*BSD News Article 91935


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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!uunet!in2.uu.net!207.18.199.254!wotan.compaq.com!twisto.eng.hou.compaq.com!news
From: "Andreas Hinterleitner" <ahinterleitn@bangate.eur.compaq.com>
Subject: FreeBSD vs. Linux
Message-ID: <01bc39ca$4cb6d9c0$232c3d9b@muna019>
Sender: news@twisto.eng.hou.compaq.com (System Administrator)
Organization: Compaq Computer Corp.
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1997 09:46:04 GMT
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I did some experiments with Linux (2.0.29) and FreeBSD (2.1.5) on a x86 and
Pentium platform and encountered FreeBSD not so well adapted to the PC
Hardware as Linux is.

Some of my problems with FreeBSD:

- stderr and stdout seems to be hard wired with ttyv0; this causes strange
effects on the screen when e.g. a login on ttyv1 is done

- midnight commander acts strange on some keystrokes and mouse movements
(CTRL+O doesn't work at all: once I disabled the panels, I cannot bring
them back!)

- color X-terminals (e.g. rxvt) don't use color by default (still don't
know how to change this)

- the APM on my Compaq LTE Elite doesn't work correctly, even with apm
driver present (return from standby: screen is still black);

also the kernel reports "sio0: not found on 0x3f8" - the PC setup shows
COM1 at exactly this address and a 16550 compatible UART is used (Linux has
no problems with this!)

- because of the absence of a nice window manager in the FreeBSD version
that I use, I decided to work with olvwm - with the result, that some xview
programs that are part of the "usual" xview distribution are missing
(props, textedit)

- my DEL key doesn't act as normal but like the BACKSPACE key (DEL should
delete the character below the actual cursor position and work to the
right, not to the left!)

- the FreeBSD "handbook" is only a poor basis for obtaining general
information about FreeBSD as other documentation is also; I ordered some
books to get in depth information; kernel parameters are sparsely commented

I like FreeBSD and ordered version 2.1.7, and I also want to use this OS in
the future (together with Linux). Can anyone give me some clues to help me
with my problems?