I see
both names used.
the documentation is the canonical source of course:
/usr/share/doc/smm/05.fastfs/paper.ascii.gz
> Does it have a journaling one like ext3?
ufs has a feature called "Soft Updates", which should get you the
same result by different means.
> I was told by my UNIX instructor that freebsd had hardware recognition
> trouble. Is this true and if so has it been fixed?
FreeBSD itself has no problems with hardware recognition. There
might not be a driver for your hardware, though. :)
Seriously, though: some hardware vendors are more likely to create
GPL'd drivers for their products, thinking along the lines of "if I
have to give up the knowledge of this portion of my stuff, no one
else will make money from it either". Think nVidia.
> I have also read that a lot of sysadmins are nervous of putting
> mission critical apps on a enterprise linux system and prefer to use
> freebsd. What is the problem that I'm hearing that linux has?
Quite a few people will say: stability; I say: bloat. But some
sysadmins are nervous of putting mission critical apps on anything
but Solaris. It's mostly what you know: the best OS in the world is
worthless if you can't administer it.
> Do you believe the berkeley system to have code that has better
> stability than the GNU systems? I look forward to your reply.
yes, but what I believe is irrelevant.
also, keep in mind that we're talking about the operating system,
which I here define as the kernel plus supporting programs; IOW the
stuff that you can get from the FreeBSD CVS repository. you might
find that an application critical for you is unstable or displays
unusual quirks on anything but linux because it does not get enough
testing on other unices.
This, unfortunately for quite a few people (that now covers even my
mother and me as I have installed FreeBSD on her computer), covers
KDE, OpenOffice, and lots of other, "office-oriented" software.
Vietse Venema uses BSD unices as the primary development platforms.
DJB's site runs on {Open,Free}BSD. Seems he's had bad luck with
OpenBSD, see http://cr.yp.to/.
It is my understanding that FreeBSD is the primary development
platform for Apache, but given how many platforms it runs on, this
is not really important. The Apache Software Foundation uses FreeBSD
for their servers though.
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