Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 16:02:03 -0500 From: Andrew Hesford <ajh3@chmod.ath.cx> To: Jason Victor <sloppyj123@yahoo.com> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: A novel idea.... Message-ID: <20010404160203.B17093@cec.wustl.edu> In-Reply-To: <20010404121602.29670.qmail@web4304.mail.yahoo.com>; from sloppyj123@yahoo.com on Wed, Apr 04, 2001 at 05:16:02AM -0700 References: <20010404121602.29670.qmail@web4304.mail.yahoo.com>
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On Wed, Apr 04, 2001 at 05:16:02AM -0700, Jason Victor wrote: > Hi. I have to have Windows on my computer, and will > NOT spoil my perfectly tweaked Debian installation. > What I was wondering was: is there a UMSDOS of Phat > Linux-type thing for FreeBSD? I think this would be an > interesting project to undertake. If there isn't one, > and anyone wants to start it, tell me what a > (relatively) newbie C programmer can do. I think it > would increase migration to FreeBSD from Windows, as > opposed to ONLY Linux. > > And something completely unrelated: do FreeBSD > drivers/HOWTOs work on OpenBSD and NetBSD? And what > are the REAL reasons that you guys prefer FreeBSD to > Linux? > > Thanks, > Jason If you ask me, playing around with FreeBSD is sort of pointless unless you're prepared to trash your Debian install. If you're fully content with Debian, why bother learning something new? There should be an incentive to switch, or at least no vested interest in losing what you have. I too came from Debian, and was looking for better performance, more stability, and a real UNIX. I was willing to switch because I had nothing to lose by trashing Debian, so I just jockeyed partitions around. Eventually, I grabbed a copy of GNU Parted, to begin resizing partitions and such. This is what REALLY made me want to switch. Because of lousy program design, the GNU tools (fdisk and parted, namely) trashed my disk. Had intelligent beings created the software, I would never have had to re-rip 3G of MP3s, and lose another 800M of MP3s altogether. The problem was twofold: first, GNU parted dynamically reassigns partition labels when deleting partitions. For example, if I want to delete partitions 5, 6, 7 and 8 but keep partition 9 on hda, it expects me to delete partition 5, 4 times. Because this is a moronic way of writing software, I tried to delete partitions 5-8. However, by the time I tried to delete partition 7, the partition I wanted to keep (9) was reasssigned to partition 7. Hence, I deleted the partition I wanted to keep (Debian's /usr in this case), and kept partitions I didn't want. The second problem was with GNU fdisk. You see, FreeBSD doesn't care where partitions end, as long as it ends on a sector. GNU fdisk, on the other hand, rounds all partitions up to a cylinder boundary. When I moved some partitions around with parted, one of them didn't start on a cylinder boundary. Thus, when I used GNU fdisk to create a new partition in front of the moved one, the tail end of the new partition overwrote the first few megabytes of my old one. Nice, eh?k That pissed me off, so I didn't bother reinstalling Debian. I just reinstalled FreeBSD, stealing the entire disk for the new operating system. I won't use a system controlled by an organization and operating system that uses software created by morons like the parted and fdisk maintainers. In short, these are the reasons I prefer FreeBSD: 1) The filesystem is so much better than any linux filesystem, ReiserFS included. 2) The system isn't made by idiots. 3) The system's development is controlled, and the system is consistent because of that. 4) FreeBSD never trashed my data. 5) It's more stable, the VMM system is FAR superior, and it contains the reference-standard IP stack (even MS ripped this off). 6) The license isn't a Communist-Hypocrite license claiming to be "Free" but really is restrictive. 7) I hate RMS with a passion (remember, he's the Communist hypocrite who claims his software is Free). 8) For a firewall, ipfw blows the doors off of Linux's iptables/ipchains/ipmasq/whatever. 9) I prefer the filesystem hierarchy. 10) Bugfixes and development happen much quicker. 11) None of those shitty SVR4 bootscripts and symlinks; no abundance of pointless runlevels. 12) Fxtv is better than xawtv. 13) The FreeBSD base system behaves better than any Linux base system (e.g., the stuff in /usr/bin and /bin). 14) Linux ABI implementation gives me the best of both worlds. 15) Development is more conservative (e.g., I don't see a bunch of EXPERIMENTAL warnings in /sys/i386/conf/LINT, like I do in Linux kernels). 16) FreeBSD is lighter than Linux. 17) Separation. People in the Debian crowd believe that every dpkg should put its files in /usr, and only self-compiled stuff belongs in /usr/local. I disagree. /usr/local is for "site-specific" stuff, which doesn't necessarily mean self-built. To me, GNOME belongs in /usr/local, because it is site specific, even if it comes in a dpkg. By site-specific, I mean anything that is subject to change from box to box. Therefore, only the base system belongs in /usr. With FreeBSD, my programs are divided logically. There's 17 reasons for you. I'd come up with more, but I'd need to close this vim session or open up another ssh connection to hunt around for things I like. Besides, isn't this message too damn long? -- Andrew Hesford ajh3@chmod.ath.cx To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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