Gnubie Posted November 4, 2003 Report Share Posted November 4, 2003 I very rarely see much discussion on any of the BSDs. Has anyone here tried them? Iam a bit curious about them and may play around with them one of these days, though I doubt I'd get very far with my limited experience, but oh well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted November 4, 2003 Report Share Posted November 4, 2003 Ermmmmm Well, I broached the subject here a few times!!! I actually have a copy of FREEBSD I want to try out but haven't got around to. Dunno.... Seems like many people think the choice of OS is between MS and Linux and forget about other OS's. And on a post the other day someone said we shouldn't even discuss other distro's than Mandrake or say if they are better??? Beats me!!! Everyone in the world surely realised BSD is far superior to linux with its TCP/IP stack and that other than gentoo's portage the packaging in linux leaves something to be desired. Personally im pretty sick of the whole MS do this so its OK if linux does attitude. So many people who have come from MS keep mentioning that the 400MB of upgrades in 2 weeks is Ok for instance becuase MS do it. I'd prefer to see objective comparisons between real operating systems and linux not Windows.... Far to many people have never tried an OS other than linux/Windows and keep the holier than thou attitude that linux is the best OS for everything!! Strangely its the same people who think its OK to relase an unfinished distro or have MS style updates or misleading advertising/marketing.... Good luck, and when i have some time Ill be testing out FreeBSD and perhaps NetBSD too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gnubie Posted November 4, 2003 Author Report Share Posted November 4, 2003 ErmmmmmWell, I broached the subject here a few times!!! I actually have a copy of FREEBSD I want to try out but haven't got around to. Dunno.... Seems like many people think the choice of OS is between MS and Linux and forget about other OS's. And on a post the other day someone said we shouldn't even discuss other distro's than Mandrake or say if they are better??? Beats me!!! Everyone in the world surely realised BSD is far superior to linux with its TCP/IP stack and that other than gentoo's portage the packaging in linux leaves something to be desired. Personally im pretty sick of the whole MS do this so its OK if linux does attitude. So many people who have come from MS keep mentioning that the me people who think its OK to relase an unfinished distro or have MS style updates or misleading advertising/marketing....400MB of upgrades in 2 weeks is Ok for instance becuase MS do it. I'd prefer to see objective comparisons between real operating systems and linux not Windows.... Far to many people have never tried an OS other than linux/Windows and keep the holier than thou attitude that linux is the best OS for everything!! Strangely its the same people who think its OK to relase an unfinished distro or have MS style updates or misleading advertising/marketing.... Good luck, and when i have some time Ill be testing out FreeBSD and perhaps NetBSD too. Yeah, most people do overlook and don't even know other OSes exist. Actually, I heard of FreeBSD before Linux if you can believe it, though I haven't tried it.... yet. Be sure to share your experience with the BSDs when you try them out. I'd like to know how it goes. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted November 4, 2003 Report Share Posted November 4, 2003 Yeah, I need some time but.... This constant MS vs Linux debate is so pointless. If linux is to expand it needs to be taking the best of other distro's, not the worst. If I upgraded Solaris and suddenly Oracle stopped working I would expect a Sun engineer in my office in half an hour!!!! However, I can't imagine the situation where a Sun upgrade failed!!! Granted its a commercial OS .... People who have no experience of ANYTHING not MS or Linux seem to have the same opinion... Its better or equal to MS so it must be OK.... they completely seem to forget that MS is CR#P to start off with.... IMHO this is a very narrow minded opinion!!! Why anyone would move to linux as a corporate webserver is beyond me, the OS simply isn't stable and doesn't have a proper TCP/IP stack. Of course compared to Windows its VERY STABLE and has very good TCP/IP.... but compared to BSD it is poorer in these areas. Im no expert but how often do you see a 5 year uptime on a linux server??? Whereas We occiasionally (usually once a year) reboot the Solaris servers just as a precaution.... The only other reason to reboot is changing the kernel .... As I understand (and I haven't tried) this is also possible in BSD as well!!! In fact its normal. Of course you can achieve this under linux too, but its not normal. Linux is geting much better in its weaker areas BUT it is also loosing track....overall. The kernel is under linus's wing and is evolving well BUT distro's are definately not. The trend to a 'desktop' distro is fine BUT unfortunately some distro's like Mandrake are obsessed by 'ease of use' to the point where they introduce buggy wizards!!! If I find this disturbing its because Ive seen buggy wizards before.... That's Windows... Also I have never found a page of documentation FOR any Mandrake wizard, perhaps I just didn't look int he right places but no-one seems to have corrected me so I'll presume they haven't found it either... At the same time this COULD have been done in a GPL fashion... Webmin could have been worked on by Mandrake and the improvements put back into the GPL codebase. This would benefit not only linux but BSD, Darwin, BeOS as well!!! Why should a commercial company do this??? Becuase they took the ideas and code from linux etal and they are making money on someone elses hard work. Politeness says you put back!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonMage Posted November 4, 2003 Report Share Posted November 4, 2003 I actually tried FreeBSD before in 2002. I hated it. Maybe I got spoiled with the nice, easy, and graphical way current linux distros do things, but FreeBSD reminds me of the dark days back in 1994 where I have to learn unix for the first time. I trudged on using only 1 console in a huge 20 inch terminals for about a year until someone who is a CS major took pity on me and introduced me to X. FreeBSD reminds me of that.. hard to learn, cryptic, and mysterious. I mean it can be safer than a fortress as a server, but if some people think that linux is not ready for the desktop, think of what they say about freebsd. Anyway, any OS that doesn't have good games in it (Neverwinter Nights) is not worth it imo :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted November 4, 2003 Report Share Posted November 4, 2003 If you are READING this you might wanna check out the new POLL I just added :D DragonMage.... I know what you mean about the install.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlc Posted November 4, 2003 Report Share Posted November 4, 2003 Well of course I have, I'm a distro HO! FreeBSD OpenBSD NetBSD = download a sparc port I've been meaning to install on a Ultra 10, just haven't got around to doing it yet. is running fine on it so I'm still not sure if I want to. If you read the install instructions for FreeBSD, very easy. It looks sort of like slackware or debian's install (sort of) ncurses/cli based, but its not all that terrible. Latest gnome and kde are in there port system so you can have a clean and beautiful desktop. BUT Can't play games as well as Linux!! B) Makes a great server though. OpenBSD, security wise your not going to beat it. NetBSD, like I said haven't installed it but have thought about it on sparc. It aslo from what I've read on seems to have more drivers for laptop than the other *bsd's, but that has been about 6m-1y since I read that so FreeBSD will probably be a better fit to first try. I know, I'll stop playing with all these distro soon! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ezroller Posted November 4, 2003 Report Share Posted November 4, 2003 I tried freebsd a long time ago. It was long enough that I could not tell the difference b/w that at linux. (what a noob) Now I use OSX. which is arguably just another bsd flavor. I have also been screwing around with opendarwin. That I really like. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gnubie Posted November 5, 2003 Author Report Share Posted November 5, 2003 As I understand it BSD has great Linux emulating capabilities, so I guess anything you can run on Linux should run on BSD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted November 5, 2003 Report Share Posted November 5, 2003 ezroller.... Hmmm. Jealosy sets in here.... I remember your new laptop :wink: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leo Posted November 5, 2003 Report Share Posted November 5, 2003 I am in the process of trying FreeBSD on a spare pc. I installed a mini version and it worked OK (no X) when I tried to fix it I screwed it up good and proper. I am going to reinstall using a full version and see if it makes a difference. From what I have seen I prefer Linux, but mainly because it is swisher (couldn't bring myself to say "more like windows" :o ) but I think it will teach me more about unix so is worth persevering with. Leo Offtopic PS: hey I've jus noticed there is a spell checker on this board :D , how cool is that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phunni Posted November 5, 2003 Report Share Posted November 5, 2003 So, having read through this thread, does anyone think there is a better deskktop OS than Linux? It sounds like BSD may well be a better server option (which is interesting...), but is Linux a better desktop OS? If that's the case - what does that mean for the future of Linux given that it has predominantly made progress in the server market rather than the desktop market? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted November 5, 2003 Report Share Posted November 5, 2003 Good question phunni!!! It depends what you call a desktop OS... For instance Linux users tend to think of a Desktop OS largely as the Window Manager and DM Of course there are plenty of other important things like configuration tools, installation. My BSD experience is that you NEED to read the installation.... then its pretty much like installing slackware ... except the devices are different to linux. For the actual Desktop.... what many people don't realise is that KDE/Gnome has nothing to do with linux!!! Except it runs on it.... Both KDE and Gnome and many DM's run on *BSD, Solaris, AIX etc. (dropping down a level) The same for XFree86, its kernel independent.... Thus BeOS or *BSD can look EXACTLY like a Linux desktop.....or visa versa. The next stage is config tools.... This is a matter of personal interest for me.... I HATE instensly disto specific config tools becuase it means I have a whole load of documentaiton to find (if it exists) and read before I know what the things are doing. However... WEBMIN etc. ROCK... they run on all *nix systems from OS-X to Linux to Solaris to ..... BSD ports are technically superoir to RPM's and probably even deb's. With the exception of Gentoo this is an advantage of BSD OVER Linux. If you look at the Mac with its Darwin Core.... People say the same as Debian....you only install once... after that everything is an upgrade. From my firends with MAc's and Linux they say they NEVER had a failure or broken app using the OS-X upgrades. (Bear in mind some of these Mac's are hacked to death and running Linux stuff as well) I view this as an even BIGGER advantage over distro's like Mandrake. OS-X is closed source which I view as a big disadvantage over linux!!! Your question is pertitent... Why does Mandrake continue making Wizards which work in limited circumstances and fail in others, specifically a mixed server/workstation type environment. I think its because they started off with a in many ways inferior OS in Linux and a 'quirky' base on top of that in RedHat. Their response is to add easy click stuff for a home user in the MS sense. My PERSONAL opinion is this is not good for Linux overall. Most people I know who become RH certified AFTER leanringa lot about other distro's refuse completely to use the RH config tools, even after having to learn about them for certification ... becuase fundamentally distro specific tools are BAD!!! Specifically for Linux as a SERVER.... Well its pretty good!!!! Compared to MS CR$P its heaven... but it has some ways to catch up in some areas wheras in other areas it excels. I don't think its a matter of Linux vs other *nix's its a matter of REAL OS's vs crippled OS's like MS. Specifically on the desktop.... I think if distro fractionation continues in config tools like YAST, DRAKE and RH specific stuff then Linux is pretty much doomed. WHY??? Well the final option in the desktop market, device support.... We complain that manufactuerers don't make drivers.... Well, lets examine WHY... First Linux is a smaller market... (at present) However also what packaging system should they make it for.... source tarball, RPM, DEB ????? Sometimes the manufacturer may wish to keep a part of the driver secret and have it closed source. Much as I'd prefer it opensource Ill take the nvidia driver.... thank you. Sometimes US legislation prohibits opensource drivers even when the manufacturer want to relase it opensource it faces a choice... Do business with the US or release an OpenSource driver. But it gets more complex, Say INTERSIL (who want to release an Opensource driver for their 802.11g wireless chipset) want to include their driver in Mandrake (a European based distro) then they can't if mandrake also want to sell the same distro to the US. I get the impression our US friends wouldn't want a cut down version ... so that means it won't be included!!! The US export restrictions work the same in reverse .... I think it is ultimately the thorny issue of closed source drivers which will be a nail in the coffin of Linux on the desktop.... If they can't realease Opensource drivers then linux will continually play catch up on windows. Combine this with the manufactuerers wishing to make binary packages available and no common format and you see why they are reluctant to commit resources. RH and Mandrake are particuarly poor in one area. They screw about with the locations of libraries etc which the program makers have standardised. Then they screw about with the configuration so that a 'normal' package won't work and you need a distro specific one. Again ,this makes extra work for the packagers and does'nt help intergration. Take a package whichwants to integrate into the KDE or Gnome desktop.... Since RH and hence MDK change the tree for KDE and Gnome (but especially KDE) the program maker has to make a special RPM that installs the integration elsewhere to where KDE say it should be. It is this level of intergration which is needed/wanted most by the home users who want something as easy as windows. How many times do you find an RPM that says SUSE users read this.... This is becuase Suse (as far as I know) don't mess with the directory structure of packages... whereas RH do. My personal opinion is lets say you have a distro and you want a graphics server. You have three choices: 1) Buy one - There are plenty of commercial X servers 2) Write your own - Quite a bit of work 3) Use a pre-existing opensource one (Like XFree86) The problem comes if you choose 3 and then mess about with it!! IF you move the config files and libraries around away from where someone expects them to be then someone making a third party tool/program that needs this info has a lot of extra work in parsing envvar's etc to see there a specific library or conf file is. A lot of these programmers are working for FREE and may cut a few corners by presuming the config files are where the other program put's them. That wouldn't be a big deal becuase its opensource and someone will add the stuff to cope....UNFORTUNATELY it will probably be distro specific. The whole idea of moving round the directory structure of OpenSource stuff in a distro is for me the biggest negative for having mutliple distro's in Linux. Overall its good, competition on features and versions gives a good development rate BUT this is one area where it really hurts linux as a whole. OK so BSD is split into 3...... But if we take SAY FREEBSD then if you make the package work on ONE freeBSD system it will work on them ALL. This is why MAC's can UPGRADE and Mandrake can't. (to a large extent) You can't just take a newer KDE and package it as an RPM, you need to hack the directories and conf files about. If you install from source and then UPGRADE then the files aren't where they are supposed to be and the UPGRADE messes UP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ezroller Posted November 5, 2003 Report Share Posted November 5, 2003 do I hear an open call for standards? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted November 5, 2003 Report Share Posted November 5, 2003 I don't really see any option. Linux basically IS open-standards. It integrates a lot from other OS's, like LDAP or 1001 others. If distro's continue to fractionate the configuration of these standards and mess about with them then it ends up being not much better than MS... (you get distro locked) Mandrake is a great noobie distro, IMHO the best noobie distro BUT I wouldn't seriously consider running it as a server at work. I think there are so many issues its difficult to seperate them, for instance a developer wishing to integrate with a desktop. Then there is the extra modification of config files for the RH directory structure .... As far as I am concerned then If I ran KDE I would have the same attitude as they have to RH. If they mess with its structure then they effectively limit themselves as to the degree of intergration for packages. A good example is liquid!! This is freely available from a commercial software developer.... Its opensource!! Its VERY NICE.... But, you can't just install from source becuase it expects the KDE tree to be where KDE says it should be... (since Mosfet is an ex-KDE developer I think this is fair enough) So that means that people like Texstar or PLF have to rewrite the make install part to stick stuff where mandrake thinks it should be. I don't really blame MDK because they are keeping RH compatibility!!! Now say WEBMIN make a KDE configuration gui thing.... (duplicating control panel functionality) then should they do it for RH and everyone else or just one or the other. Basically probably neither because there are so many variations!!! In other words its all holding linux on the desktop back. The more Mandrake make Mandrake specific config tools the worse this gets for Mandrake people! Lots of people might decide to learn linux becuase they will be using it at work. But if everything they learn about configuring it is Mandrake or RedHat or whoever specific this only works for that distro. Now to me thats a MS lock-in trick.... Easy-to get into and impossible to get out of. In reality you are unlikely to want to run the same distro in the enterprise that you do at home. Thats whats good about say debian SID. (Three distro's but with the same config and file structure) The problem is the distro people are so busy trying to make money they are not taking care of Linux as a whole!!! One poor experience with a distro can translate into a 'distrust' of linux as a whole. My fav thing to prattle on about is the mandrake shorewall config. Yeah i know I mentioned it about 1001 times....... BUT its not right!!!!!! Shorewall obvuiously are trapped between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand they have a very nice firewall. Its supported directly by Webmin.... They have easy config files that get you started in a couple of minutes in many different configurations and pages and pages of manuals.... In short a TOP CLASS product. BUT Mandrake are using it in a 'strange way' .... Shorewall are very diplomatic, presumably they are keen to see it used my a major distro like mandrake.... BUT reading between the lines they are ALSO concerned about people getting a bad impression of it. Shorewall have obviously spent time and money developing this product BUT Mandrake are wrecking it..... Sure it works fine if its your only PC but once you get out of the standard config it falls apart when you use the Mandrake wizards.... I honestly believe its a fine product AND they are on one hand happy its being used and on the other scared it will deter people from using it!!! I think its 'unfair' of Mandrake to continue like this....(not just with shorewall) Its reminicent of KDE and RedHat. Mandrake presumably include it so long as shorewall don't 'make waves' .... I know of another company like this.... They allow system intergrators to use their 'OS' at a heavily discounted price SO LOING as it is on their conditions!!! (And those condistions include NOT selling PC's with linux) I don't think MDK are even in the same ballpark of twisted evilness as MS but they are starting to move in that direction and that WORRIES ME. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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