Re: FreeBSD --> Debain: any good reason?
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On Wed, 9 Aug 2000, Greg Strockbine. wrote:
> I have FreeBSD 3.1 installed and I've
> done some perl web programming, running only
> X-windows, emacs, apache and netscape. I
> was fine and happy.
You'd notice virtually no difference at all regarding that environment on
either Linux (any flavor) or FreeBSD.
> A Slackware Linux fan at work told me FreeBSD
> is behind the curve, too conservative. Linux
> has all the latest drivers, etc, -- go with Linux.
I've heard similar things, and it seems to be that the development groups
have slightly different foci. In FreeBSD you've got the core development
team working on improving and optimizing core kernel features, where as in
the Linux kernel development you don't have a really central group of core
developers. The result is that in Linux anybody can write a driver for
whatever obscure piece of hardware they've got, and if it's any good it
stands a pretty good chance of being incorporated into the kernel. As I
understand it that's not the case in FreeBSD.
> So, I thought I would give Linux a try.
> First I got lost in which distro to go with.
> I spent a whole bunch of time before I decided
> on Debian. Debian seems to be the most
> conservative of the bunch, kind of the freebsd
> camp of the Linux world.
A wise choice. Debian really is, from my experience with several distros,
the most well engineered and best designed distribution available.
> which leads me to ease of installation. FreeBSD is
> a snap to install. I got lost in the Debian installation
> guide. There's 4 different versions of the kernel
> you can choose from, there's files to pull from several
> different directories, etc.
Debian really is very easy to install. If you have a reasonably fast
Internet connection I strongly recommend you check out Debian's network
installation capabilities. It's been a while since I installed Debian,
since the upgrade process between major versions tends to be very easy,
but last time I did the network installation required 7 floppies. You can
install with just a CD-ROM and no floppies if you are able to boot from a
CD. Installing from CD is quite easy, and really doesn't involve much
work beyond selecting the packages you want installed and providing some
info about your hardware.
> I wanted to do a multi-boot system, win98 and Debian.
> I used partition magic to set up these little slivers
> of partions, 500 MB for /root, 100 MB for /tmp,
> 2 gigs for /var, etc. Partition magic took forever,
> created half of them and gave up.
2 gigs for /var is a bit much. I'm not sure how FreeBSD organizes it's
directory structure, but on my Debian potato machine (potato is soon to
become Debian 2.2, but is in pre-release testing at this point) /var
occupies only 47 Megs. /usr should have more space given to it, as here
it occupies 1.3 gigs.
> So now I see no really good reason to leave FreeBSD for
> Linux. Am I missing something, besides the license issue?
>
Honestly, as much as I love Debian, I'm sure FreeBSD is just as good. If
you are interested in expanding your horizons a bit, then definitely check
it out. The Debian community is great and always willing to help new
users get comfortable. But if you're happily productive in FreeBSD then
you probably won't gain a whole lot by moving to Debian.
noah
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