Linux Users Try FreeBSD 5, Windows 762
uninet writes "Most people know what GNU/Linux is, but fewer know about BSD and fewer still have actually used one of the major BSD variants (other than the highly customized Mac OS X). Ed Hurst, a writer and a long time GNU/Linux user, decided to give FreeBSD a try. Will Ed join the ranks of happy FreeBSD users? Find out at OfB.biz." And our own Roblimo, Windows-free for five years, has spent a week learning Windows XP.
Don't bother reading the second article (Score:4, Informative)
Site Slashdotted (Score:3, Informative)
Re:GNU/Linux (Score:4, Informative)
The GNU Project was launched in 1984 to develop a complete Unix-like operating system which is free software: the GNU system. (GNU is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix"; it is pronounced "guh-NEW".) Variants of the GNU operating system, which use the kernel Linux, are now widely used; though these systems are often referred to as "Linux", they are more accurately called GNU/Linux systems.
Re:My own experience from No Windows to XP... (Score:5, Informative)
Roblimo's Linux--Windows Experience... (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know what he's talking about. By default (a stock Windows XPPro install) Windows will download updates in the background, and let you know when they're ready to install. You then have the option of saying "yes, install them now", "no, install them later", or you can click a button (labeled "Details...", I think) to see exactly which updates have been downloaded, and choose precisely which ones you'd like to install. I don't often give a lot of love to Microsoft, but I actually like the way they've handled the Windows Update thing- it's automatic and painless by default but you can have fine-grained control (or disable it totally) if you like.
So I find his claims really false- it sounds like he missed the "Details..." button. It's possible that the pre-installed copy of XP on his laptop was configured by the OEM (Toshiba) to work differently than a "stock" WinXP install, but if he's gonna write an article (and presumably get paid for it) then it's really his duty to figure that out.
I don't know if that's the case, just saying it's possible. In my opinion, anybody who is going to review an OS should really be reviewing a stock install, not some pre-configured OEM install that might differ from the "standard" experience.
At any rate, I'm only a couple of paragraphs into his review, and already I can't take anything he says seriously because there's such a glaring error right off the bat. Nice job.
Not the point (Score:2, Informative)
Drag mouse over text
Right-Click
Select 'Copy'
Move cursor to new location
Right-click
Select 'Paste'
Drag mouse over text
Move cursor to new location
Click both buttons
3 less clicks
Those who know have been using FreeBSD... (Score:3, Informative)
Recently my business partner and I moved to an office, we were getting enough business, so I decided that I'd DL the latest FreeBSD ISO's and formatted over my Linux drive with FreeBSD 5-Current. Gee, with KDE 3 and everything, I couldn't notice any whopping difference. The OSS desktop community doesn't cater to FreeBSD as FreeBSD proably still has its place on my Racks as a server, but when we hire a secetary, looks like she will get the FreeBSD tower with Openoffice instead of Linux.
Biggest thing I think, is that FreeBSD still has the old text based installer, but its not as ass backwards as say 2.2 or 3.4. For most noob's the YaST in SuSE and whatever it is on RH is very pleasing and better to use. Plus Linux gets support for the latest and greatest in hardware with drivers, etc.
But if your just looking for a nice, stable, OS, you can't loose with either FreeBSD or Linux. Especially if you use Gnome or KDE. Looks the same, and proably 99.95% of the people would never know.
Re:My own experience from No Windows to XP... (Score:1, Informative)
ROTFL.
No... no, it's not.
It's a copy, and a poor imitation at that. There's plenty that StarOffice just plain can't [yet] do.
I'll agree with you over Mozilla. Well, Firebird, last time I tried it Mozilla still felt a bit clunky, but Firebird great. Shame they won't support the whacky IE-centric "document" calls in JS, so it could be a complete replacement, instead of 99% though. Extension/fork, anyone?
As for the experience, it's purely subjective. This poster obviously did have a superior experience. You may not. That's part of the vast tapestry of life.
Re:Ports vs. Apt-get (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No kidding (Score:4, Informative)
If taken in that light, it could be a kind of amusing parody showing someone coming from the Linux viewset getting annoyed at features that Linux applications have that Windows applications do not. Like authors who seem to go out of their way to not understand some Linux-ism, he's going out of his way to strictly apply the way Linux works to a Windows desktop, and showing where it fails.
Given articles decrying Linux basically for being Linux, a parody article decrying Windows for being Windows could be rather amusing. I'm hoping this article was a joke, but I can't find anything within it that would suggest that it was. If it's not a joke, then I agree with you 100% - this article was annoying drek and not worth the time I spent to read it.
Re:Roblimo's Linux--Windows Experience... (Score:2, Informative)
Start > Settings > Control Panel > System > Automatic Updates > Uncheck "Keep my computer up to date..."
Re:Tried FreeBSD... (Score:3, Informative)
1. Find name of package you need
2. Find the package
3. Download package you need
4. Build package you need
5. Find and download any and all dependencies (the real time consumption)
6. make install
The order is more like this.
a) to build from source
1. Find name of package (either via `cd
2. cd to the port dir
3. `make install clean`
b) to get pre-compiled source
1. Find name of package (either via `cd
2. `pkg_add -rv packagename`
For example I can install kde in either 5-10 mins or 2-3 hours. The FreeBSD has many more options and is very powerful. A look at the ports man page and all of the pkg_* tool's man pages would revel alot of extra usage.
Two useful articles from onlamp:
Ports Tricks [onlamp.com]
Cleaning and Customizing Your Ports [onlamp.com]
Re:My own experience from No Windows to XP... (Score:2, Informative)
Ask yourself what it says about an Operating System if an application or device driver can bring the entire system down. Why is that possible? I've still never (knock wood) had all of Linux actually crash on me. I've had X freeze once or twice (that's what control-alt-backspace is for) and obviously several application crashes.
Drivers and applications don't crash operating systems. Operating systems crash themselves.
Re:My own experience from No Windows to XP... (Score:1, Informative)
1. http://apt.freshrpms.net ./synaptic (nice graphical interface browse the selection and click on the things you want. Make a desktop shorcut and you never have to use the shell again PHew!)
2. install apt (one click after download on most modern distros)
3. open a shell
4. type: apt-get install synaptic (push enter and watch)
5.
6. If it is not on this list it does not exist for you. You will never be bothered by dependencies again. Leave the bleeding edge for those that know how to deal with bleeding edge problems. And stop making this argument it is very yesterday.
Re:My own experience from No Windows to XP... (Score:3, Informative)
Quick Launch in 2000 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Linux and OpenBSD user (Score:2, Informative)
For my own uses I keep my OpenBSD configuration files in RCS and so when I do a new install of it I slap my configuration files on the box and I've got a new working system going very quickly. This is really great since my firewall hardware is rather old and so I actually have one box running as my firewall and then have a second OpenBSD firewall all patched up and ready to go so if my primary unit goes down. I'm comtemplating a 3rd firewall box so I can have a test one that I can install new versions of OpenBSD as they are made available. 3.4 is coming the beginning of November.
I've even pulled out my 12 year old 486DX/33 system from mothballs and with $17.00 worth of upgrades from the local PC recycler (EISA SCSI controller, EISA network card, and 1GB SCSI2 drive), the box is now pulling print server duty for Linix and Windows system in our office using Samba, "apsfilter" and "ghostscript". OpenBSD is a nice small OS that leaves lots of room for spooling print jobs on a 1GB disk. About the only down side is it requires a bit of disk space to keep all of the source available for patches and building new releases. I build my own release on a box I have with a large hard drive and copy my built release to the other less capable OpenBSD boxes using "scp", and "ssh" to update the boxes remotely.