Re: Free Unix OS's on x86
Andy,
My opinions follow...
I am a person that started out with FreeBSD and switched over to
Debian later.
At the time I started with FreeBSD, Debian was not yet released at
version 1.1 (there was no 1.0). Basically, there was Slackware and
there was FreeBSD. FreeBSD was (and still probably is) superior to
Slackware. Also the Linux of the day had some stability and
performance problems that FreeBSD didn't.
Today, the situation is different. Linux has evolved a LOT faster
than has FreeBSD; Debian has evolved quickly in particular. Debian's
nice package management system far outshines FreeBSD's system. Linux
stability now is very good (with the exception of a few bad apples
like 2.0.30), and Linux makes an excellent production-quality server
(as I have readily seen on the job). Linux's low resource
requirements cause it to make an excellent workstation as well.
Linux has always had better hardware support than FreeBSD; today,
those two OSs sometimes borrow each other's code for use in the kernel.
Andy Kahn <kahn@zk3.dec.com> writes:
> after being a fairly long-time Linux user (since mid-1993), i
> decided to take a look at the other free OS's out there. my first
> stop was at FreeBSD. on one of their pages, i found even more OS
> projects: NetBSD, OpenBSD, Lites, and GNU HURD.
NetBSD is a BSD4.4 derivative not limited to i386. As such, it is
slower on the i386 than FreeBSD. NetBSD is a smaller project and not
as featureful as FreeBSD. OpenBSD is a derivitive of NetBSD,
basically trying to add to NetBSD some features that Linux and/or
FreeBSD already have.
Hurd is not yet released.
> so here are some of my questions: since practically all these OS's
> (including Linux) are free, and use a lot of GNU software, why
> would one choose one OS over another? they are all Unix variants,
Correction here: Of the OSs you mentioned, Linux and Hurd are not
derivitives of Unix. Linux has been written from the ground up. *BSD
are drived from 4.4BSDLite.
Linux is currently at a state where it can be said to be
Unix-compatible; it implements everything to be expected from a modern
Unix. On the plus side, it does not inherit certain security problems
or other problems that we see creeping up in BSD4.4 every so often.
> provide similar functionality, run on the same base platform (x86,
> and branching out to others), and even use the same software (gnu
> gcc, XFree86, et al).
> from a functional standpoint, they all seem about the same.
Actually, there are quite large differences. I have found Linux to
have many more features than FreeBSD; software is generally more
up-to-date. One prime example is the sound system. Strange as it may
sound, RealAudio got me to switch to Linux :-)
Debian comes with roughly 1000 packages; FreeBSD has substantially
fewer.
> can anyone comment on the internals of each OS?
What specifically do you want to know?
--
John Goerzen | Developing for Debian GNU/Linux (www.debian.org)
Custom Programming | Debian GNU/Linux is a free replacement for
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