freebsd

Post by **lambda** » Fri Jun 06, 2003 4:27 am

it seems that everyone here uses linux primarily. that's not surprising, given the name of the site. i'm curious about the freebsd users, though. are there (m)any freebsd users here? searching through the forums reveals very few mentions of freebsd.

i've set up freebsd servers at many sites (i do contract work, mainly). most of the customers still run the same servers, albeit with software upgrades over the years. only one site has replaced the servers i set up with linux ones, but i can't say they have any good sysadmins there; the linux servers are suffering as bad as the freebsd ones were.

i've been using linux since late 1992/early 1993 and freebsd since 1994.
i currently have a debian sarge/freebsd-current box and a debian woody/freebsd-stable box box (dualboot, both of them) at home.

Post by **fawad** » Fri Jun 06, 2003 7:32 pm

Well, I do know of a couple on the list, but they don't frequent the forum.

As an off-topic question, is there any difference between Linux and FreeBSD from a userland point of view? Don't they generally have the same compilers, WMs, apps etc? I wanna know because I haven't used *BSD with any dedication, and haven't found any compelling reason to do so yet.

Post by **lambda** » Fri Jun 06, 2003 8:04 pm

fawad wrote:As an off-topic question, is there any difference between Linux and FreeBSD from a userland point of view? Don't they generally have the same compilers, WMs, apps etc? I wanna know because I haven't used *BSD with any dedication, and haven't found any compelling reason to do so yet.

for normal users, perhaps the main distinction is that "ls" doesn't color filenames, and that they have to pick gnome or kde at install time (it's not an automatic selection). there is less support for exotic hardware, and there is no equivalent of v4l (rules out quite a few usb webcams). linux libraries are available that'll let you run linux binaries on freebsd. people play quake 3 on freebsd this way.

from a programmer's perspective, freebsd is a lot better because you never have to worry about installing version x of some library with version y of some kernel and making sure you have version z of glibc (or libstdc++). ship your binaries, and they'll run on any -stable release out there. there's even good support for older releases. the downside is that stable releases don't ship with the latest gcc (though newer versions are available as separate packages).

i find freebsd a lot easier to manage than linux. i don't have to go searching around to figure out how to add an interface alias or set up ipv6; everything i need is in /etc, which is a relatively flat directory. all 3rd-party applications place their config files in /usr/local/etc. that's it -- no other locations for configs. i hate to say this, but so many front-end apps like linuxconf and the like have actually made it harder for those of us who edit files the old fashioned way.

big bonus: you get the source code to the entire system, it's easy to make site-specific customizations.

Post by **fawad** » Sat Jun 07, 2003 10:08 am

Hmm, interesting. So will the libc remain backward compatible across all -stable releases? How about the other libs your apps are dependent on?

Post by **linuxgeek** » Sat Jun 07, 2003 11:25 am

Count Me in the freebsd wagon too

but linux still rox!

its does!!

cheers

uppal

basit · Post by **basit** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 2:24 pm

despite of libc, all other userland library requirements remain the same.
Debian is sleek in such a package management, freebsd or redhat package management is inferior to apt.

But on the other hand, FreeBSD as a server OS supercedes Linux in many ways. To name a few

- Superior IPv6 support/KAME. IPv6 QoS supported also.
- Superior memory management algo's (Linux 2.4 is improved but yet
not reached to bsd point)
- Easy init scripts (most of time you just need to edit rc.conf)
- NIS+ as a server support (w/shadow encryption)
- with FreeBSD 5.0 the default distributions have ACL's built in natively
and new features in UFS and ipfw has been introduced.

If you want a desktop OS, get windows and use it. I've changed my opinions, Linux is not ready for desktop yet ! (speaking for casual users )

Basit

Post by **lambda** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 4:14 pm

fawad wrote:Hmm, interesting. So will the libc remain backward compatible across all -stable releases? How about the other libs your apps are dependent on?

for the most part, yes. i have a freebsd 3.3 box upgraded to 4.7 (3.3 to 3.4, 3.4 to 4.0, 4.0 to 4.7 over a period of two years), and it has just two libc versions in /usr/lib -- one for version 3.x, and one for version 4.x. it's a similar situation with all system-provided libraries, like libstdc++, or libncurses.

applications compiled with older libraries continue to function as long as you don't delete the libraries. for example, even after freebsd 3.0 was released, people still used netscape binaries compiled against 2.x without any problems at all.

there are also bundles of compatibility libraries available for everything from freebsd 1.x to 4.x; they can be installed at any time, even from the installer.