From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Feb 23 15:57:40 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA10761 for questions-outgoing; Sun, 23 Feb 1997 15:57:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from thelab.hub.org (hal-ns1-10.netcom.ca [207.181.94.74]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA10751 for ; Sun, 23 Feb 1997 15:57:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from thelab.hub.org (LOCALHOST [127.0.0.1]) by thelab.hub.org (8.8.4/8.8.2) with SMTP id TAA13142; Sun, 23 Feb 1997 19:57:12 -0400 (AST) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 19:57:12 -0400 (AST) From: The Hermit Hacker To: "John R. Martz" cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Linux versus FreeBSD??? In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970223171857.006a3c40@pop01.ny.us.ibm.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Sun, 23 Feb 1997, John R. Martz wrote: > on the differences between FreeBSD and Linux? One difference I'm really > curious about is that I see lots of Linux books published, but haven't > found one for FreeBSD yet. > Look for books on BSD, BSD 4.4(lite) in particular... > Can someone post some comments that will help me better understand the > pro's and con's in going with either Linux or FreeBSD? Probably the answer > is "It depends" ... but that's OK since right now I don't even know what > the choice might depend on. ;-) You might want to check the mailing list archives, as I've seen this question asked many times... ...But, a personal opinion. I'm maintainer/co-ordinator for the PostgreSQL RDBMS and the only operating system that we have major porting problems with is Linux...everything else is general small issues. The *main* pro of FreeBSD in that light is its distribution(s)...there is only one, maintained through ftp.cdrom.com and mirrors. Linux has, what, 6 different ones now? And each of those has slight quirks to what they feel is 'correct'. ie one of the is missing prototypes for a slew of standard C-lib functions, while another requires you to ftp in libdl.a seperately from the distribution, etc. I have a few friends that swear by Linux, and I personally think that its what you become used to/feel comfortable with. I went from a Linux system to a BSDi system to a FreeBSD system over the past few years, mainly because Linux (at that time) was completely unstable, and from BSDi to FreeBSD because I like having the source code... YMMV...