“And if you were just shopping around, just considering Linux and hadn’t looked at a BSD, you may want to reconsider and do some comparing between the systems. You might find that a BSD will be a better fit.” Read the editorial at eWEEK.
Is It Time for BSD?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I don’t see any compelling reasons in this article to use any BSD. He says it’s superior but really doesn’t state why, where his findings come from or give any sort of benchmarks.
I just don’t see any real point of the article. Maybe I missed something.
Agreed, basically just someone who needed to push out an article i’m guessing. While i DO think people should look at BSD, he isnt giving much real incentive. He blindly says that it’s more stable and scales better, and is better at networking. While i wont contest that, going a bit deeper would be appreciated.
Come september (when i’m off this horrid thing called dialup) i’m giving FreeBSD another shot on my DEC Alpha, i’ve been through hell with that install so far, but i’m convinced i can get it to work if i just keep at it.
… that I will be moded down, well, I guess that in the future I will say only nice things or no things at all. From what I’ve noticed people can say all sorts of crap here, but they are not allowed to say anything about … can’t say again otherwise I will be moded down again. Here I go:
I appologize for saying that … (its there in modet down topic) … and I promise I won’t say it ever again. Please accept my depeest apologies, and excuse my post. I don’t know what I was thinking.
is bsd any good for a home desktop user? Can I run all the usual stuff that I would run on linux on a bsd…like kde, k3b, mplayer, etc?
sorry for the lazzyness, but I’ve never even thought to look.
Basically you could run 95% of the linux software, as long as it’s open source. All of the software i use on my desktop is supported under BSD, so i’m not worried. Just look at their apps list to see if all of what you need is supported.
“I just don’t see any real point of the article. Maybe I missed something.”
The TCP/IP in Windows came from BSD. I don’t remember which. The “real” point of the article is that Microsoft would so much more comfortable with us using BSD if we HAVE to use an alternative OS. Microsoft can use what they want from it and no GPL to contend with.
BTW Theres nothing wrong with BSD, all versions are good. You will see a steady stream of articles like this being generated by the Microsoft PR firm in the near future. Its just an attempt to create divisions amoung alternative OS users. Don’t buy into it.
I think this article is meant for you. It says you have more alternatives than just linux. And yes, FreeBSD has almost everything Linux has like KDE, mplayer. It has a huge ports and packages collection.
Backbacon, it is possible to run desktop apps such as mp3 players, kde, gnome. FreeBSD comes with this package on their CDs.
Definitely is rock solid! As long as you know how to run the initial set up. If you have like an hour on your hands, to install and muck around with FreeBSD, I definitely recommend it.
…if you have ancient desktop hardware.
If you have a recent top of the line machine with any *very* recent modern sound card, such as a SoundBlaster audigy, or if you’re using an ATi card and want 3d accleeration you can just forget about it, and move right onto Linux.
Yes, I know I’m being a bit *itchy. But, if you own an ATi Radeon 9500/9600/9700/9800 there are no 3D drivers available except ATi’s Linux, Mac, and Windows drivers. ATi has decided that they will not provide the specifications for those cards to 3rd party driver creators (such as XiG) or to open source developers. Citing trade secret liabilities.
If you’re using the Audigy, there’s a Linux driver and BSD “works for a select group of unknown people” driver.
Now if you’re a developer who lives for kernel panics and wants the latest hardware support, go ahead and try the FreeBSD 5 series. Like I did.
If you want non-optimized not very advanced hardware support, but very stable, try the FreeBSD 4.x series.
All of the negatives aside, if you have well supported hardware FreeBSD can be pretty nice most of the time. It has a *very* cleanly written kernel, and *tons* of documentation everywhere. A great project to get involved with if you’re interested in OS development.
You will see a steady stream of articles like this being generated by the Microsoft PR firm in the near future. Its just an attempt to create divisions amoung alternative OS users. Don’t buy into it.
So we should all go and use Linux? maybe just RedHat? I personally would use Windows if my only other alternative was Linux…
BSD makes for a great desktop. I’ve been happily using NetBSD as my only desktop for 1 1/2 year now. I have not be lacking in software to accomplish all my daily tasks. As Richard pointed out earlier, there are tons of software out there. If you are not tied down to gaming, Exchange, and Office, you will find that you are able to do just about everything on a BSD desktop that you can do on a Linux or a Windows desktop.
I’m reading in a article about Yahoo’s use of PHP that one of the reasons that they didn’t go with Java was that they used FreeBSD a lot and the threading didn’t work well. Is this a problem with Java or FreeBSD? Would it affect other applications or libraries? Are there areas where FreeBSD works better?
http://www.extremetech.com/print_article/0,3998,a=20072,00.asp
if you’re interested in BSD and looking for a more detailed description…
In keeping with recent articles…
Apple makes a nice *BSD for home users. 😉
Neither Sun nor IBM have supported JVMs for FreeBSD. Some FreeBSD volunteers are working at porting Sun’s code. The alternative is emulating Linux to run the ‘official’ JVMs.
Basically you could run 95% of the linux software, as long as it’s open source.
Actually, it does support a lot of Linux binaries.. FreeBSD 5.x has been improvement a lot on this part and it works better than 4.x..
I’m reading in a article about Yahoo’s use of PHP that one of the reasons that they didn’t go with Java was that they used FreeBSD a lot and the threading didn’t work well. Is this a problem with Java or FreeBSD? Would it affect other applications or libraries? Are there areas where FreeBSD works better?
FreeBSD 5.1 has the four different threads that are working.. Two most important threads are 1:1 (libthr) and M:N (libkse) are being work on. Those can run fine, but not perfect yet and still in the beta stage.
1) Linux threads
2) historical N:1 threads (-lc_r)
3) 1:1 threads (-thr)
4) N:M threads (-kse and will change to -pthread when it’s stable)
If you want to run BSD on some esoteric hardware like an old Mac or on your Playstation, NetBSD will be for you. It’s ported to freakin’ tons of platforms
Here is a link to some very rough and highly obscure benchmarks, taken on some glut/OpenGL software compiled and run under 3 different OS platforms on the same piece of hardware.
http://jimbomania.com/benchmarks/results_table.html
Some more info on the software:
http://jimbomania.com/3dtech.html
I became interested when the NVidia drivers were released for FreeBSD. My curiosity was piqued when i found that FreeBSD gives framerates more than TWICE that of both Cygwin/Windows and Linux! More benchmarks to come…
I needed to set up a webserver with Apache/PHP/database features and tried both Mandrake and RedHat but it was hell trying to get all of the libs and latest stable releases of programs compiling and working together. I installed FreeBSD and set up everything I needed through the “ports” feature in about 1/4 of the time it took to get it working half decent on Linux. I’m not knocking Linux at all because perhaps I wasn’t doing everything I needed for a successful Linux setup, but what drew me to FreeBSD though is the ease of use, consistency, and helpful community. For someone like me with average *NIX experience, FreeBSD was much easier to understand, work with, deploy, and maintain.
FreeBSD is hands down my favorite operating system. It may not have the pretty installers and tools some Linux distros have, but I think that between the amazing documentation and the coherent userland, and the sane packaging system, it ends up being way easier to get completely up and running that any Linux distro I have ever encountered (in my experience anyhow). It also seems way more stable than Linux (or anything else for that matter), which in my experience is less stable than Win2k. This isn’t flamebait, I realize that Linux probably make for a more stable server than does Win2k, but it doesn’t cut it for me, a programmer and a desktop user. Linux tends to be less than responsive when I’m working it very hard (compiling, emulating, etc). It is also very annoying when I accidentally put a semicolon after a while statement, and not even kill -9 works. That makes Linux about as stable as Win 3.11 in my book. Okay, I guess that’s flamebait, but I can’t help it, I haven’t had much good experience with Linux. Anyway, enough rant.
I personally would use FreeBSD with anything dealing with networking (firewalling, routing, VPN’s). Why? Because it is tried and true. Linux isn’t bad but they are certainly not focusing on this area. Ex. they have yet to implement IPSEC into the OS which every other OS including BSD, Solaris, and Windows already have done. It will be coming in the 2.6 kernel but networking isn’t Linux strength.
For mail-server, web-servers, name-servers, both Linux and FreeBSD excel. However, my personal preference is to FreeBSD because there isn’t any one distro in Linux that I am happy with. Gentoo is too focused on compiling everything. Somethings I like to compile. other things I just like to add as packages. Debian is too old. The installer is terrible and the Stable Branch is outdated. RedHat is too commercial (RedHat might drop support for free Linux anytime) and is actively trying to force people to pay for security updates. On the otherhand, FreeBSD is constantly being updated, its ports and packages are being constantly updated, and it is extremely easy to stay up to date. To top it off, it has better documentation than any Linux distro.
For running third-party applications, such as Oracle, DB2, SAP, Websphere, etc., the only option is some commercial Linux distro like SuSE or RedHat. They are excellent distro’s that cost money and they get the job done.
FreeBSD, the version of BSD that Yahoo uses, does not handle threads well in the 4.x version. It is an implementation of threads that resides entirely in userland and thus the kernel knows nothing about them so multiple processors and the like cannot be used. This is a problem that has long been recognized and the FreeBSD team is trying to solve it with the introduction of Kernel Scheduled Entities (KSE), which basically allows you to have the best of both worlds having threads in userland and the kernel knowing about them. KSE is scheduled to debut in the 5.x series and from what I hear is coming along very nicely.
And just for the record BSD *does* have an official JVM see: http://www.freebsd.org/java
cheers!
Is this site about journalism or getting shouted at, being moderated down when your ‘tone’ is disliked ?
I followed OSnews for a while, in my opinion, quality is decreasing by the minute. I hope I won’t get shot for having an opinion by ELQ.
I did turn a lot more to the commercial side of things.
So I’m a convert, I turn my head to other less speculative, sensation seeking and advertisinghungry sites if they still exist.
Notice all the 59’s in the windows benchmark, I think Jim forgot to turn off vsync in the drivers… the real difference will probably be slightly in the advantage of bsd but puts linux to shame (unfortunately)
The article is taking two claims of the NetBSD & OpenBSD websites for granted, thereby spreading more misinformation.
First is the NetBSD portability – while it is true that it _is_ very portable, Linux actually has been ported to more CPUs.
NetBSD just turns what are “subarchitectures” in Linux into their own platform each. There are AFAIK a few subarches NetBSD can run which Linux can’t, but the other way around is true, too – and that’s without the more CPU thing.
Second, while there is truth in the NetBSD portability, the OpenBSD security is simply false. OpenBSD folks are simply either in secrecy, or in denial mode at all times.
I’ll just point out that there has been a remote root hole in OpenSSH beginning 2001, which affected the OpenBSD default install just as well as other vendors shipping OpenSSH, yet they’ve kept stating the “no remote root” for a long time afterwards. Now it has changed to “only one remote root hole”, but that’s (I suppose) for the remote hole last year which affected just about only OpenBSD and noone else.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the BSDs, and I use them when I see the need, but there’s something to be said for checking facts in journalism rather than taking over marketingspeak :p
<quote>
Second, while there is truth in the NetBSD portability, the OpenBSD security is simply false. OpenBSD folks are simply either in secrecy, or in denial mode at all times.
I’ll just point out that there has been a remote root hole in OpenSSH beginning 2001, which affected the OpenBSD default install just as well as other vendors shipping OpenSSH, yet they’ve kept stating the “no remote root” for a long time afterwards. Now it has changed to “only one remote root hole”, but that’s (I suppose) for the remote hole last year which affected just about only OpenBSD and noone else.
</quote>
_This_ is false. OpenBSD’s security claim is true. There has only be one remote hole in the default install in seven years. Other holes have been in services that are not enabled by default.
I’m not saying anything about the importance of this statement, as not much is enabled by default (and that’s a good thing!), but it _IS_ true.
I can’t understand why people keep on misinterpreting it…
And no one can deny that OpenBSD has the best security track record of all the free OS’s out there. Especially with the recent stack protection features, it’s very secure.
There are ‘hardened’ linux distro’s too, but did they do full source audits?
OpenBSD has been around for 7 years, and has really proven itself security-wise. But it’s true that it’s not a system for every user.
But I love my OpenBSD desktop *g*
When we have all these lovely BSDs.
as a response to some stupid comments here… I can’t really figure out any reason why to downgrad to Linux from BSD
It is an illusion that BSD’s are safe from (i)legal actions
from pure software companies like Microsoft and SCO. Now
they are focused on Linux, if they had any success, they will
go after BSD, too. Free and OSS software and GPL is “cutting of the air supply” for them, to cite microsoft. If they do not accomplish to do some harm, they will be extinct species in
ten years or less.
So, there is no point in falling back. This is war, and there can be only one survivor.
I became interested when the NVidia drivers were released for FreeBSD. My curiosity was piqued when i found that FreeBSD gives framerates more than TWICE that of both Cygwin/Windows and Linux! More benchmarks to come…
Shouldn’t a lightbulb appear above your head when you get benchmarks like these on something which is largely hardware bound?
The point is they’ve *already* settled their IP issues wrt original Unix code. More over, since at least FreeBSD has a very small core group maintaining the kernel it is quite unlikely that any copyrighted code was inserted into the kernel by a third party contributer vis-a-vis SCO’s allegations.
Notice all the 59’s in the windows benchmark, I think Jim forgot to turn off vsync in the drivers… the real difference will probably be slightly in the advantage of bsd but puts linux to shame (unfortunately)
And yet Linux runs Q3 faster than MS Windows:
http://www4.tomshardware.com/howto/20020531/windows_gaming-04.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23735.html
Your vsync observation is probably spot on though.
More over, since at least FreeBSD has a very small core group maintaining the kernel it is quite unlikely that any copyrighted code was inserted into the kernel by a third party contributer vis-a-vis SCO’s allegations.
Dude, there are dozens and dozens (I say “dozens and dozens” because I don’t know exactly how many it is) of people who can and do commit code directly to the FreeBSD cvs tree. Besides, it just not possible to audit code for copyright infringement on code you don’t even have access to.
I don’t see any compelling reasons in this article to use any BSD
The most compelling reason is this one, repeated two or three times in the article: “facing foot-dragging on Linux from corporate bosses thanks to fallout from SCO’s suits”
He didn’t argue BSD’s superiority — rather, he argued it was as useful as Linux in most situations where people choose Linux. If you want details on some of BSD’s advantages, he points to other articles.
When he writes: “All have superior security, scalability and networking” he doesn’t mean “superior” as in comparison, but as in description.
It’s a good article.
“In many cases, upper management and corporate lawyers have been spooked by SCO’s scare tactics and are putting the kibosh on Linux usage until the smoke clears.”
For the moment, the all-powerful Darl McBride (CEO of SCO), has deemed it acceptable for you to use non-linux systems, except for AIX. However Darl has it made it very clear that SCO owns *all* rights to every version of proprietary UNIX as well as “derived works” such as Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. Make no mistake Darl very specific cited the BSDs. Darl has also hinted that SCO owns MS-Windows and MacOS as well.
Be thankful that Darl allows you to use your PC at all. Moving to BSD is no solution.
I definitely agree. This was not not an article comparing Linux to BSD to any degree of technicality. The author’s audience here appears to be clearly those who are looking to make the switch to Linux in this time of trepidation, and presents a clear case at why everyone should at least look into a BSD. In case you’ve been living under a rock, Linux is still a buzzword to most people, and in some cases, a BSD installation might have been a better decision. No, he didn’t provide why BSD has superior anything, but then..I wouldn’t really expect to read hard specs on eWeek, this is just to get the word out. Without fanning the flames of any of the OS camps (and contrary to the Initiative for Software Choice), choice is a good thing.
I think it was a good article as well, and has been a long time coming.
“So, there is no point in falling back. This is war, and there can be only one survivor. ”
What exactly do you mean by this comment? If you think that going from Linux to BSD is somehow falling back, you are sadly mistaken. BSD is every bit a viable solution as Linux or Windows, both as a server and a desktop if not more so.
I’ve read many posts are how difficult it is to install any of the BSD because none of them come w/ a graphical installer, but the fact is all 3 BSD’s have simple easy to follow text installers. I don’t find it anymore difficult to install any of the BSD’s more difficult than installing Linux or Windows.
The Package and Ports systems on the BSD’s make software management sane and simple. Installing a new software is as simple as going into a directory and issueing a single command. Apt and Portage are also fine software management systems for Linux. The depth and breadth of the software available for the BSD’s have been covered in previous posts, so there is no need to go into detail that there are plenty of software for them.
NetBSD’s rc.d configuration for services, which was recently adopted by FreeBSD, is a simple and powerful system tool for starting, restarting, or stopping services.
One of these days, hopefully, you all will get tired of having your strings pulled by puppet master Bill. “Linux bad look this way little puppets!”
Later after hes got you looking away from Linux it will be “BSD bad, look this way little puppets!” and of you will go doing Bills bidding.
One of these days, hopefully, you all will get tired of having your strings pulled by puppet master Bill. “Linux bad look this way little puppets!”
Later after hes got you looking away from Linux it will be “BSD bad, look this way little puppets!” and of you will go doing Bills bidding.
What the HELL are you talking about? How do Linux and BSD have ANYTHING to do with Microsoft? None of that makes any sense at all. Did you ever think that not everything is a battle against Microsoft?
I guess it is true “BSD is for people who love UNIX, Linux is for people who hate Microsoft”
“I guess it is true “BSD is for people who love UNIX, Linux is for people who hate Microsoft”
Me three. I use it for infrastructure stuff whenever I can. Windows 2000 on the deskop (XP can go suck eye candy). Linux has too many variations, combinations, permutations, confustications, ways of doing things, and has become bloatware worse than any Microsoft by-product…
Is it just me, or are you folks tired of hearing the old “BSD license is more free” statements (was mentioned in the article. Even RMS himself admits that the BSD license is a free license, just that it’s not copyleft. Personally I prefer the GPL, but is it really that necessary to pick on one or the other? I enjoy my freedom, copyleft or no copyleft.
Also, when are these journalists and such acutually going to read the terms and distinctions that RMS has laid out, which can be found on gnu.org? He has defined a logical set of terms that would make all this discussion more sensible. For example, BSDL is non-copyleft license, etc… I wish that these journalists and such would stop using overly-generalizing terms like “Intellectual Property” (just an example) which groups together three totally different areas of law (patents, tradmarks, copyrights). I just think the field of computer science deserves as much submission to standard terms as do law and art. Every new and revolutionary movement deserves to have its terms and definitions adopted, just like the first person who put wheels on a board to make skateboarding created the terms, trucks, bushings, grip, etc… to create a sensible framework for something which didn’t exist before, or at least was only deconstructively conceptualized in the minds of men. It’s only fair.
Is it just me, or are you folks tired of hearing the old “BSD license is more free” statements (was mentioned in the article.
Depends on your definition of “free”
According to RMS’ very odd definition of the word, yes both licenses are “free”
But according to the common-sense, “normal” if you will, definition of the word, BSD is “more free” in that it gives you fewer restrictions. I personally call it more free from that perspective, as I would say that GPL takes away rights instead of “giving you additional rights” like RMS says.
Of course this all a matter of semantics and differing view points. Neither side is necessarily “right” or “wrong” they just hold differing beliefs.
StGermain: How do i turn off vsync in the drivers?
I’m compiling under Cygwin 5.0 and using a GeForce3 under Win2k. I’ve checked the display control panel, but I’m not sure if I’m finding the right options to change…. could somebody give me some advice?
samb: And yes, a lightbulb did go off. The hardware was a constant in this equation; I’m using 2 triple boot machines to get the results.
thank you for your kind responses,
-Jim
I hear a lot that BSDs TCP stack is superior to Linux and also that BSD scales better. However, in my experience BSD doesn’t scale as well as Linux since its support for SMP isn’t that great, and when it comes down to it, which matters most to most users, a superior TCP/IP stack or the ability to run the latest and greatest desktop/development/admin utilities? I’ve heard arguments that BSD runs Linux apps better than Linux, but that has not been my experience. I have many Linux applications that I like which do not run on BSD or require that I purchase a separate BSD version (such as SlickEdit, which I use extensively for Java development, not to mention BSDs problems with Java).
I use OpenBSD on several servers. No, it doesn’t scale as well as Linux, but it is secure and very easy to manage. I like it as a server. I have tried Open, Net and FreeBSD as a desktop/development machine, and I always end up dumping it for Linux. The main reason is that BSD does not support everything I need/want and Linux does.
I think BSD is a great system, but I also think as a desktop/workstation BSD is today where Linux was four or five years ago.
Of course, this all is just my personal opinion.
“Also, while they don’t tend to have as many applications as Linux, the BSD operating systems can generally run most Unix and Linux applications in emulation mode.”
Correct me if i’m wrong, but i thought linux compatibility was done directly, not in emulation.
I am getting really tired of hearing everyone bitch about FreeBSD’s Java support. FreeBSD’s Java support is as good as Linux ala the Linux emulation layer. I’ve never had any issues running any Java software using this method. The Linux emulation layer is as damn near flawless as it’s gonna get. Also, the “official” native Java ports are coming along very nicely, I’ve even built a couple of them from source, and they seem to work just fine for me.
I can’t wait until they complete their native Java ports so they can distribute them as binaries, instead of having to futz with downloading the source off of Sun’s website.
Another thing that will be nice is the finishing up of KSEs, SMP support under the current versions of FreeBSD is excellent, however threading is not scalable to multiple processors.
Just from a simple administration perspective, the BSDs are great server OSes. Everything is logical in their design, from the file system hierarchy, to the ports/package systems, to the init scripts
Documentation for virtually every task conceivable is another nice plus.
1) BSD Supporters are in denial in the following regards: scalability in SMP, and Java. Yes, BSD’s are good in this regard, but there certainly are better platforms out there (yes, sadly I would even choose Windows over FreeBSD as a Java server). However, these problems will be resolved within a year and put BSD in the running as a primary choice even in these categories.
2) Linux Supporters are in denial in the following regards: uptime, networking, SMP, ease-of-use, and choice. Yes, Linux is an overall above average OS and does a lot of stuff really well for really cheap. However, if anyone of these were my only concern, I would look elsewhere. For example, I would use Solaris or AIX when scaling to 64 or more cpu’s. They do the job better. Yes, 2.6 will scale better but that is in the future, and the benchmarks are based on proprietary compilers and modifications to the kernel parameters. Same with networking, Linux is the only major OS with no IPSEC support. Ease-Of-Use, Microsoft wins hands down. And BSD’s own the uptime market. Finally, there is such a thing as choice in every markets. When two things do a certain function equally well, some would choose A and other choose B. This is why some people by Toyota’s, other Ford, other Nissan’s.
3) Linux Fanatics are similar to Bill Gates but just utter failures: They want to replace all OS’s with Linux. And if anyone likes any other OS, such as BSD, or gasp, a proprietary OS like Solaris, the fanatics argue that they are pigeons of bill gates. But I say if these fanatics really want a monopoly in the OS market, they should just start supporting Microsoft. Microsoft already has this monopoly and their OS already does everything good enough.
not to mention BSDs problems with Java
You mean Java’s problem with BSD? Java is SUN’s proprietary software (if you didn’t know it), so Java is as much BSD’s problem as it’s BSD’s problem that there is no native MS Office.
LOL…that’s the best point I’ve seen in this entire thread.
I like that!
desktop and user application environment, there’s always Mac OS X, which is based on BSD.
I would rather get a $40 dollard linux distro than get a $500+
mac. If apple did OS X for pc that might be cool.
The linux runtime compatiblity isn’t emulation. It actually implements the linux system calls inside the FreeBSD kernel. I believe the linker also automatically will use native libraries if they are present and then look for linux libraries if not. The linux java vm works flawlessly under freebsd I might add. Somebody said that 95% of linux software will run under it. I would say that 100% of linux software will run so long as it’s not a kernel module
. In fact, if you’ve got an nvidia card, you can run UT2k3 on it without problem 
.
you guys were right, turning off vsync improved the results under Cygwin dramatically. Windows looks comparable to BSD, while Linux lags far behind.
http://jimbomania.com/benchmarks/results_table.html
Thanks for the advice.
I guess it is true “BSD is for people who love UNIX, Linux is for people who hate Microsoft”
Thanks, you just prove me that BSD fanatics are as stupid and elitist as Linux zealots.
I use Linux. It is necessarily because I hate Microsoft? No. It’s because I don’t want to support them and that Linux is currently the best solution for me.
I don’t use BSD… It is because I don’t like UNIX? No. It’s because the majority of my hardware isn’t supported.
I agree that Linux might be overhyped, but BSD isn’t that good, especially with new hardware. It depends on your needs.
Thank you for taking my point out of context. I was replying to a stupid “Microsoft-sucks! Use Linux instead” zealot.
And I do stick by my original post. I never said ALL Linux users do so because they hate Microsoft, and I never said that all people who like/love UNIX must use BSD.
BSD is great, my favorite family of OSes, but I’ll admit it’s not without its wrinkles, and I in fact do use Linux every single day. My primary development machine is powered by Linux. I also have a few BSD machines laying about performing various functions.
Anyway, I digress…please re-read my post, I don’t see any reason for you to react the way you did to it.
SMP support under the current versions of FreeBSD is excellent
That would be news to John Baldwin.
samb: And yes, a lightbulb did go off. The hardware was a constant in this equation; I’m using 2 triple boot machines to get the results.
Which should make it painfully obvious that the fault is with the operator.
Linux is the only major OS with no IPSEC support.
IPSec support for Linux has been available for years: http://www.freeswan.org/
But hey, the more you repeat something the more true it becomes, right?
you wrong linux does not have native support for IPSec in contrast to *BSD, Solaris Win2k/XP Pro (that have it for years) and from some time Mac OS X. From the site you mentioned:
“2003/06/27
As you may have heard, the 2.5 Linux kernel WILL feature native IPsec support.”
Check the date. Now 2.4.x does not have it and next production ready kernel is 2.6. For home users 2.5 may be ok but nobody serious will use experimental kernel (2.5.x)in production environement.
<quote>
If you have a recent top of the line machine with any *very* recent modern sound card, such as a SoundBlaster audigy, or if you’re using an ATi card and want 3d accleeration you can just forget about it, and move right onto Linux.
Yes, I know I’m being a bit *itchy. But, if you own an ATi Radeon 9500/9600/9700/9800 there are no 3D drivers available except ATi’s Linux, Mac, and Windows drivers. ATi has decided that they will not provide the specifications for those cards to 3rd party driver creators (such as XiG) or to open source developers. Citing trade secret liabilities.
If you want non-optimized not very advanced hardware support, but very stable, try the FreeBSD 4.x series.
</quote>
You’re really exagerating the ancient hardware angle here. I run FreeBSD 4.8-stable on a Dual 1.8Ghz Xeon, 1GB RAM, ATI Radeon 8500 128, SBLive!, 18 & 36GB SCSI disks, CD-R, DVD, etc. This is hardly ancient stuff. Being that is this is my main workstation I CHOOSE stability over bleeding edge. Yes, I did have to move my Audigy to my Dual 500mhz Red Hat box but that’s not much of a sacrifice.
I find FreeBSD much easier to maintain over the long haul. I can complete a cvsup/make world in under 30 minutes and have the latest & greatest FreeBSD at any time, while still using my system. I think the last FreeBSD CD I used was 4.2 or something. Portupgrade makes application updates equally brainless. Sure, I can & do use Synaptic to keep Linux updated but that doesn’t cover all software. Try updating Gnome to 2.2.2 and you’re either searching google for instructions or stuck with the whole Ximian deal.
I used linux for about 4-5 years before switching to bsd almost a year ago. BSD seems to be overall slightly faster. Nonetheless, they are both great operating systems but I doubt I would ever switch back to linux again.
The current one is just not user friendly – or at least it’s lacking behind most major Linux distros installers.
Untill this is fixed I personally won’t bother to mock around with it much.
What exactly is wrong with it?
I installed on my laptop a couple of weeks ago. Followed all the prompts and didn’t have to dig down or back up from a previous step. It seems to work just fine. I haven’t seen anything that is any worse than any other installer, unless you mean the fact that it’s not all eyecandy?
I know that the maintainers want to do something to replace it for many reasons. But for what it is supposed to do, install the OS, it works well enough. It’s certainly no worse than the Win2k installer and it seems to give you more options.
I found it just as easy to use as the OpenBSD installer, and far easier to use than the Debian installer. In all cases I’ve tried, I’ve rarely had to deal with the installer more than once on any given machine.
Perhaps your just used to other installers?
How many times do you need to deal with the installer anyway? It’s not like you have to run an upgrade install every six months. Cvsup/make world will keep your system up to date infinitely.
It’s in the works, along with a new packaging system.
http://rtp1.slowblink.com/~libh/
“2003/06/27
As you may have heard, the 2.5 Linux kernel WILL feature native IPsec support.”
I laughed my ass off because of the irony of this whole situation, you know with samb trying to argue that Linux has IPSEC.
Yo SAMB, if FreeSWAN has been around for so long, but noone has bothered to use it, not even the kernel developers, you reckon there is something wrong with it? Maybe it is the fact that, like Microsoft, the FreeSWAN team are more trying to hijack (embrace and extend) IPSEC for purposes it wasn’t meant for than implement it cleanly. Don’t believe me, care to explain why the kernel developers chose to use the BSD implementation of IPSEC?
Yo SAMB, if FreeSWAN has been around for so long, but noone has bothered to use it
I’m pretty sure that the FreeS/WAN IPsec has had far more usage in Linux than IPsec has had in any of the BSD versions.
Don’t believe me, care to explain why the kernel developers chose to use the BSD implementation of IPSEC?
Really? A quick check reveals that the contributors to IPsec in Linux are David Miller, Alexey Kuznetsov, Maxim Giryaev, James Morris, and the folks at the USAGI IPv6 project (http://www.linux-ipv6.org/). There is no mention of BSD or people connected to the BSD projects in any of the source files.
http://www.linux-ipv6.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/usagi/doc/HOWTO/IPsec btw says the following: “USAGI’s IPsec is based on FreeS/WAN-1.9 and IABG, but now our implementation is diffrent from them.”.
Please mr. slash, can you stop making things up? There’s hardly a grain of truth in anything you post.
Also, do you really want to play the “features we have that those other guys don’t have”-game? That’s why you brought up IPsec in the first place, right?
I certainly agree that having support for a certain feature in the mainline kernel is preferable to having to apply a third party patch, but just because something isn’t in the mainline doesn’t mean it isn’t available. For instance preemptive multitasking and support for the XFS filesystem isn’t a part of the mainline 2.4 kernel, yet I use it with such a kernel.
It’s in the works, along with a new packaging system.
http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=313418+0+archive/2003/…
“Also, do you really want to play the “features we have that those other guys don’t have”-game? ”
I wasn’t playing this game. If you read my original statement, I was just pointing out that certain OS’s have benefits over other OS’s and contrary to popular belief, Linux isn’t the best solution for all situations. I gave examples of BSD’s shortcommings. Currenty it doesn’t have the best SMP support. There are plenty other OS’s that currently have better SMP support. But Linux also has shortcommings. I did state that Linux is overall a really great OS. However, there are situations where other OS’s are better choices. Will you go wrong by choosing Linux. No, it will get only better in the future. But the same is true with FreeBSD.
TO THE OSNEWS EDITORS: your standards for articles is far worse than slashdot could ever be. throw in the towel now you dorks.
“I found it just as easy to use as the OpenBSD installer”
The FreeBSD installer crashed for me – my HD is 4998 cylinders, my bios recognises 4112 of them, FreeBSD’s fdisk crashes on that. So used Linux fdisk to create a disklabel, after that the installation went fine.
The OpenBSD installer is less user-friendly in one sense: it uses prompts where Net/FreeBSD offer nice menus. In fact, the older the BSD, the graphically nicer installation: FreeBSD-NetBSD-OpenBSD. Especially the OpenBSD fdisk is not particulary user-friendly.
FreeBSD seems to support less hardware – my cardreader and soundcard work plug-and-play in Net/OpenBSD, not in FreeBSD. Also, my ATA card is known as a “difficult” card. Linux provides workarounds in the kernel, FreeBSD needs a cryptic “set hint.ata.ata_dma=0” to entirely disable DMA to make it work, I don’t knwo for net/openbsd but there it just works, all precompiled linux kernels I encountered also “just worked”.
Though I think I will remain using FreeBSD: it has FreePascal, which I like, without DMA it works for me, and the combination of packages/ports is great.
I have tried Gentoo, but I could not find the packages anywhere. Reading the installation guide they seem to be on some CD, but not on my 1.4_rc4.
“TO THE OSNEWS EDITORS: (…)”
This is not an entire article, just a link to one.
this is really funny. See the problem is that I use *BSD, Solaris, RH, Even tried OS X as an experimental server. You seem to cite only good people’s opinions from the web. I admire your hmm… fire towards linux, but you should “try it first”. Set up, I dont know mail server with >100k mailboxes and see what is going on after month or so under heavy load. This is a real life benchmark. Lab tests are merely indicators and are good for public. Now linux preemptive multitasking is not that great, check out copmetition. SMP? never used FBSD with it so although docs are pretty exciting but unless I try it I am not going to argue about superiority of one or other OS approach to SMP.
Stop citing this is good for school kids and pretty much annoying after a while