I still remember the first copy of RedHat 4.0 and copy of the Linux Bible that I owned in 1995. Linux was still in its infancy and most of the mainstream press had not picked up on it. The only reason I had was because I had a friend who had started an ISP and had recommended it to me. (He used Slackware)
Years later, this friend as well as a number of others "in the business" have moved over to FreeBSD. In 2003 I began to understand why they were... many Linux distros were becoming very, very large and "bloated". My last several installs of Linux have required me vigorously going through and removing tonnes of things I didn't need. Even just the other day as I was monitoring my OpenSUSE box, I spotted a couple of processes from packages I had missed... they are gone now, but why did they get there in the first place?
The other thing is that as stable and as much as I loved hacking around with Linux, it could be more polished at times. I have a number of occasions chased problems for hours, only to find out it is not my configuration error, but rather a bug in the programme. No OS or distro is perfect, but sometimes Linux has had a developmental edge that has crept out into release versions of distros. (it's still not as bad as Windows I guess!)
So now, through the encouragement of those who influenced me into Linux in the first place, I have been studying FreeBSD off and on for the last number of months. I like the disciplined approach to maintaining "a base" and I love some of their documentation. I set up in January a firewall based on FreeBSD called PFSense and though most of it self configured itself (and is managed by a very well designed web GUI), my trips into the command line have led me to think that it is not that much of shocking difference...
Also, I found a VERY interesting philosophical article tonight that you might find interesting on the ethos of FreeBSD in comparison to Linux at: http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/bsd4linux1.php Even if you aren't interested in ever looking at BSD as a solution for anything you are doing, it does give some helpful insights into the differences and the background of Linux.
If I do pick this up as a full blown study project which I play around with on Friday evenings, I'll blog on here as to what I found my adjustments were. I am thinking I might set up an IRC server based on FreeBSD and if I get it going, I'll invite you to give it a whirl with your favourite IRC client!
Comments
It's about the freedom
Hi Donovan,
Nice article! For me this boils down to one thing: GNU and the GPL.
I think the linked article you pointed to is correct: BSD may be technically better than Linux. I don't doubt for one instance the technical ability and excellent engineering skills of the BSD guys. In fact I am thankful for OpenSSH and OpenSSL and of course the Windows NT networking stack that is taken from BSD's networking stack (Vista is a new MS stack - be very afraid!).
I like the desire to give it all away - the BSD licence gives the code away incredibly generously to others. Wonderful.
BUT... I am more persuaded by the community ideas of Stallman and the GNU folks. (70% of ALL free software projects use a GNU licence. So I think I might be in a majority) And this is my reason: the GNU licence creates a community space for people to work together on code, to continuously improve it for the benefit of a community and not have some commercial body come along, take all that hard work and profit from it thus destroying the community.
I just am not persuaded that the altruistic goals of the BSD community are the same ones I share! I will cheer them on but I think the GPL is the best way to preserve the freedom of the other people I care about.
These are strong feelings. I have yet to release code under the GPL as I am a terrible coder, but it will be my choice for a licence in the future. My current level is "Advocate"!
Good post Donovan!
Licensing, et. al.
Yes, it is funny how these decisions are not just technical, but also in licensing. I would have to say in general that I like the GNU license better. However, the more I read, the more I am intrigued by the technical capabilities of BSD, particularly in a server type environment.... which brings me to another consideration I had.
I think that Linux is superior when it comes to being a Desktop replacement. Ubuntu and OpenSUSE are particularly have configurations which make it attractive for even mobile deployment into laptops. However, I perceive that BSD is not as advanced in this area. There are a couple of offerings, PC-BSD, http://www.pcbsd.org/ being the most interesting to me.
That said, my interest in Linux from day one has always been in server applications. So I suppose that is my primary orientation. For the most part, I'm not concerned about things such as flash support for the Linux version of Firefox or editing high def video. I'm not saying this isn't important, it's just not my area or interest.
However, some of the things that do interest me are:
1. I love their documentation. I cannot tell you how often I have been disappointed in the quality of some of documentation of Linux. If it wasn't for Google and the internet, I wouldn't know half of what I do. Most of the time I don't find an answer that I need from the documentation, but rather some group where the problem is being discussed by users.
2. I like the idea of having a base install, from which you can add what you want. Of course, I am showing my server oriented interests on this one.
3. As much as I like the stability of Linux, I want to push this further... my free software project built on a PII-400 is mostly there in terms of stability, but I think it is possible to take it a bit further and even go a bit faster. I don't mind the idea of compiling things myself to get it there.
So anyhow, I'm going to try to buy a box for a tenner off of ebay and have a play. I thought I might try to put up an IRC server with it, but actually am thinking more that I'm going to have another furray into mySQL. We'll see how we get on...
Another interesting point... I have been reading a lot of great things about Gentoo. I didn't know much about this distro until about a month or so ago. If I had unlimited amounts of time, I would check it out to see what the fuss is.
Unix et. al
Speaking of various forms of Unix, I'm thinking of testing out OpenSolaris in a VM some time. I've mostly stuck with Linux, due to it being the most wide spread, and with the most software options. However, I read an article last night about ZFS in OpenSolaris, and it looks quite interesting. If only Sun and the FSF could sort out those pesky GPL/CDDL compatibility issues, so that ZFS could be compiled in to Linux!