What's so compelling about FreeBSD?

[Nathan Vidican]

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 08:13:05 -0700, Jeff Mohler wrote
> > > Linux supports more devices than FreeBSD, especially new devices.
> ---
> 
> Linux clearly supports many more bugs than FreeBSD as well.
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In one word... stability. Seriously, it's matured better than linux. Based 
on a codebase tested and depended upon for a lot longer than linux has been 
around. BSD is here to stay, even if linux is becoming more mainstream. 
Simply because it works, and has worked for years and years.

FreeBSD is an entire operating system. The 'commands' you run (ie: shells, 
tar, disk utilities, filesystems, etc) are all bundled in the same code as 
one offering. Linux is a kernel, and a filesystem - each individual 
distribution therefore consisting of the kernel and various (mostly third-
party/gnu) utilities to make up an O/S. Since there's no real 
central 'standard' set of utilities, each distribution varies not only in 
what it supports, how it works, but also where and how everything is 
configured from the install. FreeBSD on the other hand, stays tride and true 
with the same structure and only minimal variances (ie: sysinstall moved 
from /stand to /usr/sbin in version 6).


On a more personal note, I prefer *BSD to linux because of the simplicity; 
too many variances between different linux distributions. With linux 
everyone and their brother has a different distribution out there; differing 
releases move configuration files to different places, each vendor makes 
their own package management, etc. I know the same could be argued about 
FreeBSD vs OpenBSD vs NetBSD, etc... but it's been my experience that linux 
has no real standard that all distros follow where *BSD does in terms of the 
userland, and let's face it - the userland is what we all have to work/live 
with the most.

(just my two cents)
--
Nathan Vidican
nathan at envieweb.net