Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 08:53:18 -0400 (EDT) From: Thomas Good <tomg@mailhost.nrnet.org> To: Brennan W Stehling <brennan@offwhite.net> Cc: y u r i k <koroby398@ifrance.com>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: newbie needs advice Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1000523083952.17256A-100000@mailhost.nrnet.org> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0005222222520.31753-100000@home.offwhite.net>
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On Mon, 22 May 2000, Brennan W Stehling wrote:
> After about a years experience with FreeBSD the Linux movement was
> swelling and talk of hardware vendors jumping on the bandwagon encouraged
> me to look at Linux. I installed SuSE, Redhat and Caldera. I tried each
> one for a while but found that these more commercial products were not as
> helpful as the less commercial FreeBSD. When I wanted to do an update for
> my Caldera distro, I was only aware of one ftp server where I could get
> RPM update files. I would run the updates and frequently the ftp server
> would go offline and make it hard for me to continue with my updates.
>
> I am not sure if Caldera is trying to encourage me to go get a new CD
> each time I upgrade my system, and I do not care. Their service was
> horrible and it was largely the same with SuSE. Redhat I simply had
> problems with in general and did not give much time to it.
Brennan,
You might want to try slackware. It's author (Pat Volkerding) refuses
to 'dumb down' the OS to make it accessible to people who don't really
want a unix box to begin with...
Anyway, like FBSD it is a Walnut Creek product. In fact the FBSD developers
are on speaking terms with Pat or so I'm told. ;-)
Slackware is streamlined and smart. RedHat and its derivatives are cute.
A little too cute. I tried slackware when I wanted unix at home and couldn't
afford UnixWare (awhile back). Since then I've tried all the flavours.
I still like slack but I also use FBSD. It is very reminiscent of UnixWare.
Great filesystem and an AT&T Unix feel to it. I'd like to see FBSD modernise
some of its feel - like some of the device names. They are unwieldy and
could be simplified. I'd like to see Linux get a real filesystem. Anyway,
both slackware and FBSD have strengths and weaknesses and I like both.
Bottom line: Walnut Creek is simply the best. Therefore I have subs to
both of their banner products. And I run both on production boxes.
I am also a fan of Tim O'Reilly as are you...and waiting for the inevitable
slew of FBSD books. That would really be helpful.
The linux v. fbsd thing is getting rather stale. It was silly to begin
with, I mean, why spend time arguing about the OS when you could argue
about things like whether perl is better than python? (Obviously this
is rhetorical! Perl is clearly better. ;-) TFIC here!
Cheers,
Tom
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