thelinuxlink.net

Found this on digg. Being a relatively new Linux user myself, I found it to be a very good read. What do you guys think?

http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/ra ... linux1.php

Personally I don't run BSD but I don't have a problem with it. It's a very solid unix variant. Perfect for the server. Recently they've been pushing on the desktop with the PC-BSD and DesktopBSD variants. For me linux is fine. I think there are lot more people developing applications (especially for the desktop) on linux than on BSD.

BSD is a cousin to linux. We should maintain a good relationship with them. It would be beneficial to both groups. Granted there are zealots looking to start flame wars in both camps.

From the article....

It's had quirks. It's had vagaries. It's had out-and-out bugs. It's had bizarreness. It's had inexplicable behavior. It's given me misleading error messages. Sometimes, it out-and-out breaks things that worked yesterday.

Gee.... breaking things that worked yesterday? Sounds a lot like MS-Windows. Unless the author meant BSD breaks things as a result of operator errors.


Anyway, I think I'll be sticking with Kanotix.

Wally Balljacker wrote:Found this on digg. Being a relatively new Linux user myself, I found it to be a very good read. What do you guys think?

http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/ra ... linux1.php

I like BSD quite a lot, in fact, I have run NetBSD for quite some time. Great stuff. I did, however, read the article and trhink the author to be a bit naieve about Linux. Linux is just as much a unix as Unix is anymore and sometimes more so. The though that BSD is better because it hasn't evolved/modernised as much is flawed. Every OS has to do that to stay useable and BSD does as well. Also, all the BSD's depend heavily upon developments in GNU software and Linux (particularly for drivers), so there is another flawed arguement. I can't tell you how any times I have use GNU utils (or wished I had them) in traditional unixen like SCO, AIX, HP/UX, and Solaris. Just because they are newer, or don't have the BSD license doesn't mean they don't work better

I enjoyed the article a lot. I liked the fact that he went into the differences in design philosophy, rather than concentrating on "Linux uses x and FreeBSD uses y."

Sometimes I get a bit annoyed that Linux is moving so fast towards dumbing things down for the new user. I'd welcome a system where you actually have to know how to use your computer. I think I'm just paranoid, but it's good to know that if I have to I can fall back on something like FreeBSD if and when Linux no longer even has a command line.

I actually did an install of FreeBSD 5.4 last night on a spare system and had a good time with it. It was like being back in RedHat 6.0. I'm still not sure why the install program is so needlessly user un-friendly. It doesn't seem to help you at all, and there doesn't seem to be a way to go back if you screw up.

The install went OK, but I've not done anything with it. I miss color ls (ls -G works, I found), and tab completion on the command line. I'm at a loss for how to get X working, but maybe I missed something. I'm used to booting to a command line, but it would be nice to have X once in a while.

If I can get it working OK, I may keep BSD on this machine because it's old hardware and only acting as a server.