Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 14th Mar 2008 20:48 UTC, submitted by Valour
"Here we are at the moment of truth for the FreeBSD operating system - the 7.0 release. This is what FreeBSD users and developers have been waiting for ever since the dark days of the 5.X series when the promises of superior performance, threading, and stability fell flat. Though each release in the FreeBSD 6.X series improved markedly in quality and performance, 7.0 has been widely anticipated as the release that FreeBSD fans can have confidence in. I wish I could say that FreeBSD 7.0 lived up to the hype."
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Member since:2006-10-08
Yes, FreeBSD has some hardware issues. However, I run it on a laptop, desktop and multple servers at home without issue.
Same here. I think it just depends on the hardware. It's well known (at least I think it is so) that Linux has the best hardware support overall, but if you have standard compliant hardware, FreeBSD should run fine.
The only thing I miss is Flash support.
That's true. For basal support, you can of course use "Flash" for Linux via the Linux ABI, or gnash. This causes trouble in some cases. Or just leave "Flash" stuff aside. Personally, I don't miss it. :-)
The JDK issue is annoying, but not a big deal.
It is, but once you have downloaded the needed files, you can transfer them to any new system you setup. (Or you transfer the complete system using dump and restore to transfer 1:1 partition-wise, followed by changing some few configuration files to support the changed hardware setting.)
The installer is awesome. Custom install for base and the kernel only and then CVSUP stable and build world.
The installer just does what it is intended to. It installs the operating system and, if you wish it to, it installs additional software, and configures your system in a dialog driven way (in opposite to editing files or using the respective command line tools).
Command line works great. Learn how to setup your own shell init files and login scripts and you too can have color.
Just put into your /etc/csh.cshrc (and look if local a .cshrc eventually overrides it):
setenv LSCOLORS ExGxdxdxCxDxDxBxBxegeg
set promptchars = "%#"
set prompt = "%n@%m:%~%# "
set autolist
There are even some more special character sequences that could give you a colored prompt (e. g. brown user name, blue system name, yellow path and green or red clearance prompt). As I mentioned, console mode applications support color (e. g. Midnight Commander or CenterICQ - or simply the sysinstall utility). And you can play around with the vidcontrol utility to make all the pretty colors. :-)
Yes, the defaults can be considered "basic" and it does lack the flash and pomp of Ubuntu.
On the other hand, Linusi like Ubuntu are distributions containing the OS and much additional stuff, for example GUI system administration tools. This is not what the FreeBSD philosophy implies. You are free to add it, if you want, but it's not the default.
The same is true for security reasons: Services need to be enabled. Security barriers need to be abandoned manually (to increase comfortability, e. g. file permissions in /etc/devfs.conf or an automated login without password). This is well intended. In a multi user setting, you'll see that it makes sense not to allow anyone put USB sticks into the system and copy classified data, or install stuff on his own, or destroy data by doing nonsense (dd, combined with /dev/null and an arbitrary hard disk device come into mind).
However, the target audience of FreeBSD are for the most part admins and the like. PC-BSD is the version targeted at more end users.
PC-BSD and DesktopBSD are good solutions for users that are not interested in learning the basic stuff of UNIX system operations. They provide (mostly) what they already might know or like from Linux systems.
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Member since:
2006-05-12
I've been forced to use CentOS for a LAMP stack at work now and I cry for FreeBSD. The defaults settings, documentation and general cleanliness of the CentOS install blows compared to FreeBSD. Not to mention that PF walks all over ipchains.
Yes, FreeBSD has some hardware issues. However, I run it on a laptop, desktop and multple servers at home without issue. The only thing I miss is Flash support.
The JDK issue is annoying, but not a big deal.
The installer is awesome. Custom install for base and the kernel only and then CVSUP stable and build world.
Command line works great. Learn how to setup your own shell init files and login scripts and you too can have color.
Yes, the defaults can be considered "basic" and it does lack the flash and pomp of Ubuntu. However, the target audience of FreeBSD are for the most part admins and the like. PC-BSD is the version targeted at more end users.
If Adobe released Flash for BSD and apps like vmware console were released for BSD I wouldn't touch Linux. As it is, I need to have a Linux terminal server setup in the basement to run vmware-server-console. *blegh*