Questions About

[Polytropon]

On Mon, 27 Nov 2017 17:36:55 -0500, Baho Utot wrote:
> 
> 
> On 11/27/17 13:28, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
> > 
> > On Mon, November 27, 2017 11:03 am, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> >> On Mon, 27 Nov 2017 22:04:16 +0530
> >> Rahul raj <rahulrny03 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> How Different Bsd operating system from Linux ?
> >>
> >> 	That's a very big question.
> > 
> > Small question, but calling for big answer ;-) I certainly am not as
> > knowledgeable as Steve O'Hara-Smith is. I just would add Linux refugee
> > prospective.
> > 
> > Over 5 years ago I started seriously looking which system to migrate Linux
> > servers to. The reason (one of them) was: on average you have to reboot
> > Linux every 45 days. There is either kernel update or glibc update, so you
> > have to reboot. Compared to that FreeBSD only has updates requiring reboot
> > about once a year. Recently there were other big turns Linux took which
> > very many who use Linux dislike a lot (systemd, firewalld, and friends).
> > This can be considered question of taste, but for me that just confirmed I
> > was right when decided to flee servers to FreeBSD. My favorite CentOS
> > Linux (aka binary replica of RedHat Enterprise) became more like MS
> > Windows, and farther away from UNIX IMHO.
> > 
> > Good luck making right choice. You can install two systems on the same
> > machine, and start using both, then you will make your own choice based on
> > your own experience. If it is server I would strongly recommend FreeBSD
> > (or any of close relatives like NetBSD). If it is workstation, it may be
> > simpler to install FreeBSD based TrueOS (formerly known as PC_BSD). I,
> > however, preferred a bit more works and have FreeBSD on my workstation and
> > on my PC laptop.
> > 
> > Steve mentioned FreeBSD handbook. I would say, FreeBSD is the best
> > documented system IMO.
> > 
> > Just my $0.02
> > 
> > Valeri
> > 
> 
> Actually Arch Linux is the best documented system.  FreeBSD has nothing 
> that is even close to the docs on Arch Linux site.

Well, I wouldn't go as far as (mostly) saying "FreeBSD's
documentation is far inferior to what Arch Linux offers"
(this is what your statement seems to imply), but of course
I agree that Arch has good documentation, even when it comes
to non-english languages (which is a _big_ problem especially
for commercial software!). I can only talk about the german
version of course, which is (more or less) up to date.

The Arch documentation people put lots of work in keeping
the documentation current and correct, which is not easy
with a quickly moving target like Linux (in general).



> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide

FreeBSD's handbook covers all installation steps:

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/bsdinstall.html



> https://bbs.archlinux.org/
> 
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/
> 
> https://security.archlinux.org/
> 
> https://bugs.archlinux.org/
> 
> https://aur.archlinux.org/

FreeBSD has its equivalents for those topics (bug tracking,
source code access, online manuals, Wiki).



> And this doesn't even account for all the mail list not the IRC channels

I don't know if there are FreeBSD-related IRC channels (but
I assume there are), but the mailing lists (164!) allow both
a general and a specific approach to discussion:

https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo



> And they are very helpful

Just as this mailing list here. ;-)



Also consider the offline resources (!) FreeBSD provides for
documentation, such as man pages, handbook, or FAQ, as well as
the documentation supplied with the software included. In my
opinion, this is especially useful if you don't have Internet
connection for some time, but still need to find out stuff.

Scattering documentation across the web, in discussion forums,
wikis, project pages and arbitrary user web pages can be very
problematic for the user, as you can understand. The general
attitudes "nobody needs documentation" or "let the users deal
with documentation" are not helpful. Of course providing
good, current and correct documentation takes time and requires
skilled people, so _honoring_ the present documentation is an
important effort by the users. FOSS projects allow users to
contribute back. This is very different from "deal with it,
you won't get anything else, and if it isn't working, it is
your fault" mentalities usually found in commercial software
is something you obviously don't want to have in FOSS.

Allow me an additional note:

FreeBSD's overall design is something that people _think_
about: All things have their place, and those places can be
logically predicted. For almost anything, there is a manpage:
for system binaries, configuration files, kernel interfaces,
library calls, maintenance procedures and so on - all of them
locally available and searchable without Internet connection.
As a developer, I don't just value that "normal" documentation,
but also "implicit" documentation that the source code consits
of (plus the "explicit" documentation provided in comments).
Especially this is where FreeBSD is superior than many Linux
projects in my opinion (and my experience, which is limited,
simply because I cannot compare everything to anything). If
you have to deal with kernel or library sources to integrate
your components with the OS, you'll be happy about such a
great resource.

In this area, FreeBSD is definitely not inferior to Linux.
I'd even say: In this _specific_ case it's even better. But
as I said - this is just my very individual opinion, as my
days of Linux OS-level development are over. :-)



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...