[Techtalk] Linux and *BSD

[Julie]

Rasjid Wilcox wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> I've often wondered why the *BSD's (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD) seem less 
> popular (and are certainly less well known) than Linux.  Couldn't think of 
> somewhere to post the question without risking starting a flame war, but this 
> seems like a safe enough place.  :-)
> 
> There seem to be a number of potential reasons I can think of:
> a) timing - If I've read the history right, Linux started in 1991, and the 
> *BSD's a year or two (or three) later.  Perhaps is it just because Linux got 
> a head start.
> b) license - those in favour in GPL style free software might favour Linux 
> over the *BSD's.

BSD has been out for much longer than Linux, but it predates the modern
version of "Free Software" and a lot of people don't recognize anything
but the GPL as "Free Software".  There's nothing inherently "unfree"
about the BSD license, it's just that Richard Stallman doesn't like it
because, well, he doesn't.

The one biggie is that BSD wasn't completely unencumbered until the late
80's, early 90's (I forget exactly, because I'm not much into BSD UNIX).
So I suspect that when Linux was just starting people though of FreeBSD
and NetBSD and all the other BSD children as "proprietary software".
That's not been the case in quite a while, but I'm betting that the
belief is still out there.

> Really, I'm just curious about this, and I'd be interested to hear what others 
> think or, even better, know.
> 
> Also, I have been meaning to have a look at one of the *BSD's for a long time.  
> Several sources suggest that FreeBSD is probably the easiest to install and 
> use.  Any suggestions or hints on this?

I've run FreeBSD and OpenBSD under VMware just to try them out.
I didn't find either of them to be particular hard to install,
I just didn't like that they were BSD-derived.  I've been using
USG UNIX derivatives for quite a while and some of the things
in BSD derivatives drive me batty.

On the other hand, the lack of raw disk device support in Linux
is about to make me insane.  I was testing an Orb SCSI disk last
night and buffered I/O is no way to test a disk drive.
-- 
Julianne Frances Haugh             Life is either a daring adventure
txjulie at austin.rr.com                  or nothing at all.
					    -- Helen Keller