Freebsd Vs Linux - What would you use?

Which one do you think is best? Please explain your choice. Cheers!

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

I choose Linux over FreeBSD, because Linux has evolved further than a UNIX system. It is it's own system, but using UNIX as it's base. Linux's development is faster and has more people backing it up.

xboxrulz

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

I'll go for linux! Linux has more commercial product and I'm more used to it. It also has a large user base. It has a large distrobution to choose from...Ubuntu,Mepis,Suse,Fedora,Mandriva,Debian,Redhat,Yoper,DSL,Gentoo,etc ,etc, etc.
BSD has 4 distro (with different goal)
FreeBSD aimed to be the most optimized for x86
NetBSD aimed to be able to run on every platform
OpenBSD aimed to have the greatest security
DragonflyBSD uses FreeBSD4 as a base.

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

even if i'm an efervescent supporter of linux and co i would choose bsd for some reasons like better stability, code created and mantained better than in linux(read some articles if you need explanations, i'm too lazy to write them here), it's way of getting software through ports is fascinating and it has the ability to run linux software natively -linux can't run bsd apps-.I would also mention DesktopBSD wich is supposed to bring this freBSD based distro to descktop PCs.
The only alternatives i would consider are freeBSD and DesktopBSD as PC-BSD is quite unfamiliar to me.
My *nix distro order would be: DesktopBSD, Kubuntu/Ubuntu, Mepis, FreeBSD, OpenSuse, PcLinuxOS .
But i would definitively try the first one:D

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

Desktop: Macintosh OS 10. Technically BSD with a MACH kernal, but much more comercial support plus the default iLife tools.

From there it depends on what you want to do. BSD is designed as a Server OS first, maybe with execption of NetBSD...which is designed to run on anything including a toaster. I'm not joking about that either...

From a developer's standpoint, Linux can be hell. The lack of standardized distros for where dependancies make it far more costly to provide tech support for Linux users. Even if you say: we only support RH or SuSE you will get Slackware and Mandrake users emailing and calling you asking why something won't work. Also the fact that Linux users tend to play and have farmore customized installs makes tech support a nightmare. Two users could have RH Fedora installed with two completely different configuration. The chaoticness that anyone can do anything they want with Linux is great for in house development when you'll be the internal user, not for those in the external devellopment world.

BSD, especially FreeBSD and OpenBSD, is much easier to developer for because there is only 1 distro for any given version of FreeBSD. While some users customize their installs, most just us the defaults and yet even fewer change where the major dependencies are located. From a server and systems admin standpoint, BSD is far easier to maintain. Need to update the Kernal, CVSUP and leave, come back, restart. Need to install Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL? Go to the directory in the PORTS tree, type make && make install and leave. It will go fetch and install everything it needs. Most of that can apply to OpenBSD as well, but with more focus on security than features. OpenBSD lacked the ablity to run on SMP (multi-processor) machines for years compared to either FreeBSD or Linux and was a major draw back in the server room.

 

 

 

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

http://freebsd-image-gallery.netcode.pl/?gallery=Video

The Screen Savers — FreeBSD vs Linux

An old TSS episode with the guys from FreeBSD and Suse on the show to compare and contrast the two operating systems.

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

@stlgoalie
Freebsd Vs Linux

uuh, actually Darwin (Mac OS X core) uses the Xnu kernel grafted as a service on to the MACH microkernel and little BSD daemons floating around. Originally apple was going to use the Linux kernel for that; which actually took advantage of the MACH. But since they bought NeXT, they just went with a technology that was already finished. 

Your rant about standardized distros is bull, there is absolutely no binary incompatibility between them. They use the same libs, and have you ever heard of the Linux Standard Base? the only noticeable difference is the GUI or weather the system uses /mnt or /media, and there is usually a symlink between them, so you either don't actually know anything about the technical underpinnings of Linux/Mac OS X or are a liar. This was posted from my OpenBSD workstation.

-reply by hal68k

 

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

FreeBSD wins on performace, stability and security - not jusr hearsay, documented bench tests exist on the net.

 FreeBSD built with the linux options enabled is actually more compatable with the different linuxes out there (there's more than one version of linux out there) then any single version of linux. That means more "linux apps" will work on FreeBSD than most versions of linux - but being fair most of the stuff people use and yu would want will work on any of these.  There's even a few more commercial linuxes out there - not more commercial as in used in more companies, but more commercial as in they cost money (or support or updates costs money).

FreeBSD releases are well controled and scheduled, OK some linuxes also are well controlled but many aren't - some of the 'best' linuxes are the worst to keep up to date - that is unless you don't mind recompiling kernals every other weekend.

anyway, some other info (admitedly from a freeBSD site)

http://people.Freebsd.Org/~murray/bsd_flier.html

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

I want to use FreeBSD on my high-end server, but I'm concerned about I/O performance. Is it true that  gmirror performs so bad on RAID 1 with 2 disks?
See: http://www.Freebsdwiki.Net/index.Php/RAID,_performance_tests

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

It depends on the use case.

For desktop use, linux is better (heck, for desktop use, linux is better than windows even)

For server use, FreeBSD by a long-shot. Better performance is one factor, another is jail system call, which linux lacks. (linux does provide a wide array of virtualized machines, which makes it good for running windows or completely different kernels though)

The BSD jail functionality provides a light-weight compartment allowing you to partition a freebsd box into several freebsd boxes, for organizational purposes, security, different configurations, etc..

For learning, linux is good, tends to be a bit easier to use.

For fun, freebsd - it captures some of the original unix "flavor" that I miss.

For commercial software, linux (though, you /can/ run linux software on freebsd if you want to, heck, using a jail, you can more or less install a linux distro on freebsd)

For security, probably openbsd (or dragonflybsd) because these are less common (and openbsd has specialized in security) linux uses the /proc filesystem, which isn't as secure.

For disk intensive applications (databases) freebsd.

For exotic hardware, linux. 

Neither one is "better" they're all unix-ish and it's good to have a variety, I feel it is unfortunate that linux seems to be stealing the spotlight these days. If more people knew about the BSD jail functionality, this would change.

They're all better than windows. :-)

-reply by Jamie

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)