over-yonder.net — While there's overwhelming similarity between the operating systems in most cases, there are also a lot of differences. As you probe more into the differences, you find that they emerge from deep-seated disagreements.
Sep 11, 2006 View in Crawl 4
somabcSep 12, 2006
BSD vs Linux, what you *didn't* want to know
msodrewSep 12, 2006
That BSD Kool-Aid needed more sugar.
geomonSep 12, 2006
"The article isn't a bias free comparison of BSD vs Linux, it's a subtle (sometimes not) dig on Linux in nearly every paragraph."No s**t. And we aren't the only ones who know the sentiment:<a class="user" href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=gFAJDbV9Vfs">http://youtube.com/watch?v=gFAJDbV9Vfs</a>
leviathan777Sep 12, 2006
Ah, yes, the good old flamewar. Personally, I'll nearly always be a BSD guy. I liked gentoo's improvements on the FreeBSD ports, but one power outage, lost a partition hosed beyond repair, went back to FreeBSD.And yet, FreeBSD is clearly behind when it comes to certain hardware support. Sometimes this is because developers are linux-centric. But in higher level progs that really count (say, Amarok), it ends up getting fixed. And KDE's forthcoming HAL should solve that more or less permanently.On the other hand, FreeBSD sound card support has historically been weak. I just bought a 4front oss license today so I can listen to music while I type this. That's fine - I'll be installing Debian on a partition I left blank so I can use audio editing software (Ardour, Rosegarden).But any chance I get, I'll continue to use FreeBSD. I think it's too bad that Gentoo seems to have lost momentum, because it's one of the only Linux distributions that "gets it" when it comes to upgrading software packages. I don't want to wait for a new version of an OS just to get an updated piece of softare. FreeBSD + portupgrade is so much better. You can stayAnd in general, this is as good as I can do on generalizations; FreeBSD does it right: Linux just gets it done. Sometimes that means stuff works on Linux years before it works on a *BSD. But when it works on a *BSD, it generally works better, and is more properly engineered. Check out CARP (orig. from OpenBSD) if you want to see what I mean. Years of multiple clustering solutions on Linux, but now that it's on *BSD, it's in the base system, and is engineered "the right way".
blixelSep 12, 2006
Another one to add to the list:<a class="user" href="http://www.openbsd101.com">http://www.openbsd101.com</a>
dougmcSep 12, 2006
`It was clearly written for people like myself who are (relatively) new to both linux and BSD.'Perhaps, but at first it sounds like it's going to be a balanced discussion of the two items. He even explicitly says that it's NOT `why you should use BSD instead of Linux.' ... and then talks a little about how they're similar, and a lot about how they're different ... and then points out thing after thing after thing about how *BSD is better.For example, every single `Myth' that he disproves is disproved in a way that is beneficial to *BSD.Ultimately, I'd say his article IS about why he thinks *BSD is better than Linux, and why *BSD users are better than Linux users. Which is fine, but it would be nice if he didn't try to pretend it wasn't.
mendicantSep 12, 2006
I agree with nofxjunkee... now.I remember the first time I tried to use gentoo instead of FreeBSD, and to be honest, portage was crap. You could see where they were going, and it looked good, but it just messed up too much.So I stuck with FreeBSD and ports for another year and a half or so and now I've pretty much switched entirely over to Gentoo. Portage, while it still has a few problems here and there is so much more powerful than ports, and as pointed out earlier has some really good tools associated with it that make it much nicer to work with.Plus I'm using it more as a desktop environment too, and although FreeBSD has made a lot of headway here, I've got to say that linux is still the winner there.All that being said, I'm probably going to be needing to build a server here soon... and when I do it'll probably be FreeBSD, just to show some support (I'm still a big fanboy) and have some variety.
jacks0nSep 13, 2006
thank you, I've been wondering this for a while.
clp727Oct 9, 2006
I have installed and used several distributions of Linux as well as PC_BSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. I like them all. In my opinion, they all function very well in any role that they are placed in. I favor FreeBSD because of its lineage. I currently have FreeBSD 6.1 running on an old Compaq Proliant 800 server. It runs great. I have been able to find every application that I could ever need for FreeBSD. I believe that to be true for all distributions of Linux as well. Drivers can be an issue, but if an individual plans ahead, one can buy hardware that is compatable with the OS that they choose.I think the author of the article should have been promoting the use of both Linux and BSD. People need to experience things other than Windows. The average computer user probably thinks that the only alternative to Windows is Mac. (Speaking of Windows and Mac...I like them also!) There are versions of Linux and BSD (Ubuntu and PC-BSD) that are geared for people that just want a user friendly OS.I think a computer enthusiast should experience every OS that he/she has the chance to use.
clp727Oct 9, 2006
Thanks for the DesktopBSD link! I wasn't aware of it.
devfeedApr 20, 2007
Really good. Host is down.