Here is a poll for you this Sunday, you can vote for your favorite BSD-based OS.
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Uh? You can read, correct? Slackware is a yet another Linux distro, which it is not BSD.
Anyway, my vote goes to FreeBSD.
Slackware has a BSD-like init system, but that doesn't make it a BSD.
Not really sure I have a favorite between the two :-) NetBSD has done wonders for an old IBM z50 I have, and is what I currently have installed next to Linux and BeOS, but FreeBSD was my first foray into Unix.
Adam
chill every one....I am sure anon ment it as a joke. anyone that uses slack would know it is not BSD.
becasue I can relax withing its nice interface and still get all the power from a unix system.
Nice interface with lots of mainstream apps and excellent quality shareware and freeware.
FreeBSD's pkg_add -r switch makes it the best 
You don't need to specify a full ftp path to install stuff! w00t!
I think anon knows it's not a BSD either - I would definately say it's the Linux Distro that's closest in both power and setup up to the BSDs. I run Slack and FreeBSD on my machine and half the time you wouldn't know which one I'm running - except that Gaim quite often breaks the BSD sound support for some reason
I run FreeBSD on my server, headless - no monitor, no keyboard, no mouse, no GUI. Works awesomely.
My personal opinion is that _no_ X-Windows based UNIX will ever make a viable GUI desktop platform for me. Although that might change, maybe, I guess.
Oh, and OS X is not BSD! lol Okay, Darwin is BSD-based, but ... until Aqua/QuartzExtreme run on my PC, MacOS X ain't in my books as a BSD. ;-)
No matter what you think about it, Mac OS X is a BSD. Maybe not in the sense you're used to, but that doesn't make it any less of one.
I was looking at a UNIX family tree the other day. Mac OS X was clearly traced back to NeXTStep on it. NeXT, in turn, derived from BSD (4.4? I can't remember the version numbers.) and Mach. Mach, if you were realy obsessive and traced it even further back, derived from an older version of BSD (4.3? I really must go check those version numbers). So, Mac OS X (Darwin) is derived at its roots entirely from BSD.
Oh, and OS X is not BSD! lol Okay, Darwin is BSD-based, but ... until Aqua/QuartzExtreme run on my PC, MacOS X ain't in my books as a BSD. ;-)
FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD currently doesn't run on my pc, so they aren't BSD's either.
Hey, eugenia, what's the point of having a poll about favorite BSDs, if "BSD" is just a myth?
- it runs on my VAX
- it runs on my x86-Notebook
- it runs on my Powermac
Only my NeXT Cube runs on OpenStep - but hey! It's also BSD (well, kinda).
FreeBSD 5.0...I'm posting this from it right now...my favorite OS in the whole wide world
You found a platform that NetBSD doesn't run on?
HELLSPAWN! HEATHEN! TAKE IT BACK! lol
I am quite partial to FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD. I like all of them about equally. OS X may be really cool as well, I just don't own a Mac.
Alright I'm a newbie so please don't flame me because I'm gonna ask a very stupid question. Just ignore it if you feel these questions insult your intelligence.
1)What is the difference between BSD and Linux?
2)If I want to learn Unix, which would be a better choice to load on my home PC? Linux or BSD?
3)Could I possibly use BSD as a desktop OS like you can Linux? For instance, is BSD real finnicky with drivers and stuff?
My vote goes to OpenBSD, because it's by far the most clean,stable,secure,'done-the-right-way' UNIX-like OS I have ever used.
Sure linux is cool, but linux is bloated. The BSD's aren't so bloated, which is why a lot of people hate them (ie. not userfriendly enough,...), but that's exactly why I love 'em.
Free/NetBSD are both fine, though imho OpenBSD just has that little extra touch of being so correct in every detail, and so secure that you could almost call it paranoid. That's exactly what I like.
Sure, OpenBSD is not for everyone. It shouldn't try to be an OS for everyone, because that would degrade its quality. See what's happening to linux. The mainstream distro's are getting so bloated that their stability is decreasing. I think I can be confident that my favorite OS will never make such mistakes trying to please the masses.
I haven't used OS X a lot (well, I played with it for an hour or so), since I don't own a Mac 
. It seems to me that OS X has a pretty nice mix of the power of BSD and an extremely userfriendly wrapper around it. OS X looks like a great OS for the average user, but since I hate crowed, bloated workspaces (blackbox and fvwm rule), I doubt it's my kind of OS.
Then again, there's no point in discussing what the 'best' OS is, since that heavily depends on your needs. For me, a 'spartan' *nix (OpenBSD is the only one that really does that, afaik) is best, while for the average non-computer savvy user, Windows would be the best OS (well, no, OS X would be just as easy for those users, but beats the sh*t out of windows). For others, linux might be the perfect mix between *nix-power and userfriendlyness.
I would suggest Linux. A lot of drivers are written for Linux before being available for *BSD. Also, a lot more distributions and friendly package managers are available under Linux.
As for the poll, I voted for NetBSD, it's one slick system, well designed, portable and it feels clean.
I had major hardware problems with FreeBSD (4.6 I think), and I wasn't up to the mood at the time to fix it. I don't know 'bout 5.0. Anyways my vote has to go to MacOSX. MacOSX has everything the other BSD's / Linux could only dream of.
To begin learing about *nix, I think it's the easiest to start with some flavour of Linux, or Mac OS X.
Linux is more userfriendly for the beginner, with all kinds of GUI installers and stuff. Also linux supports more funky hardware, though the BSD's hardware support isn't bad.
There's a chance that you'll (like I did) one day grow bored of linux's bloat, and move on to one of the BSD's
would suggest Linux. A lot of drivers are written for Linux before being available for *BSD."
All this really means is that you have to be a bit more careful when buying hardware. And besides, it's not as true as it used to be. Example: FreeBSD had USB support long before Linux did.
"Also, a lot more distributions and friendly package managers are available under Linux."
I don't think I can agree with this. After all, what could be easier than "cd /usr/ports" seeing all the applications that are available, changing to the directory of the one you want, and typing "make install"?
I run a mix of Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses. My server OS of choice is FreeBSD. I run OS X on my everyday system (my 17" LCD iMac) and I run Linux on my workstation. I find them to be similar enough to enable me to move from one to the other without any problems.
I guess I'm just an OS junkie. There are so many great (and some not-so-great) OS's out there that you really don't have to choose just one!
Oh yes...
I don't consider OS X to be a BSD because it doesn't use a BSD kernel. It has a BSD subsystem. But at its core, it isn't really BSD.
I'd guess most people here are saying "BSD <x>" is my favourite BSD, but I'd find it hard to imagine everyone here has tried every single flavour of BSD, like myself, I've only tried one BSD, thats FreeBSD and loved it, so I never bothered trying the others
So, going by my limited BSD knowledge being based on just one version, I vote FreeBSD 
[quote]
I don't think I can agree with this. After all, what could be easier than "cd /usr/ports" seeing all the applications that are available, changing to the directory of the one you want, and typing "make install"?
[/quote]
Building a port is very easy indeed, but for some odd reason, the average newbie suffers from some kind of commandline-o-phobia, and thus prefers a GUI click'n'drool package manager.
Like I said before, with operating systems, there's no one-size-fits-all.
exactly, although I would probably choose OSX for my Macs, FreeBSD for my general *nix needs, cause the speed is just incredible, especially after a make world with tweaked /etc/make.conf.
I would, however, choose Red Hat for a lot of areas where certain applications are only supported under Linux or where it might be necessary to have some level of support.
Hmm, if only there was FreeBSD for 32-bit SPARC, I would've voted for it. In the meantime I'll run NetBSD. besides, OpenBSD might be secure, but it is seriously screwed up...
It runs solid as a rock.. for years, not months. I never lost a *single* file anymore since I moved the file server over to FreeBSD+Samba from Win2K Advanced Server. That used to be quite different in the windows days even with regular backups. On the Linux side of the world Gentoo is making nice progress. I'm posting this from it now, looks great on my desktop but my servers will remain FreeBSD.
Just a little clarification.
Mach by itself is not related to Unix (and/or BSD for that matter). Mach just reffers to a microkernel that follows the Mach model from CMU. What Apple (OSX) and NeXT (NeXTStep) did was adding a BSD layer to the Mach core, so that it looks and behaves like a BSD to the upper level layers (user code, and stuff). However it is a bit tricky calling NeXTStep and OSX actual BSDs since the kernel by itself is not really Unix... Apple claims OSX to be unix (and they do have the cert to prove it, I think)... so I guess it all depends on how you look at it.
My question is this, is OSX a BSD or a BSD-like? In the same sense that Linux is not Unix, but rather a Unix-like.
Theoretically you could add an Amiga (or NT to be even more adventurous) layer to Mach, but it would be tricky to claim that such a layer would make that OS a pure AmigaOS (or NT) or not, since at the core they have pretty different systems running....
I just inherited an old PPro 200 and threw OpenBSD on it originally. I really like the proactively secure philosophy of OpenBSD but it just becomes too difficult to work with (at least for someone that doesn't have unlimited free time)... I was compiling shared libraries for a dependency of the package I actually wanted to install... I stopped myself there and installed FreeBSD (4.7) by ftp...
The quality of FreeBSD is also top-notch and there is alot more documentation and you'll more likely to find precompiled binaries, etc.
Cheers
An excellent point. I would, however, argue that Mach is in fact a BSD rather than a BSD-like. Mach was written with the stated intention of being a replacement kernel for a BSD system. Look at a UNIX family tree (life <a href="http://www.ehlis.com/adam/solaris/history.html">this one) and you'll see that Mach is always shown as deriving from BSD.
FreeBSD (4.8 is coming out soon, kde 3 ? )
FreeBSD (4.8 is coming out soon, kde 3 ? )
Wasn't it already released a couple of days ago? It was mentionned on here or some other site... Can't quite remember.
I hear great things about FreeBSD, but without support for PPC (or 68K) I'm not going to get a chance to use it.
OpenBSD interests me, and with better hardware support I might try it eventually. I have had it reccomended to me before as an exelent distro.
I have tried, and failed to get NetBSD running on a PowerBook 180. Should be suported, but had weird issues after its first boot. Still need to take another hack at getting that working again. Also burned off a boot cd for my DreamCast, but not much I could with it without the broadband adapter, or even a keyboard.
I'm running OS X almost all the time (booting to Debian occasionally, but that ruins my uptimes), but I'm not too happy with Darwin. Lack of any simple way to make a modem connection killed it for me. My Darwin partition has been wiped now.
I think I voted for NetBSD as I like the idea of it.
"I would, however, argue that Mach is in fact a BSD rather than a BSD-like."
The Mach kernel is nothing at all like the BSD kernel. It's a microkernel. The BSD kernel is monolithic.
What makes OS X "BSD like" is its BSD subsystem. It will run most BSD applications. But as far as Mach being a BSD kernel, it isn't. It's design is completely different.
being a fan of the ever-changing world of linux, i must vote none. i like doing all kinds of stuff with "computable devices" sadly no single bsd has all of the advantages of linux for me. i like weird hardware! hell, making my own hardware! like interfacing nintendo controllers to my serial port :-D
re: openbsd, so far all of openbsd's POLICIES are implemented in redhat so far as i can tell. if a server is set to listen to localhost in openbsd, that's how it is in redhat. if a user can't write this to that, it's like that in redhat. even redhat beats openbsd in issuing patches, they even email you, if you're one of those kind of people who do work on your computer and not just lurk on security websites.
re: bloat, i run a webserver on a dreamcast 
under 100MB distro(tv-c linux!)... whatever. :-)
I have come to quite like FreeBSD - it is very 'clean' and easy to install with a bit of practice, works really nicely with Windows 2000 (dual-boot) and no lilo or grub problems. Just works. Had to compile the kernal for sound (ver. 4.7) but that was easy ... just followed the great instructions (which are not a fragmented mess like some Linux distros. Ports makes it easy to install software. KDE3 works well. Setting up internet dial-up under KDE is a breeze. A PPC version would be nice.
Or you could stop doing retarded flamebait polls.
I think that Solaris is best and I love it very very.
Couldn't vote: poll was closed!
Wouldn't anyway: I only used FreeBSD and OS X!
When I first tried FreeBSD after some Linux distros (it was about 2.9) I was so happy with it I just kept it, upgrading with each new release. After having accidently erased it from my HD (pure inattention!), I'll give Open & Net a try, then I'll vote (those polls reappear regularly).
Solaris isn't BSD, it SysV based if i'm not mistaken.
Though the earlier SunOS certainly is BSD based.
My preferred BSD cannot be hacked using any technique that works, or will ever work, on *any* operating system (it even defeated that attack that caught Open BSD last year); has a very intuitive interface that is much both sweeter and simpler (if stickier) than Windows; and even operates when your computer is turned off. Why wasn't it listed? What has OS News got against the British Standard Doughnut?
All the way man. It is _the greates_ *nix/*BSD ever.
'Nuff said.
I believe the release candidate was made available.
Brett
Sure linux is cool, but linux is bloated. The BSD's aren't so bloated, which is why a lot of people hate them (ie. not userfriendly enough,...), but that's exactly why I love 'em.
Contrary to popular belief, bloat doesn't equal user friendliness. If that were the case, Linux would be the world's most user friendly OS, VMS would come second, and the BSDs wouldn't be that bad either.
I would say that a BSD is the best way to "learn UNIX". Not only because it is very true to UNIX philosophies, but also because of the very fact that they don't come with any easy GUI. You don't learn UNIX by installing Redhat or Lycoris or Lindows or the flavour of the day. You learn UNIX by partitioning your hard drive on a text screen, setting up users, reading man pagers, editing config files, reading more man pages, learning Vi, reading even more man pages, swearing at the stupid 70s bourne shell, reading its stupid man page, and finally download the sources for the latest Zsh since the binary hasn't showed up in the package collection yet, and compiling it. And editing some more config files.
That's how you learn UNIX. Because though it might not sound very appealing, it isn't so boring while you're in it, and at the end, you've really managed to get a taste of the true UNIX spirit. With a mainstream Linux distro, you only get in contact with UNIX if you ask for it, or inadvertently. BSD is UNIX from the moment you insert the installation floppy (or load the install kernel over the network) to the day, six months later, that you've managed to set up X-Windows and have installed KDE.
Hrm. I can't seem to get a straight answer on this question? But how high can the BSD's scale? There was always this "perception" that Linux is stuck under 8-way systems... How high can BSD go?
As for: BSD is UNIX from the moment you insert the installation floppy (or load the install kernel over the network) to the day, six months later, that you've managed to set up X-Windows and have installed KDE.
Sounds scary to me, especially if anyone wanted to convert quick and fast (though those docs are sure helpful).
Funny how the "so-called" (to some), OSX and FreeBSD are so far apart in ease-of-use, while Linux still can't reach OSX's ease of use, and Windows still doesn't have most of the nixes flexibility and stability.
Seems like there still isn't a perfect OS yet. Maybe that's a good thing.
"Hrm. I can't seem to get a straight answer on this question? But how high can the BSD's scale? There was always this "perception" that Linux is stuck under 8-way systems... How high can BSD go?"
Traditionally, scalability has been a weak point of FreeBSD. However, with FreeBSD 5.0, the SMP subsystem was almost completely rewritten because of a nice gift from BSDi (FreeBSD got the BSD/OS SMP code). So with 5.0, scalability is significantly better. I haven't actually seen any benchmarks. But it is a lot better than previous versions of FreeBSD.
It's a close call for me between OS X and FreeBSD.. I don't have any OS X servers, but I don't have any FreeBSD desktops either (though I used to). I have a much longer history with FreeBSD, but OS X is such a great innovation.. FreeBSD seems to handle more load, but I'd think that OS X would scale better since its threading and SMP are more robust (yes, beneath that pretty face lies a complete kernel based threading implementation with SMP to boot)..
Ah well.. too close to call for me..
Isn't OSX a BSD only in userland instead of kernel ?
