From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Nov 6 18:53:20 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id SAA13752 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Fri, 6 Nov 1998 18:53:20 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from gershwin.tera.com ([207.224.230.28]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id SAA13737 for ; Fri, 6 Nov 1998 18:53:15 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kline@tera.com) Received: from athena.tera.com (athena.tera.com [207.224.230.169]) by gershwin.tera.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id SAA22324; Fri, 6 Nov 1998 18:53:02 -0800 (PST) From: Gary Kline Received: (from kline@localhost) by athena.tera.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id SAA16703; Fri, 6 Nov 1998 18:52:49 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199811070252.SAA16703@athena.tera.com> Subject: Re: FreeBSD vs. Linux In-Reply-To: <19981107095107.C499@freebie.lemis.com> from Greg Lehey at "Nov 7, 98 09:51:07 am" To: grog@lemis.com (Greg Lehey) Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1998 18:52:45 -0800 (PST) Cc: wjv@cityip.co.za, martin@netconstruct.com, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL23 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG According to Greg Lehey: > On Friday, 6 November 1998 at 16:59:13 +0200, Johann Visagie wrote: > > On Mon, 02 Nov 1998 at 16:31 SAST, Martin Leufray III wrote: > >> > >> There is a raging debate in our offices about FreeBSD vs. Linux. We are an > >> international consulting firm and our internal decisions affect a lot of data > >> centers. > >> > >> Is there a definitive comparison anywhere? > > [[ ... ]] > > To the casual observer, there is *no difference* between Linux and > FreeBSD. If you look closer, the differences you'll see are mainly > historical. If you look in the source code, you'll see the real > differences: FreeBSD is more mature code, and it expends more effort > making the system run well in an environment with a large number of > processes. I think it unlikely, for example, that you could create a > system like wcarchive (ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/archive-info/wcarchive.txt) > using Linux. > > What does this mean for the average desktop user? Nothing. > Yes, *BSD bigots, it's true. My experiences with Linux were fairly limited, but under normal `desktop' use it was solid for the few weeks it was running. Another point that Greg didn't mention is the large number of commercial apps ported or being ported to Linux. (For my sake, there is nothing worth actual dollars that I'd ever buy, though, so this means little to me.) If your usage is heavy to extremely heavy, go with FreeBSD. It's stability is becoming legendary. If your load is much lighter and you might need commercial-ware, Linux may be better. gary To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message