which version to pick up

[Johnson David]

On Tuesday 05 August 2003 11:55 am, Valentine Kouznetsov wrote:

> I was grown up with Linux. And I don't want any response like: "ah,
> you're Linux guy, we'll not talk to you since
> BSD is BETTER then Linux". I don't want this discussion. I want to
> try FreeBSD and here my questions:

I just got back from a vacation, so pardon my tardy response.

There are some people in this community that have that bad attitude, but 
there are people like that in every community. But so far I have found 
that the people on the -newbies list are excellent.

> 1) how good/bad support for laptops (in particular pci, pcmcia, usb,
> acpi)

It's kind of "iffy". Laptops can have strange hardware. There have been 
some where I have had zero problems, and others where I couldn't get 
past stage one. Your problem spots will be ACPI and 32-bit PCCard 
devices, since those are still relatively new to FreeBSD.

> 2) where to check that my hardware is supported

The best place to check is to look at the output of "dmesg". Also look 
on the console as you plug in USB and PCMCIA devices.

> 3) which version of FreeBSD to choose for desktop/server/laptop

FreeBSD-4.8 is the most stable. FreeBSD-5.1 has more features, but it 
hasn't yet been stamped with the seal of stability. I haven't had any 
problems with 5.1, but I have heard of people who have.

For a server I would definitely stick with 4.8 for now. But you may have 
more success on a laptop with 5.1.

> 4) is there any journaling filesystem available on FreeBSD (and I
> want it be default while installing FreeBSD)

There is no true journaling filesystem available. But you probably don't 
need one. Using UFS plus Softupdates, you get the same benefits as a 
user. You won't corrupt any files on a crash or hard poweroff. But you 
may (as with most JFS systems) lose any writes that occured just prior 
to the poweroff. fsck under Softupdates isn't as fast as a reiserfs or 
xfs fsck, but it's still fast, and you also have the benefit of 
background fsck under FreeBSD-5.x

> 5) how different gcc/ld on BSD from Linux (mostly loader)

FreeBSD-5.1 uses gcc-3.2.2. I don't know about ld, but I strongly 
suspect that it's from the standard GNU binutils.

> 6) what the difference between Free/Open/Net and why (give me the
> real reasons) should I choose FreeBSD
> rather then Open/Net clones.

In a nutshell:

FreeBSD == general purpose
NetBSD == runs on any architecture
OpenBSD === NetBSD + security audits

In reality, they're all fine operating systems, and choosing between 
them is a matter of preference. For example, both FreeBSD and NetBSD 
have benefited from OpenBSD's security audits.

Why FreeBSD then? It's the simplest to install and configure, more 
people use it so it's easier to get help, and there are more ported or 
binary-only applications available.

I've always meant to try out NetBSD and OpenBSD, but never got around to 
it, because FreeBSD works like a champ. There are no major annoyances 
to spur me to try out the alternatives.

David