From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Oct 15 22:56:34 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E3B3516A403 for ; Sun, 15 Oct 2006 22:56:34 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from stapleton.41@gmail.com) Received: from ug-out-1314.google.com (ug-out-1314.google.com [66.249.92.171]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F26D143D60 for ; Sun, 15 Oct 2006 22:56:33 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from stapleton.41@gmail.com) Received: by ug-out-1314.google.com with SMTP id m2so624355uge for ; Sun, 15 Oct 2006 15:56:33 -0700 (PDT) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=uZYZ8iGSylxjHZhulsmpc208A2ewutkXs7PbZzVtAOlvT4kLEkGMD77hQ8wodpxUdqK0ex8BY+viCFMTvMm0E2MPayNk0H71VjsvopWjp/sLEDZM9yj5bmBGxV5cJhOdB6Qn6++/wLXKmHaWDnYoTGwFNGVm95VLzkw15QG64u4= Received: by 10.67.24.13 with SMTP id b13mr7260440ugj; Sun, 15 Oct 2006 15:56:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.67.86.18 with HTTP; Sun, 15 Oct 2006 15:56:32 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <80f4f2b20610151556l18c5adcci4196ab107b6b9907@mail.gmail.com> Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 18:56:32 -0400 From: "Jim Stapleton" To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: Subject: Re: What's so compelling about FreeBSD? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 22:56:35 -0000 Well, in my case: - No matter what method I use to install packages in Linux (Apt-Get, Yum, Deb, RPM, and to a much lesser extent, Emerge, and to a *MUCH* greater extent src tar.gz's), I tend to have a lot more trouble getting installs to finish than with BSD in ports. - The FreeBSD community is much more friendly and helpful than the Linux community, in my experience. Gentoo's is better than other Linux communities, but still not quite up to FreeBSD. - I notice a lot smaller number of "It's 'X' liscence, therefore it has to be good", or "It's open source therefore it has to be good" fanboys in FreeBSD. The users tend to be more of a "It works, so it's good" type. This really makes the commmunity pleasant. - The documentation of FreeBSD is much better in both organization and detail - while good documentation can be found for Linux, FreeBSD just takes a lot less searching. - I've found a lot of breaks in Linux where I couldn't find anything short of a system re-install to fix them without a lot more effort in searching for some obscure piece of documentation. Aside from once when I blew up my kernel build, I didn't have that problem in BSD. - It's less popular than Linux, so it's less commonly known/accounted for, and it makes you just that much safer from hackers. Note: that's not to say it doesn't have it's issues, like every other OS, I could name a few dozen issues I've run into with FreeBSD without much hassle (mostly related to drivers, UI, and parts of the installer), but that's a different topic alltogether. -Jim