Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 12:52:36 +0100 From: Daniel Bye <dan@slightlystrange.org> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD compatibility Message-ID: <20020725115236.GA80539@catflap.home.slightlystrange.org> In-Reply-To: <LAW2-F79bkfYNnAt8si0001cc59@hotmail.com> References: <LAW2-F79bkfYNnAt8si0001cc59@hotmail.com>
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On Thu, Jul 25, 2002 at 02:12:28PM +0300, Tiago Marques wrote: > Dear Sirs, > I'm a user of Linux, and i do some programming for college, some related > with sockets, processes, and all kinds of linux system programming. > I've been thinking about moving to FreeBSD but i would like to know if the > programs i do in Linux will be compatible with FreeBSD. > I've already installed OpenBSD in another computer but due to some problems > here i didn't have the time to test those things yet... > Also, i'm a regular user, but not very experienced in Linux, i just know my > way around, not much more. Do you think i'll be able to use FreeBSD easily > or is it more complicated to mantain and admin ? > Sorry all this questions Provided your Linux programs don't make too heavy use of the Linux procfs (which is significantly different to the BSD implementation), or any of the extended i386 sys calls, you should be able to run them under FreeBSD, using the Linux emulation layer. The best thing to do is install FreeBSD, including the Linux emulation bits and pieces, and try it out. (There is code in the base system to support linprocfs, but I have never had call to use it so cannot offer any help or opinions about it) The name FreeBSD refers to the OS as a whole, unlike Linux, which is the name of the kernel. Therefore, you can consider FreeBSD in the same terms as RedHat or SuSE - RedHat's OS is _based_on_ a Linux kernel, but the specific details of the implementation of the rest of the system are down to the developers who put the thing together. Because of this, there is only one FreeBSD "distribution", which you can rely on being sane from one install to the next - whereas the multitude of Linux distros are effectively different OSen, and you will find considerable variation in the specifics. (However, that's not to say that one RedHat install will be vastly different to the next...) Personally, I like FreeBSD's design. I find it to be clean and systematic, and yes, pretty easy to keep it going smoothly. It also has this list, which is a truly marvellous source of help and information for those who can't find what they need elsewhere. Installing new apps is a breeze using the Ports system (which is so good, that NetBSD and OpenBSD have adopted it), and the documentation for the base system is, in my opinion, some of the best written and maintained documentation I have ever come across. But this is all just so much personal opinion. Try it, break it, fix it, see what you think! Dan -- Daniel Bye PGP Key: ftp://ftp.slightlystrange.org/pgpkey/dan.asc PGP Key fingerprint: 3D73 AF47 D448 C5CA 88B4 0DCF 849C 1C33 3C48 2CDC _ ASCII ribbon campaign ( ) - against HTML, vCards and X - proprietary attachments in e-mail / \ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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