Re: Which BSD?

From: David Douthitt (ssrat_at_mailbag.com)
Date: 11/07/03

  • Next message: Rudolf Polzer: "Re: Which BSD?"
    Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 08:29:02 -0600
    
    

    On 6 Nov 2003 17:51:44 GMT, Rudolf Polzer
    <denshimeiru-sapmctacher@durchnull.de> wrote:

    >BTW, is there a Gentoo-like (Any)BSD install process?

    >Gentoo's installer is /bin/sh - it at least does
    >what I want it to do.

    Well, there's always the emergency holographic shell :-)

    I'm not sure about NetBSD, but installing OpenBSD/mac68k was certainly
    much similar to the described Gentoo install: format the drives
    yourself, mkfs them, copy and undo the tarballs into the right
    directories, then start the system up to finish configuring....

    > Just because the mirror I chose was missing the package index
    >file, it tried over twenty times to download that index file: five times
    >for each package it wanted to install. If I had pressed ^C, I'd probably
    >have had to start over.
    >
    >After a long long time, I was finally able to choose another mirror.

    I found this to be a complete pain also. Not only that, but the ports
    tree itself will try multiple mirrors.

    Red Hat and SUSE installations will come back immediately if there is
    no connectivity with the chosen mirror and ask for a new one.

    Why not the BSD sysinstall? And why not let skip the network
    configuration if its already configured? And why "unconfigure" the
    network if its already configured and functioning?

    Seemed like if there was any problem with the network one had to start
    over.

    I might add I've installed numerous FreeBSD and OpenBSD releases - and
    the probllems with FreeBSD networking during installation stands out.

    >I'm running Linux on my 486 notebook with 8MB RAM (Linux kernel 2.2.25,
    >no fat 2.4.x or even 2.6 kernel). I am not running a BSD there because
    >the notebook only has a 500MB hard drive which is already completely
    >filled up with the world, world sources and ports tree.

    I'm running FreeBSD 4.8 on my 486 notebook with 20M RAM and 600M hard
    drive because I know it fits. Don't load the ports tree or world
    sources and it fits just fine.

    I might add that the 2.2 kernel hasn't been used for years. Even so,
    trying to run a floppy-based Linux 2.0 (even smaller) system on a 8M
    486 I have was mostly impossible (I tried several). PicoBSD fired up
    just fine in 8M and ran well.

    >But I noticed that a BSD kernel is built much faster than a Linux kernel
    >and does more seldomly fail to compile because of undocumented
    >dependcies of kernel options; [...]

    The whole BSD system is put together much better that way - Linux is
    more of a hodge-podge. Nothing against Linux - just in BSD the entire
    system (whether FreeBSD or NetBSD) is overseen by a group of people,
    including all of the utilities and the libraries and the kernel and so
    on.

    In Linux, the only thing overseen by Linus is the kernel. Even the
    major distributions: none oversee any bit a very little bit of the
    code - it comes from many more sources and isn't subjected to strong
    internal review such as FreeBSD or NetBSD.

    David Douthitt (david@douthitt.net)
    UNIX System Administrator
    HP-UX, Unixware, Linux
    Linux+, LPIC-1


  • Next message: Rudolf Polzer: "Re: Which BSD?"

    Relevant Pages

    • How I replace SCO OpenServer and VisionFS with FreeBSD and Samba to run FoxPro Unix
      ... How to make a FreeBSD system.doc Revision date: ... FreeBSd install CD. ... Edit the kernel conf file with edit ... In My Network Place move pr_data->tmp->prstuff.tar to zip ...
      (comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc)
    • Re: Question
      ... >I am a network manager for a small government. ... >proprietary to something like FreeBSD or linux? ... Are server needs are currently simple and we only have one NT4 server ...
      (freebsd-newbies)
    • Re: Poor network performance for clients in 100MB toGigabit environment
      ... Are the NFS mounts UDP or TCP on Linux and FreeBSD? ... Clients on the Gigabit network are fine and screams, ... > clients to both servers are fast. ...
      (freebsd-net)
    • Re: Best Linux version to port from OpenServer 5.0.5/6
      ... >have any suggestions about BSD vs. Linux? ... I just really like the clean design and predictability of FreeBSD. ... Reboot and see if the kernel is OK, go to single user and install ... Upon examing things I found that everything that xinetd was to ...
      (comp.unix.sco.misc)
    • From Linux to BSD
      ... I've been running Linux for quite a number of years (actually started ... A few months ago I installed FreeBSD 5.3 on a spare machine. ... install software, excellent security, etc. FreeBSD (in fact all the ... FreeBSD on my main desktop machine, ...
      (comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc)