Comparison between linux and BSD-type systems

[Bill Campbell]

On Thu, Jan 23, 2003 at 05:13:38PM -0800, Aaron Grewell wrote:
>I've used both FreeBSD and Linux at different times, and both work well
>on the server end.  FreeBSD is alleged to be faster and more stable
>under load, but I never had any occasion to verify that.  Linux has the
>advantage of greater third-party support and is much more usable as a
>workstation than FreeBSD.  OpenBSD is focused on security and is
>supposed to be very secure indeed.  I have never used it so I can't say
>more than that.

The most appealing thing to me about freebsd is its relative stability
compared to Linux.  Many Linux developers don't seem to give a damn about
breaking existing systems, either by changing the behaviour of scripts and
programs, or by gratuitously moving things around in the file system.

Furthermore I like the philosophy of freebsd where the OS layout is well
defined, and anything not in the base OS goes under /usr/local where it
belongs.  This makes things a lot easier when working around the vendor's
system without breaking things.

We're in the process of moving all of our Linux stuff off of Caldera Linux
systems, most likely to SuSE 8.1, and I'm trying to do it so that we're not
tied into any particular distribution's ``Way of Doing Things(tm)''.

I've been spending quite a bit of time over the last few weeks getting
everything we use on our systems working under the openpkg package
management system where it's independent of the vendor's packaging.
OpenPKG is built around a modified RPM 4.x, and runs on a variety of
Linuxes, freebsd, Solaris, AIX, and other *ix systems.  There are well over
500 packages built for openpkg, and they're packaged for maximum
portability.  Hopefully by building for openpkg, we can minimize our
problems moving from one flavour of Linux to another, not to mention the
things we do on freebsd, SCO OpenServer, and Apple OS X.

Bill
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to fit their views ... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to
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                -- Doctor Who, "Face of Evil"