Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 19:27:36 -0500 From: Matthew Graybosch <matthew@starbreaker.net> To: "Tsalicoglou, Isaak" <tisaak@student.ethz.ch> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: From Linux to FreeBSD [formerly "*NIX Selection"] Message-ID: <200111301906.0229@starbreaker.net> In-Reply-To: <786CB48E65ABC74CA1E25577B096357F3FE7F6@EXSTUD2.d.ethz.ch> References: <786CB48E65ABC74CA1E25577B096357F3FE7F6@EXSTUD2.d.ethz.ch>
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Friday 30 November 2001 12:35, you wrote: > What more is there in BSD that's not in Linux? I am a Linux user > since some years and I would be interested to run BSD on my old > machines. Well, BSD seems to yield better performance than Linux, and I've had a much easier time configuring it. I started with Red Hat, and moved to Mandrake after a week. After a few months I moved over to SuSE 'cos I wanted a more recent distro and there was a copy of 6.4 sitting in a CompUSA bargain bin for twenty bucks. I used SuSE up until August of this year, until I got frustrated with the piecemeal approach to upgrading (an RPM here, a source tarball there, and heaven help you if you try to use YaST to update the whole system). After that, I spent a couple of months with Slackware 8. Pardon my French if you're a religious man, but my experience with configuring and building Linux kernels is that it's a hard-working dirty bitch of a job. I've spent whole afternoons downloading the kernel, working through the options in Tcl/Tk config tool, building the kernel, and then hacking LILO to make the damn thing walk and talk. Then there's the ALSA drivers to contend with. I use an SBLive! for sound. While SuSE took care of the sound for me, I had to download, configure, and build ALSA when I moved over to Slackware, which meant another evening down the toilet. Add another day getting my printer and X11 to work the way I want them to. On the other hand, with FreeBSD I can configure the kernel in about 10 minutes, most of it spent reading the Handbook and the kernel config file, about 20 minutes going though the build process, and then 5 minutes to reboot. It took me that long to get sound working on a kernel tuned to my Athlon compared with roughly an 8-hour workday and a half setting up Linux. If I need to RTFM, I can find most of the info I need at the freebsd.org site. I can pick and choose the ports/packages I like, and if I build from source I don't have to settle for prebuilt generic binaries. Granted, I had similar customization options with Slackware, but there's that beastly Linux kernel to contend with. Besides, why settle for a Linux distro that apes BSD? Why settle for a Unix-like OS when you can have real Unix? Mind you, I'm not knocking Linux or claiming that it sucks. However, having used Linux at home for two years before switching to FreeBSD, I must conclude that I like FreeBSD better. - -- Matthew Graybosch http://www.starbreaker.net GnuPG Key ID: 0x7D488659 "Sex, Unix, and rock 'n roll" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (FreeBSD) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE8CCP4cCiK1X1IhlkRAm3jAKDMAAlvMfo801fMqzXsQRDx8bPcTwCfeVpT pcYTPS2iMN34JkgYhu9zQ/0= =zb7F -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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