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Xref: sserve comp.os.linux.help:8324 comp.os.386bsd.questions:6725 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!library.ucla.edu!galaxy.ucr.edu!network.ucsd.edu!yossarian!bill From: bill@yossarian.ucsd.edu (Bill Reynolds) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Re: SUMMARY: FreeBSD vs. Linux Date: 11 Nov 93 14:47:41 Organization: Center for Nonlinear Studies, LANL, Los Alamos, NM Lines: 44 Message-ID: <BILL.93Nov11144741@yossarian.ucsd.edu> References: <2brq1b$a8j@news.ysu.edu> <2bs065$1gd@news.cs.tulane.edu> <CGC6nH.J08@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> Reply-To: bill@goshawk.lanl.gov NNTP-Posting-Host: louise.ucsd.edu In-reply-to: pitts@bigbang.astro.indiana.edu's message of Thu, 11 Nov 1993 16:47:40 GMT In article <CGC6nH.J08@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> pitts@bigbang.astro.indiana.edu (Jim Pitts) writes: It is a trade off ... a trade off that I think hits many in the pocket book. It is a trade off that, I think, people wind up paying for in the end with a somewhat luke warm version of unix. In the end they generally wind up wanting to do things that I do in FreeBSD that they can't do in Linux. Sigh. Unix envy. No flame intended, but what can a loaded BSD system do that loaded Linux system cannot? Clearly both systems have their strengths and weaknesses, but it's not at all clear to me that one is good and the other ``luke warm''. So, obviously I think that Linux is a great package for someone wanting a Unix/X system with no investment in hardware. But if you got the resources, don't mess around with it. You get what you pay for. See above. I do *lots* of numerical research in nonlinear physics using my Linux box. I find it equal if not superior to the Sparcs that most people in my group use. It is a very cheap, very powerful, very useful system. The only thing it can't do is run commercial binaries (I'd kill to get MapleV on this box - now I have run it remotely on a Sparc10 and display it here), but neither does Net/FreeBSD. One could niggle over nits e.g.: Linux networking support - BSD driver support - shared libraries - man pages - your mother wears army boots! But by and large it seems that both systems are pretty good (at least now that BSD is maturing, thanks to the Net/Free people, I remember running the initial 0.1 release, it wasn't stable enough to be competitive with Linux at that point). If you need to decide between them, read the FAQ's, monitor the newsgroups for a while, think about what your hardware will do for you (the BSD's still take more space, but have better docs - blah blah) and go for it - my guess is that once it's up and running (which can, at times, be problematic on *both* systems) you'll be happy with whatever you go with. -- _____________________________________________________________________________ Bill Reynolds bill@goshawk.lanl.gov _____________________________________________________________________________ Out of circulation till the dogs get tired.... T. Waits