From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Jun 14 16:05:02 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA15012 for questions-outgoing; Sat, 14 Jun 1997 16:05:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailhost.lal.ufl.edu ([204.199.163.177]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id QAA14996 for ; Sat, 14 Jun 1997 16:04:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from hacker.lal.ufl.edu (hacker.lal.ufl.edu [204.199.163.175]) by mailhost.lal.ufl.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id TAA01193; Sat, 14 Jun 1997 19:06:01 GMT Received: by hacker.lal.ufl.edu with Microsoft Mail id <01BC78F5.E9723D30@hacker.lal.ufl.edu>; Sat, 14 Jun 1997 19:05:23 -0400 Message-ID: <01BC78F5.E9723D30@hacker.lal.ufl.edu> From: Brad Bates To: "freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG" , "'Jon Paxton'" Subject: RE: FreeBSD and Linux... Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 19:05:22 -0400 Encoding: 63 TEXT Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Jon, With the group's blessing, I will give this a shot. FreeBSD is a derivative of the BSD UNIX and its ancestors. It has a long and solid history. Primary differences between this and other flavors of UNIX are: Its free (some others are too). Its more secure than other forms of free UNIX (opinion). It is able to do what you are looking to do with little hassle. It is also well-supported via mail groups, news groups, and the web sites, and fairly easy to learn (I am training others on it). However, it is not Windows, and it does not look or feel like the Microsoft products. You will have to read up on it via the web sites and/or some of the better publications to decide if that is a problem or not, but many will tell you that UNIX, any UNIX, is preferable to NT, regardless of what you want to do (stand by for rocks and flames here). I use both. UNIX is my choice for mail services because it is more mature, probably more secure than NT, way cheaper than NT will ever be, and much easier to administer (for me). Web services are easier to administer in NT (opinion), but not they are not bad on UNIX, and they probably run more efficiently on smaller systems than NT will every hope for from this point on. The only reason I use NT at all is because we have it where I work - it is not my cup of tea, but it is what we use. You do not need to buy anything (except a PC) to run FreeBSD. You can connect any useable system to the Internet and have it running this operating system in a few hours. Check out all of the instructions in the documentation pages and give it a shot - it will only cost you your time. Brad Bates ---------- From: Jon Paxton[SMTP:jon@ncuk.com] Sent: Saturday, June 14, 1997 7:10 PM To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: FreeBSD and Linux... Hi, First off, could you just tell me *exactly* what freebsd is? I am trying to decide wether to use NT or Unix as a Web/Mail server, so, is Freebsd the web server?, or just a platform? If so, does it support things like server side includes etc?? You may have noticed I have no idea what I am talking about, so, could you *please* tell me a place where I can d/l linux, I have been to loads of websites, put they *always* point me to complicated ftp sites, all I need is someone to tell me *exactly* what files I need to d/l, or even better, just one file which has all the other files compressed in it... Please help, Thanks, Jon Paxton http://www.ncuk.com/staff/jon