Re: General Unix Learning
From: Joshua Tinnin (krinklyfig_at_spymac.com)
Date: 09/12/04
- Previous message: Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P.: "Re: Dmesg and error logs."
- In reply to: hide110: "General Unix Learning"
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To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004 23:21:59 -0700
On Tuesday 07 September 2004 12:15 pm, "hide110" <hide110@us-it.net>
wrote:
> Please forgive me if this is not the right place to turn but, I
> figure you all would be able to share your wisdom with me.
>
> I am a Windows user and I've hated it for the past few years.
I can relate, though I still keep it around for games and sometimes
sound production stuff (which is really better on a Mac ...). I don't
like Windows, but it still has its uses for me.
> The
> Unix experience I have accrued has mainly been working from a shell
> account; nothing really in detail about the actual operating system
> or installation. I have considered FreeBSD & Linux, but really, for a
> desktop system do you guys think it's viable for a nearly pure unix
> newbie to tinker around with BSD? Or would it be easier to start
> with Linux & eventually port over to BSD?
Well, I never took to Linux like some people, though I used it
occasionally over the years and basically understood it, but when I
discovered FreeBSD, everything was suddenly so much more logical - it
made so much more sense. It's not as "user-friendly" as many Linux
distros, but the way everything fits together - from the complete
system approach to the ports system - makes it much easier to maintain
and less hassle all around. Even Linux made more sense after I started
learning FreeBSD. It does require some commitment on your part to learn
it, but it's time well spent. Like others have mentioned, FreeBSD is
more of a "pure" Unix-like OS than Linux is, but this means if you
learn it you'll understand Unix (and by extension other *nixes) much
better.
> Normally I'd take my own advice (if you want to use BSD, use BSD, if
> you want to use Linux at the end of the day, use that) but I'm just
> trying to be practical with all learning curves taken into
> consideration.
Try both - seriously, and you should try more than one Linux distro,
too. I have Slackware, Win2k and FreeBSD on one machine - FreeBSD gets
the most use, though Win gets fired up when I want to play a game (some
good games have been written for *nix, but Win is still the only
serious gaming platform). When it comes down to it, if you're going to
use a window manager or desktop, it will look pretty much the same on
any system - KDE on FreeBSD looks the same as it does on Linux, but
what's underneath is what counts. Linux does have an edge with hardware
support, but quite a lot of hardware works on FreeBSD. I'm running on a
2GHz AthlonXP on an Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe with an 8xAGP ATI Radeon
9600XT. For a while, I didn't have 3D support in FreeBSD (though it
worked in Linux), but after upgrading to 5.3 beta3 I now have it - this
was not a big deal even when it wasn't there, as I don't play many
games in *nix. As far as Linux, if you want to go the easy route, try
Mandrake or SuSE. If you want "pure" Linux, try Slackware, and some of
the other hardcore people tend to distros like Debian and Gentoo - the
latter is interesting, as it uses an installation helper called
portage, which was inspired by BSD's ports. Although some people swear
by it, I'd avoid anything-Red Hat (e.g., Fedora). RPMs are a nightmare.
And after you've tried at least a couple distros of Linux, try FreeBSD
and compare. It may not be right for you, but you might not want to use
anything else after you do ... hey, happened to me ;)
> My deepest apologies if I should not be asking something like this
> here. But any replies would be terribly appreciated.
No, this is great - we finally have some on-topic conversation! W00t!
- jt
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- Previous message: Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P.: "Re: Dmesg and error logs."
- In reply to: hide110: "General Unix Learning"
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