Today I was thinking about BSD. BSD is not just a kernel like linux but it is a whole os. People say BSD is more stable. I use linux. SHould I try BSD out?

Sure, why not. The BSDs can all be had for free, there''s certainly at least one that works on your box. Just don''t expect a mind blowing experience. Linux and *BSD can differ in the details. But the overall, broad experiences are very, very similiar.

quote: Original post by tortoise
Sure, why not. The BSDs can all be had for free, there''s certainly at least one that works on your box. Just don''t expect a mind blowing experience. Linux and *BSD can differ in the details. But the overall, broad experiences are very, very similiar.

Yes. The differences will be things you as a user will hardly ever notice. Things like the way the initialization scripts work, and stuff like that. Maybe it''s more stable, so if you''re running a server that needs to be up 99% of the time instead of 98%, then try BSD (my point is, there probably isn''t any measurable difference for the user, it''s more in sys admin stuff).

quote: Original post by tortoise
Sure, why not. The BSDs can all be had for free, there''s certainly at least one that works on your box. Just don''t expect a mind blowing experience. Linux and *BSD can differ in the details. But the overall, broad experiences are very, very similiar.

Wrong, actually, BSDi isn''t free. There are free variants to it though.

OpenBSD which is said to be the most secure.
FreeBSD which is the fastest BSD.
NetBSD which runs on the most architecture.

[Cyberdrek | the last true sorcerer | Spirit Mage - mutedfaith.com][ Administrator & WebMaster GuLSE]

quote: Original post by Russell
Yes. The differences will be things you as a user will hardly ever notice. Things like the way the initialization scripts work, and stuff like that. Maybe it''s more stable, so if you''re running a server that needs to be up 99% of the time instead of 98%, then try BSD (my point is, there probably isn''t any measurable difference for the user, it''s more in sys admin stuff).

That varries. Older version of FreeBSD, I think it was 4.1 or 4.2. The first thing I noticed was the users home directory. They''re in ''/usr/$username'' I think they''re linked in /home now too but what the heck. I just found that a bit curious.

[Cyberdrek | the last true sorcerer | Spirit Mage - mutedfaith.com][ Administrator & WebMaster GuLSE]

That would be curious indeed.

Fwiw, My /usr on FreeBSD 5.0-Release:

$ ls /usr
X11R6/ compat/ games/ lib/ libexec/ obj/ sbin/ src/
bin/ doc/ include/ libdata/ local/ ports/ share/ sup/



Anyway while just the linux kernel itself is rather sparten in os terms (as one would expect a kernel to be) GNU/linux (i.e. all the other programs you always find with the linux kernel, in near any distro) make for a fairly compleat and feature rich OS, I think.