From owner-freebsd-questions Fri May 15 14:37:11 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id OAA09511 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Fri, 15 May 1998 14:37:11 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from peloton.physics.montana.edu (peloton.physics.montana.edu [153.90.192.177]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id OAA09488 for ; Fri, 15 May 1998 14:37:00 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from brett@peloton.physics.montana.edu) Received: from localhost (brett@localhost) by peloton.physics.montana.edu (8.8.8/8.8.7) with SMTP id PAA28964; Fri, 15 May 1998 15:36:08 -0600 (MDT) (envelope-from brett@peloton.physics.montana.edu) Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 15:36:08 -0600 (MDT) From: Brett Taylor To: Randy Foo Jong Suan cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Difference between FreeBSD & Linux In-Reply-To: <000001bd8042$816022c0$defc18d2@randyfoo.pacific.net.sg> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Howdy, On Sat, 16 May 1998, Randy Foo Jong Suan wrote: > Dear Chuck, I'm now pretending to be a little demon. :-) > 2) It seems to me that FreeBSD is like Linux BUT it is not classed > together with the Linux distributions. (GNU Public Licensing aside. . .) > > So if I were to install, learn and use FreeBSD on my PC, am I learning > Linux or UNIX or what?!? By using FreeBSD, can I correctly claim that I > am learning Linux?? No - Linux and FreeBSD are 2 separate beasties, but still similar. Linux evolved from Minix - Linus created Linux when he wanted to play with Unix but couldn't get the source to BSD (at the time). FreeBSD is developed directly from the BSD source (which was released 2 years after Linus went to work making Linux - I think that time is about right). Learning FreeBSD will help you run Linux in the sense that both are Unix or Unix-like, but Linux is more like SYS V and FreeBSD is obviously more like BSD. As noted there is a difference in licensing philosophy which we DEFINITELY don't need to go into here. > 3) Are there any major technical differences between Linux and FreeBSD? > Or was it just the GNU licensing thing that sets them apart? See above. Linux tends to support more new and lower end hardware. FreeBSD tends to support new stuff, but focuses more on the high end hardware (although most low end hardware works just fine). I won't go into licensing. You would find Linux and FreeBSD very similar for the most part. In terms of technical differences I'll leave those specifics to someone else. I do find that FreeBSD is better under high load situations. The Linux server in the dept tends to bog down under high load whereas I can be doing a make world, running netscape, reading mail, serving web and ftp requests and have 3 or 4 others telnetted into my machine and although it's a little slow to respond, it's still very usable. > I am somewhat confused. Moreover, Red Hat seemed to be a very popular > choice. Should I touch on FreeBSD then? Sure - investigate each. Play around with both and see which one you like better and use it. Brett ********************************************************* Brett Taylor brett@peloton.physics.montana.edu http://peloton.physics.montana.edu/brett/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message