Date: 14 Jan 1998 08:07:08 -0600 From: stephen farrell <stephen@farrell.org> To: matjaz@vizija.si (Matjaz Vrecar) Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD vs RedHat Message-ID: <87g1mrf8tv.fsf@phaedrus.uchicago.edu> In-Reply-To: matjaz@vizija.si's message of "Wed, 14 Jan 1998 08:50:43 %2B0100" References: <199801140850430210.005B6609@mail.vizija.si>
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matjaz@vizija.si (Matjaz Vrecar) writes: > I know my question might sound stupid to you but anyway: what's the > difference between RedHat Linux and FreeBSD? I work with windows but I > like linux too! What's better at FreeBSD in comparison to RedHat? They're very competitive systems, so this is a difficult question to answer--though one that is argued far too often. To answer your question as straight-forwardly as possible: FreeBSD: based on Berkeley 4.4 sources... modified to be POSIX compliant and improvements in virtual memory, etc. emulates linux binaries very well. Kernel and whole system are organized by the same group. Linux: newly written kernel by linux torvalds and friends starting 1990ish. Also aims towards POSIX specs. Much larger user base (~ 5,000,000 vs. ~ 500,000 VERY ROUGHLY). kernel is managed differently then the rest of the system. The rest of the system (aka distribution) comes from organizations/companies like redhat, debian, slackware, suse, etc., and varies in quality (redhat and debian being most popular), though for the most part it is based on a common set of gnu utilities. If freebsd didn't exist I'd use linux and I'd be happy. As it is, I'm happy that freebsd exists and personally avoid linux =). My complaints about linux basically stem from (a) unstable c library and friends, causing an upgrade to break some old programs, etc--essentially to much "new" stuff without enough focus on ease of maintenance and reliability (b) quality of distributions varies, and I don't particularly like any of them for various reasons. Best advice I've heard is to use what your friends or associates use, as they will best be able to help you and you won't have to have arm wrestles, fist fights, and bloody dart fights trying to figure out who is running the better OS. -- Steve Farrell
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