*nix trial

[J. Seth Henry]

You may want to ask yourself what you envision doing with *nix before
deciding on an operating system to learn on. If you are just trying to
"get the hang of" *nix, then almost any flavor will teach you the basics
(though clearly I prefer FreeBSD ;)

Most jobs these days that use *nix, usually involve Solaris, AIX (or some
other Unix variant) or Linux. Sad as it may be, Linux has more "sex
appeal" than FreeBSD, despite being less mature in a lot of ways. As a
result, it has more popular support, and gets device drivers much sooner
(and in some cases, at all) Unfortunately, Linus only blesses a
kernel, and a kernel is not the same as an operating system. They
have to be included in distributions which provide a "world" (as
FreeBSD calls it) Distros can vary from absolutely zero production
engineering to a high level of integration and high overall quality. Both
Debian and Mandrake (at least when I used them) were very good
distributions overall. If you have an eye on a job that involves *nix,
you might inquire as to what flavor, and find an OS that has a fairly
similar interface.

I just wanted to get that out there, since I get the impression you are
trying to beef up your resume.

That said, I believe FreeBSD to be a superior operating system to Linux
with respect to "newbies" because of its simplicity, elegance, and
intelligent port system. Library issues are rarely a problem if you
stick with the ports tree or package system, and you can easily review
what you have installed, and their dependencies. Only Debian's apt-get is
superior, IMHO - but not by much!

The difference is that FreeBSD is an operating system, not a kernel. There
is only one "distro" per revision, and it is very well crafted to work
right. For the most part, every FreeBSD system of the same version works
like any other. With a few notable exceptions, any FreeBSD system of the
same major release works like any other as well. I switched to FreeBSD
from Linux (Mandrake linux to be exact) after using NetBSD extensively on
an old Mac (68'040 system). It was that good :)

As for obtaining it, I'd go with the 4CD set from the FreeBSD Mall. Go
with the 4.8-RELEASE version - it's the current "production" release. 5.0
is actually closer to a final beta than a production OS. Running it would
be like learning to drive in an experimental car. Also, the 4CD set
includes every port available for that release. No Internet access
required at all - which can be helpful, especially if you are having
problems getting your network running in the installer.

Good luck,
Seth Henry

Mohsin Sabir. wrote:
> I am a Microsoft Product Administrator and been engaged with Microsoft
> Products from the last 7 years.  Now, I have opted that I should add
> something more to my expertise and thought about *nix but have hard time
> to pick which Unix, as there are quite a bit of flavors available out
> there.
>
> I read about you, saw the sites hosted by you.  I want to try BSD Unix
> and please advise me which version is the latest and greatest from where
> I can start.