Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1999 03:28:44 -0500 From: "Christopher S. Weimann" <cweimann@wallnet.com> To: wonko@entropy.tmok.com, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why is FreeBSD better than Linux? Message-ID: <19991207032844.I6078@wallnet.com> In-Reply-To: <199912061609.LAA85120@entropy.tmok.com>; from Brian Hechinger on Mon, Dec 06, 1999 at 11:09:43AM -0500 References: <199912061609.LAA85120@entropy.tmok.com>
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On Mon, Dec 06, 1999 at 11:09:43AM -0500, Brian Hechinger wrote: > ok. long time Linux user. found FreeBSD. won't touch Linux with a 10-foot > pole anymore these days. i know it's better, i just don't know exactly why. > i've used it and i like it more than i like linux is probably the answer. > Start with why you won't touch Linux with a ten foot pole but you are willing to touch FreeBSD. <long tale of woe regarding Linux> I personally run BSD on my servers and Linux on a few desktops. I am getting ready to get rid of Linux and quite frankly don't want to touch it with a ten foot pole myself anymore. Just two days ago I had to recompile a Linux kernel to add support for a new device. This in itself isn't a problem since I would probobly have to do the same in FreeBSD but the process in Linux was a horror. I suppose it is possible that my problems with Linux stem from the fact the I "grew up" on BSD but I really think that the BSD systems just have it together better than Linux. My first mistake with building a Linux kernel was making it to big. I don't really know why it matters but it does. Next I had to deal with the conflicting documentation for building the kernel, which both seemed to conflict with the reality. I eventually managed to get the kernel in the right place and coaxed lilo into using it. Now I rebooted and was greeted with "Out of memory System halted" There doesn't seem to be any way of selecting your old kernel from the boot prompt so I decided to download the "rescue" disk from RedHat ( well actually from cdrom.com, RedHat server was too busy ) I eventually discovered that 6.1 apparently doesn't have a rescue disk so I picked up the 6.0 disks rebooted my system and put my old kernel back in place ( using the lilo command on my hard drive since it doesn't seem to be on the rescue disk for some reason ) Next I went back to kernel configuration and disabled everything that I could find that I didn't think I needed and repeated the process ( from my own pseudo documentation ) and it started up right. Now I was faced with the problem that the driver for the device didn't seem to recognize the device. I found a howto that told me that I needed to set some options but it didn't tell me how to go about setting them. Also it seems that not all the drivers use the same syntax for options, one might use io=0x300 and another might use base=0x300. I added the appropriate options to the modules.conf but upon reboot they seemed to be ignored. I tried putting in at the boot prompt but they were also ignored. I finally looked at the source for the driver and found that it can't be passed options unless it is compiled as a module separate from the kernel. So here we go again rebuilding a the kernel. Success finally. It only took me a day and a half! I have had on three occasions needed to rebuild my Linux ( RedHat ) kernel. Two of those occasions resulted in a non functional system and I had to fall back to booting from the rescue set of floppies. Thank god it was a desktop and not a server. In FreeBSD and BSDi I have rebuilt the kernel dozens of times and have only had a problem once but was able to pick my old kernel from the boot prompt. My main complaint about Linux is documentation. There is loads of documentation for Linux and none of it seems very useful. It either contradicts other documentation or it is a Howto that is horribly out of date. I also can't seem to find a mailing list archive anywhere but there might be one. RedHat's site doens't seem to make it easy to find anything. I stumbled onto the redhat-install mailing list by accident but I still haven't found an archive. If I have a problem with FreeBSD the answer is either in the handbook or in the mailing list archives. I have never needed to look at source except out of curiosity. Keeping a FreeBSD system up to date is a piece of cake with cvsup. I am quite frankly am still not quite sure what the appropriate way of keeping a Linux system up to date is short of buying another CD. Keeping packages/ports up to date is FAR easier with for me with FreeBSD. Dependancies are handled for me. I had less trouble getting Gnome working under FreeBSD that I did under Linux! I just went into the appropriate ports directory and ran make. In Linux I had to download a dozen or so RPM files that didn't want to install because replacing the old libraries would break dependancies for other applications so I had to use the --force option ( advice which I found after quite some time searching the web rather than a few minutes searching a mailing list archive ). I don't care what anybody says the BSD kernel config file is a thing of beauty compared Linux's process. All in all Linux seems to me like a hodge podge of software that isn't quite done yet and FreeBSD seems like a professionally put together complete package. I'd much rather maintain any BSD. </long tale of woe regarding Linux> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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