Date: Sat, 06 Feb 1999 22:17:13 -0800 From: Frank Warren <clovis@home.com> To: MrChevy <captainauto@lightspeed.net>, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Which OS to install Message-ID: <36BD2FE9.5CA22441@home.com> References: <36BD2080.59EB5013@lightspeed.net>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
MrChevy wrote: > > I'm a newbie to UNIX, and was wondering: I have a spare pentium system > laying around, and am going to set it up fully freeBSD or Turbolinux. > Which would you personally recommend? Also, any books and other docs > that might help me out? I am going to get deep into programming. Which > computer language would you recommend me study? Thanks a million in > advance! > Brandon Combs You've asked a question that is partly religious and partly technical in nature. The answers will vary in the first part based on who likes what and what they believe in. I can only give you my views. The second part is much less equivocal. BSD is morally superior to Linux on all counts. It is not merely free of charge, it is intellectually and spiritually free. The code is there and you can do with it as you please, without restriction. If you use Linux, it is under the Free Software Foundations "Gnu Public License" that most of us partial to BSD call the "Gnu Public Virus." It is an effort to encumber all software, steal everyone's ideas, and looks more like the Bill Gates Empirical Plan than Bill Gates own monopoly does. This requires some explanation. If you use some Gnu-licensed software, you are REQUIRED, under penalty of criminal and civil prosecution, to publish the source without cost beyond distribution charges. It substitutes the KGB of Stalin and the Death Camps of Hitler with the guns and powers of US Copyright law. Anything you do with Gnu never again belongs to you. It is not a statement of "live free or die!" it is, rather, a statement of "give to us or the power of the state will kill/incarcerate or at least bankrupt you with legal fees." The license is cleverly drawn, but it is every bit as evil, morally, as anything Bill Gates has ever done in ruining competitors. It is nearly akin to declaring that the software industry itself, that any profit made from any software, is inherently evil. Thus "FreeBSD" like its close siblings Net and Open BSD, really are free in more ways than you don't have to pay to get them. If you are inspired by this software, and want to use some of it to make more, there is only one requirement -- credit the Regents Of the University Of California for their contributions, and then do what you will with your stuff. Did you make something people are willing to pay for? Fine, sell it if you can. Most of us prefer to contribute back to the Berkeley License, always aware that we don't "taint" our right to our own ideas and our own work if we find it commercially useful at a later date. The BSD license is one of absolute intellectual freedom. BSD variants, be they NetBSD, FreeBSD or OpenBSD, are technically superior in my opinion, and FreeBSD is the best of all distributions for personal computers simply because FreeBSD, unlike Net or Open, tends to concentrate on the Intel platform and PC hardware. NetBSD is great if you have an old Sun and don't want Sun's encumbered mess. OpenBSD is great if you similarly have unusual non-PC hardware and are concentrated on security issues. FreeBSD leads through its general excellence of distributions. BSD networking has always been better than anyone's, hands down. Linux is a pale shadow of BSD by comparison, and the security of ANY BSD variant is always superior to the security of any Linux variant. I tried Linux before I settled on FreeBSD. Red Hat, Caldera, Debian, Slackware -- I went through all the major distributions. FreeBSD wins just in package quality hands down. And, unlike Linux, I don't have to be a practicing communist in order to draw from, contribute to, or muck around with the code base. My vote is FreeBSD. It's treated me better than anything else, and so help me, I actually like it better than Microsoft's best. All the BSD folks, and I've met some from the NetBSD and OpenBSD crowd, are quality people, good to know, good to hang out with. Having said all of that, I'll say all of this. UNIX and its derivatives are not for everyone. I've been programming since I was a kid as a hobby and professionally since 1978. There are times when I have to do a lot of reading of documentation, and still don't quite find all the answers I'm looking for, and need to wade through some source code to see what is going on. Unlike Windows, there is nobody to hold your hand. On the other hand, because source is available, there is this unbelievable freedom to configure things any way you please, to set them up any way you please. Even if you don't program, there is enough data out there, and the programs are so inherently configurable, that a little legwork will, without recompiling or touching a line of code, give you pretty much anything you heart desires in network setups, or even in the way you configure your desktop. FreeBSD lets you have it your way. Whatever your choice, good luck. Frank -- Disclaimer: Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer are purely coincidental. I'm not sure what my employer's views are, exactly, except that they improve on a day when the stock is doing well. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?36BD2FE9.5CA22441>