From owner-freebsd-newbies Thu Sep 30 2:11: 3 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Received: from mail.surf24.de (mail.surf24.de [212.62.192.50]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E8CA414F3E for ; Thu, 30 Sep 1999 02:10:53 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from Rainer.Duffner@surf24.de) Received: from duffner.surf24.de (surf234.surf24.de [212.62.193.234]) by mail.surf24.de (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id KAA25592; Thu, 30 Sep 1999 10:10:50 +0100 Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 11:04:04 +0200 (MESZ) From: Rainer M Duffner Subject: Re: doubt? To: Nitebirz Cc: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII X-Organization: enigma, http://www-stud.fh-konstanz.de/~enigma X-Mailer: ANT RISCOS Marcel [ver 1.46] Sender: owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org 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 | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message