Re: Comparison of BSD vs Linux? (here goes the flame war!)

["Kristian Erik Hermansen" <user=152@nabble.blu.org>]

 On Nov 15, 2007 8:30 AM, Scott Ehrlich <[hidden email]> wrote: 
> I'm in a class at Usenix/Lisa and the instructor is a BSD fan and hates 
> Linux.  I'd like to get insight from the list of viewpoints, security, 
> comparisons, package availability, etc, of the differences between the 
> basic worlds of UNIX-like distros. 

Viewpoints: 
BSD does not run on laptops as well as Linux does -- hardware support 
is lacking. 

Security: 
OpenBSD generally has Linux beat.  But Openwall Linux is a strong secure distro. 

Comparisons: 
BSD and Linux are very similar.  The same GNU tools run on both and 
the kernel does relatively the same thing :-) 

Package Availability: 
Linux wins hands down.  Think of all the software that is available 
out-of-the-box for Linux but not BSD.  You should even consider 
proprietary software.  Can you run VMware, Skype, etc on BSD?  I never 
tried.  Can you have the latest Gnome desktop running on OpenBSD 
without breaking everything?  Possibly.  How about video driver 
packages?  Rarely do I see 64-bit BSD driver support... 

> Second, what are the differences among Open/Free/Net BSD? 

OpenBSD == BSD + security features 
FreeBSD == BSD + well maintained, easy to use 
NetBSD == BSD + portability, runs on almost any architecture 

> I'm not calling for any wars.   I'm looking for genuine education to 
> understand the worlds between Linux and BSD, and then among the BSD 
> distros. 

Was this helpful? 
-- 
Kristian Erik Hermansen 

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