Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 11:04:04 +0200 (MESZ) From: Rainer M Duffner <Rainer.Duffner@surf24.de> To: Nitebirz <nitebirdz@uswest.net> Cc: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: doubt? Message-ID: <Marcel-1.46-0930090404-d07Zsav@duffner.surf24.de> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9909291800480.17080-100000@coimbra.oss.uswest.net>
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On Thu 30 Sep, Nitebirz wrote:
> I would like to stress this part: "as FreeBSD is a bit more
> server-oriented". Many programs that are available for Linux are not
> ported to FreeBSD.
You should say "commercial programs".
("dot-com-Office").
As the Linux-guys are mostly GPL-freaks, almost everything is available
in source-form and so should compile under FreeBSD almost seamlessly.
> Yes, you can run the Linux emulator but still in many
> cases you have to struggle quite a bit to get the program to work. Also,
> if the application uses Linux's /proc, then it will not even run in
> FreeBSD.
>
> Finally, no offense here, but there is much more documentation and support
> for Linux in general.
Perhaps, yes. There's more to dig into.
But how many of the how-to's are really usefull ?
How many deal with current problems ?
And besides, a lot of the linux-docs can be used for FreeBSD just as
good.
E.g: Setting up named on either system is more or less identical.
> If you need to run a desktop computer, I'd recommend Linux over FreeBSD.
Perhaps, yes. But only if you're interested in the mutlimedia-gizmos and
things that are available in some distros.
I wouldn't really recommend Linux over FreeBSD. Only over NT ;-)
> On the other hand, for a server I truly
> think that both work pretty much the same
I don't think this is really the case.
More knowledgeable people could certainly underline that.
FreeBSD is developed as a whole operating system, where all parts are
meant to work together seamlessly.
For Linux, the distributor picks some 30 or 50 core-packages that form
"the OS" and hopes that they all run together nicely, together with an
additional 500-800 application-packages.
The packages are all developed individually, by individual people with
individual goals, directions and individual coding-standards.
Now think about auditing/testing/reviewing such code.
A nightmare.
And that's just the reason why we had more or less a dozen new local and
remote r00t-exploits in the shiny new Linux-distributions from Redhat,
SuSE and the likes in the last two or three weeks alone.
Not a big deal if you're on the net by your phone lines, but more and
more people get xSL or are on a campus network.
The number of people with 24x7 net-access will increase.
> although BSD may have an advantage when it comes to performance,
> especially network-related performance.
Also the ability to migrate to newer versions easily is important for a
server. At my last job, the sys-admin talked about a former job at the
stock-exchange where they had a server (Tandem, IIRC) that had an uptime
of seven years.
And just think about the 2GB file-size limit of Linux.
This one really sucks, even for a workstation.
cheers,
Rainer
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|Rainer Duffner, E-Mail: duffner@fh-konstanz.de |
| & Rainer.Duffner@surf24.de |
|Fachhochschule Konstanz, Germany |
|"What's a Network ?" - Bill Gates, early 1980s |
| WWW:http://www-stud.fh-konstanz.de/~duffner |
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