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BSD For Linux Users

over-yonder.net

79 pointsEnnis23 comments

I've used both the BSDs and Linux for almost a decade. Both have their strong points, but I'm finding that I like the Linux distributions which take inspiration from *BSD.

Arch Linux is currently my favorite desktop OS: rolling release, bleeding edge, minimalist, customizable, binary packages and a ports like build tree (ABS). See "The Arch Way" for more: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way

For a server you can't go wrong with Debian stable or FreeBSD (or OpenBSD if you can sacrifice some convenience and speed for increased security measures).

I'll look into Arch Linux. My biggest frustration is with drivers. I made the switch from WinXP to Ubuntu last year but I couldn't get bluetooth audio to work. I loved Ubuntu but it wasn't usable for daily workflow. I had to go back to Win7. After increasing crashes I'm going to try out BSD. I'm pessimistic about driver support but i hope it's up to par with Ubuntu at least. I really like the philosophy behind the OS. Haven't looked at the code yet but they won me over with the "build from scratch" no-binary way!

If you like building from scratch, you might also like the linux distribution Gentoo.

I used Gentoo as my main desktop OS for a year. The system will not get much faster because of the CFLAGS one uses (this is especially true for x86_64), but you can customize the packages you build to contain exactly the functionality you need (through the use of USE flags).

In the end, I switched over to Arch Linux (got tired of waiting for compiles), then switched to Debian testing (needed loads of LaTeX packages not found in Arch Linux), before I switched back to Arch a couple of weeks ago.

I've been using Linux since the day Linus posted to minix-list about it.. Yggdrasil was my first non-hand-built Linux config, then Debian, and now .. Ubuntu. Which, on my particular hardware, I am finding is very, very stable, very useful, and 100% supported - including Bluetooth Audio, as well as Firewire-based Audio (I'm a musician) and other nifty tricks like that.

I haven't dived into Arch Linux yet - haven't really found the need, and I guess I'm pretty much settled on the Debian way of doing things .. but one thing I have been thinking about lately is that it would be nice to have a stable-as-Ubuntu Linux system that has 100%, without fail, FULL SOURCE on-board, with everything configured so that if I find and fix something, it can easily go back into the sources as a patch or something.

Is Arch Linux going to provide that sort of configuration - full source onboard, easy to submit patches from whatever source I edit, etc? I might dedicate some time to checking out Arch in the future, and if it means I can configure my system to be 100% full source-onboard, I might do it sooner rather than later.

Of course, the idea of doing my own distribution based entirely on onboard-sources and instant patch contribution to a common public pool has also crossed my mind .. maybe BSD delivers in that regard? I really want my system to become a programmers paradise ..

Arch Linux provides a hierarchy of build scripts that were used to build the binary packages you download using the standard package manager (pacman). Like BSD ports, the actual source is not contained, but each build script instead points to the source tarbal upstream. You can of course apply your own patches or change the sources the builds scripts uses.

I'm a FreeBSD user and I've deployed it in many high load situations on servers. Drivers are not a strong point in the BSD world and it's best to check the supported hardware thoroughly before upgrading.

What is there generally works very very well but more esoteric hardware is often not important to the BSD community.

Slackware is pretty BSD-like also; I know it's pretty straightforward to use NetBSD's pkgsrc (a fork of FreeBSD's ports mentioned in the link) on Slack. Like Arch, Slackware uses the BSD init system.

Slackware uses the Linux kernel and GNU toolset. The manual pages are all GNU. The only thing BSD like are the startup files.

I used Windows in the past, moved to Linux (right now, I'm using ArchLinux), also tried FreeBSD.

My problem is that I have a laptop, and FreeBSD doesn't have to many drivers for it including the battering saving ones. Plus, since I need a desktop (includes applications like Firefox, Flash, OpenOffice, GIMP, etc) I found that FreeBSD had quite a few usability bugs (eg. in Firefox, images were only half rendered). So now I'm happily using Linux - the arch way.

I tried installing ArchLinux on my father's computer, but I didn't have time to configure everything (eg. pressing the poweroff button shuts down the computer) and from an end's user point of view his desktop was barely usable. Finally I decided to go with Ubuntu, and since then I haven't heard any other complain about his OS. On contrary, he is much happier than he was when he had Windows installed. Now, only if I find some good chess linux software. Grandmaster Chess was his favourite, but in the linux world I could not find anything similar, only some playing engines.

Try Brutal Chess, although the program looks real nice, the AI isn't particularly sophisticated.

I bet you could find a flash-based chess game on the internet where you could play with other people.

> doesn't have to many drivers for it including the battering saving ones

I know it was a typo, and I know what you meant, but I want a driver that will save me from battering my laptop now.

I've used OpenBSD for years, and I've installed FreeBSD a few times (largely because it has more ports), but have found it less convenient in a variety of small ways* . I'm curious what you found less convenient about FreeBSD.

* OpenBSD has mg in the default install, uses sudo by default, I much prefer its installer, etc. To some extent, this is probably just due to OpenBSD's defaults / general style suiting me well, though.

Can you please go over the cases when you would choose one over the other (BSD vs Linux that is). Even some bullet points would help. I've never found anything that didn't delve into a flamewar, and I have always been curious about such choices.

Seconded: Arch Linux is pimp. It's like the best of Slackware and Gentoo combined.

The open source community needs more writing like this: conversational but not dumbed-down, informative but not dense. This was aimed directly at my level of familiarity, and hit it straight on.

This article motivated me to give FreeBSD a go about a month ago.

I haven't been using it consistently, but so far it's been like using linux, if there wasn't so much insanity surrounding how to do everything outside of the kernel in linux-distro-land.

I found it much easier to start poking around the source of the kernel, and of the various userland utilities, and all of the source that I looked at was pretty damn clean, well commented C.

The man pages are better (or at least more consistent). Actually, the whole OS feels a lot more consistent.

In short, I'm liking it. You probably will to if you're the type that likes to get down and dirty with your OS.

I have been an OpenBSD user for about 3 years, and I can't give high enough praise. The programs work as the man pages say, and my experience with Linux/GNU has not been the same. The OpenBSD system is logically put together, and simple to debug. The same can not be said for Linux/GNU; not only because each distribution has its own startup style or package system, but also because the tools that make up the system aren't a cohesive package.

I haven't used FreeBSD in about 10 years so I can't comment on it, but back in the late 90's it was pretty nice. NetBSD feels particularly old school to me, and I just liked OpenBSD the best.

There are times when Linux/GNU is necessary, and in that case I run Debian.

Freebsd is pretty nice, mostly for ports and simplicity reasons. I would use freebsd over linux on my computer if the boot disk would work with my usb keyboard and usb mouse... and if matlab were native, I don't know if it is my nforce chipset or some other weird thing but it works fine if the usb peripherals are unplugged.

This may be a good introduction to BSD (I don't know BSD at all so can't comment on that side much), but it certainly isn't representative of modern Linux kernels and distributions.

"Last modified: $Date: 2005/04/15 06:38:18 $" explains a lot.

I was about to comment about this specifically until I saw that someone else beat me to it. THIS ARTICLE IS FROM 2005 PEOPLE

Sure, some things will have not changed, but I imagine a great many things will have. While its a good article and a good read, I wouldn't consider it up to date; if anyone has a more recent discussion I'd definitely be interested in reading it. For example, how the discussion covers largely RedHat based distros, if the article was written nowadays I think that would change.

He seems to distort Linux a little by focusing on Redhat derived distributions.

eg Debian/Ubuntu doesn't use RPMs, there's one central place to get packages, it's realistic to upgrade the system a long way without reinstalling, etc.

Mind you this article/essay was written quite some time ago now, several years at least.

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