Linux or FreeBSD?


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If there was an absolute "better", then everyone would be using it. Instead, there are OSes more suited for for certain things, or for certain people and preferences.

Let me try this, anyway...

Networking. I think both would be equally capable, unless you have some specific requirements you were after.

Security. OpenBSD. They leave less "on" by default, and are pretty meticulous, so are traditionally looked at as the leader in "security". So, I would pick that over either Linux or FreeBSD.

Compatibility. To what? Specific hardware? Overall platforms? Business Software applications?

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I agree with mark that neither is a "better", each has it's following and purpose.

Compatibility - FreeBSD implements a RedHat compatibility layer so most linux binaries will install and run on FreeBSD systems. Gaming, only nvidia drivers support 3d acceleration in FreeBSD. If you have ATI graphics, Linux will be your only choice for open source gaming environment.

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compatibility with:

- Hardware

- Overall Platforms

- Business Software applications

Hardware - http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1...q/hardware.html

Software - http://www.freebsd.org/ports/ & http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1...book/ports.html

In general, many open source applications have ports available for native use on FreeBSD. You can easily download, compile, and install your own versions of popular software using the directions above. OpenOffice, mySQL server and just about any open source solution you would need for a business environment.

Growth and Support for FreeBSD is quite strong as you see in this chart:

status.png

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Linux or FreeBSD?

Wich is better?

to:

? Network

? Security

? compatibility

what is yor [sic] recomendation [sic]?

Well from a user standpoint, FreeBSD is more difficult to configure (drivers and so forth) and compared to Linux is lacking in newer hardware support.

But since we're talking servers, that's another story. FreeBSD is famous for being an excellent server OS. Their motto is ?The Power to Serve?. Most of Yahoo! runs on FreeBSD.

For what it's worth, I've never used FreeBSD myself (just Linux and Windows).

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Actually, most of the steps to install drivers on FreeBSD have been as easy or easier than Linux in my personal experience. Open source and commercial drivers are downloaded, compiled if from source, and installed from ports with two commands that could be as simple as:

cd /usr/ports/x11/nvidia-driver
make install clean

Software is just as easy.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Software - http://www.freebsd.org/ports/ & http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1...book/ports.html

In general, many open source applications have ports available for native use on FreeBSD. You can easily download, compile, and install your own versions of popular software using the directions above. OpenOffice, mySQL server and just about any open source solution you would need for a business environment.

"We" have something very similar, it's called Portage. It comes with Gentoo GNU/Linux and Gentoo GNU/FreeBSD.

Security. OpenBSD. They leave less "on" by default, and are pretty meticulous, so are traditionally looked at as the leader in "security". So, I would pick that over either Linux or FreeBSD.

Does OpenBSD have something similar to the NSA's SELinux, RSBAC, PaX stack smashing protection, Grsecurity etc?

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Pimping my own favorite operating system, see sig. cool.gif BSD like, same roots.

Well from a user standpoint, FreeBSD is more difficult to configure (drivers and so forth) and compared to Linux is lacking in newer hardware support.

...

For what it's worth, I've never used FreeBSD myself (just Linux and Windows).

Get!

Out!

Just because you don't get a fancy schmancy GUI installer, doesn't mean it's hard to install and use. And hardware support isn't really an issue these days, unless you buy your stuff from Timbuktu Electronics Inc.

Well, maybe slices may be a weird concept to Linux users, but slices is the way it works with BSDs and alikes.

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"We" have something very similar, it's called Portage. It comes with Gentoo GNU/Linux and Gentoo GNU/FreeBSD.

Nice... looked up the Gentoo FreeBSD bit, didn't know they had spilled over into BSD environment. Glad to see some more focus on the community. I'll give it a try sometime but I'm still learning the system in general and helping the PC-BSD test their beta components for their FreeBSD based distribution.

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  • 2 months later...
"We" have something very similar, it's called Portage. It comes with Gentoo GNU/Linux and Gentoo GNU/FreeBSD.

Does OpenBSD have something similar to the NSA's SELinux, RSBAC, PaX stack smashing protection, Grsecurity etc?

OpenBSD has a "secure-by-default" approach with focus on security and code correctness. There's no need for extra addons like SELinux and grsec kernel patches.

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Go with FreeBSD you'll probably end up learning more, but it's a steeper learning curve compared to an average Linux distribution. BSD is more 'academical'.

OpenBSD if you really want to get a security based distribution...

It all depends on your willingness to learn. Linux is more "user friendly" so might end up automating a bit too much for you. I'd reccomend Slackware as linux distribution, as it's clean and automates very little for you. This way you end up learning Linux, not the particular distribution you are using. ;)

Up to you...

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Something else to consider is that there are two 'styles' of unix. BSD and SVR4. The *BSDs and OSX take the BSD style. Linux, Solaris (8 and later I think) and most other *NIXes take SVR4. Using either is a matter of preference. I'm used to SVR4 because I'm a Linux guy so using a BSD style system (like my mac) seems a bit strange to me.

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Solaris is slowly going their own way. For instance, in OpenSolaris (where Solaris 11 will come from), the SVR4 runlevels are only there for legacy reasons, SMF milestones are the new runlevels.

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OpenBSD has a "secure-by-default" approach with focus on security and code correctness. There's no need for extra addons like SELinux and grsec kernel patches.

Of course they do - that's when they're not accepting the fact that they have security vulnerabilities in their OS. *cough*ipv6 mbuf*cough*

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For a server my choice would be FreeBSD,

Network: FreeBSD is famous for having an excellent tcp/ip stack and was designed to be a server os. You may find some difficulties if you want to use it as a gateway because it's necessary to recompile the kernel and configure firewall rules. I achieved the same thing with Linux easier, but once it's working it's rock solid.

Security and Compatiblity:

You can see a comparison between FreeBSD, Linux and Windows 2000 that includes these two topics:

http://people.freebsd.org/~murray/bsd_flier.html

I've used Linux and switched to FreeBSD and overall I don't regret it. Linux has an easier way of installing and updating packages, in FreeBSD you have to invest a little time in compiling packages but in the end there is some performance gain. In the default config Linux is better configured to handle a big number of simultaneous connections although is easy to configure FreeBSD to act in an equivalent way. (http://wiki.freebsd.org/Performance).

Edited by Vieira
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Horribly out of date and not to mention ludicrously biased (Then again, freebsd.org .. )

Well it's really out of date, but it's not so biased as you may think: there are other sources that say the same. However as I said before Linux handles high numbers of simultaneous connections better than FreeBSD by default (and since kernel 2.4 (?) it includes heavy improvments handling swap memory), although it's relatively easy to optimize FreeBSD.

However on the security side the main problems will came from third part packages vulnerabilities that affect both. FreeBSD in my opinion provides better tools for monitoring and working around these ports vulnerabilities than Linux has for packages.

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  • 1 month later...

well i use FreeBsd

when installing i do a minimum install then download the latest sources then i download the latest ports via cvsup

then install portupgrade to upgrade my installed ports then i installed portaudit to let me know when a port is vornable to attacks

i also do about once a week pkg_version -L = to tell me which packages are out of date

so i think Freebsd is a very secure os if dune right and is more stable

i have used centos linux and freebsd

PS

Linux was made From Unix

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...

Linux was made From Unix

Not correct.

Linux was not created from any unix code. It was coded from scratch to duplicate unix (Minix, to be precise).

Linux is often called a "unix-like" OS, because its functionality and operational behaviors are based on 'what would unix do?', but the code is not "from" any unix.

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  • 2 months later...

I used redhat in a broadcasting server. I had a lot of performance problems and I just installed FreeBSD in the same hardware and all problems were fixed.

Choose FreeBSD if you want security, performance and reliability but a pain in the ass for updating and maintenance of everything as it is considered as elite OS, just for gurus hehe.

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Try DragonFlyBSD. I prefer it to any of the other BSD's. Still not as 'easy' to pick up as Ubuntu, though.

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dfBSD is a lackluster. Dillon promised some uber-SMP implementation, yet they're nowhere near any of his promises, and what's worse, now he thinks he has to focus on and clone ZFS but with cluster specific stuff.

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There's only one reason to chose FreeBSD over Linux. It's not because of the software you can run. Almost all software that can run on Linux can run on FreeBSD (it has a ports system.) It's not because of kernel modifications that allow more security. Afterall, FreeBSD has TrustedBSD which, among other things, implements the NSAs FLASK/TE from SELinux. It's not because it is more "network centered". It's not because Yahoo! trusts FreeBSD. Numerous large organizations trust Linux instead (including amazon, slashdot, wikipedia, youtube).

Nope, it's not because of any of these reasons. The only reason one would choose either above the other is because of the licensing restrictions (or lack thereof). FreeBSD is mostly licensed under the BSD license. People with certain ideologies claim this as a plus because the BSD license is "more free" than the GPL. The Linux kernel is fully licensed under GPL. The proponents of the GPL license claim GPL is superior because it forces all modifications of the code to be licensed under GPL.

The other main difference is that FreeBSD (and other BSDs) is a complete operating system. Linux, technically speaking, is only a kernel. Everything else that included with it is usually provided by whoever packaged your system.

Anyway, you should continue this debate after reading http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants.../bsd4linux1.php It's really a great article that will help you realize why people choose BSD (mainly FreeBSD) over Linux. It isn't without its errors though. For instance, the article claims that the kernel uses BitKeeper to keep track of development. This isn't true anymore. Torvalds wrote Git to remove dependence on a proprietary product (among other reasons.)

There's a lot of literature out there that deals with GPL vs BSD debate.

Edited by Kardona
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