From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Jun 26 21:17:25 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mail7.nc.rr.com (mail7.southeast.rr.com [24.93.67.54]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 47BE537B40A for ; Wed, 26 Jun 2002 21:13:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from i8k.babbleon.org ([66.57.86.84]) by mail7.nc.rr.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.5.1877.757.75); Thu, 27 Jun 2002 00:12:36 -0400 Received: by i8k.babbleon.org (Postfix, from userid 111) id 0247ABA05; Thu, 27 Jun 2002 00:12:26 -0400 (EDT) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" From: Brian T.Schellenberger To: Paul Everlund , David Kramer Subject: Re: FreeBSD, Linux or Solaris Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 00:12:26 -0400 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.3] Cc: "Roger 'Rocky' Vetterberg" , References: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Message-Id: <20020627041226.0247ABA05@i8k.babbleon.org> Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Wednesday 26 June 2002 09:59 am, Paul Everlund wrote: | On Wed, 26 Jun 2002, David Kramer wrote: | > I have to go through the collection of ports and make sure everything I | > need is there, but I'm sure it is. BTW, is there a way to check what | > software is installed on your box? Is there an automated way of | > uninstalling ports? I couldn't find this info on freebsd.org. | | There are pros and cons to the ports system. I personally think there's | more good than bad. I'm not sure, but maybe there's a utility in the | ports hierarchy that can deal with rpm's? Red Hat's "rpm" command, which runs just fine under FreeBSD if you enable Linux compatibilty works nicely: % /usr/compat/linux/bin/rpm RPM version 3.0.3 Copyright (C) 1998 - Red Hat Software This may be freely redistributed under the terms of the GNU GPL The fact the FreeBSD gives you all the advantages of FreeBSD *and* it runs Linux software seems like the choice between Linux and FreeBSD is easy *unless* you need to run hardware that Linux supports and FreeBSD doesn't. But in this case, starting from scratch, I'd say that FreeBSD is the clear choice. Lots more hardware options that Sun, though not quite so many as Linux. Fewer licensing encumberments than either. Very wide software choice. Generally, only programs that modify the kernel under Linux will fail to work under Linux compatibility mode, and those are very rare. (Win4Lin is the only one I know of off-hand.) Since you don't have existing hardware to worry about, just make sure that what you get will work with FreeBSD--there are only three really good arguments I can think of in favor of Linux, and none apply here: 1) Hardware. Since you don't have the hardware yet, this is a non-issue. Just be careful when you do get it. Avoid nvidia. 2) Window-friendliness. Linux "plays nice" with the Windows extended partition scheme and FreeBSD does not; also, programs like Partition Magic work better with Linux. But since you plan to have a dedicated Unixy machine (I assume, since Sun is on the table), this is a non-issue. 3) User friendliess. Many Linux distributions are so use friendly that you only need to see a GUI; some so "friendly" that you can't find the *#$! config files to save your skin. But if you are considering Sun, you really want Unix, you aren't just a PC user who's gotten to resent Mr Gates, so this is also presumably a non-issue. | To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org | with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message -- Brian T. Schellenberger . . . . . . . bts@wnt.sas.com (work) Brian, the man from Babble-On . . . . bts@babbleon.org (personal) http://www.babbleon.org http://www.eff.org http://www.programming-freedom.org If you smell the smoke you don't need to be told what you've got to do; Yet there's a certain breed, so very in-between, they'd rather take a vote. -- DEVO -- Here To Go To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message