Re: Comparison of BSD vs Linux? (here goes the flame war!)

["Scott R. Ehrlich" <user=81@nabble.blu.org>]

 On Thu, 15 Nov 2007, Kristian Erik Hermansen wrote: 

> On Nov 15, 2007 8:30 AM, Scott Ehrlich <[hidden email]> wrote: 
>> I'm in a class at Usenix/Lisa and the instructor is a BSD fan and hates 
>> Linux.  I'd like to get insight from the list of viewpoints, security, 
>> comparisons, package availability, etc, of the differences between the 
>> basic worlds of UNIX-like distros. 
> 
> Viewpoints: 
> BSD does not run on laptops as well as Linux does -- hardware support 
> is lacking. 
> 
> Security: 
> OpenBSD generally has Linux beat.  But Openwall Linux is a strong secure distro. 
> 
> Comparisons: 
> BSD and Linux are very similar.  The same GNU tools run on both and 
> the kernel does relatively the same thing :-) 
> 
> Package Availability: 
> Linux wins hands down.  Think of all the software that is available 
> out-of-the-box for Linux but not BSD.  You should even consider 
> proprietary software.  Can you run VMware, Skype, etc on BSD?  I never 
> tried.  Can you have the latest Gnome desktop running on OpenBSD 
> without breaking everything?  Possibly.  How about video driver 
> packages?  Rarely do I see 64-bit BSD driver support... 
> 
>> Second, what are the differences among Open/Free/Net BSD? 
> 
> OpenBSD == BSD + security features 
> FreeBSD == BSD + well maintained, easy to use 
> NetBSD == BSD + portability, runs on almost any architecture 
> 
>> I'm not calling for any wars.   I'm looking for genuine education to 
>> understand the worlds between Linux and BSD, and then among the BSD 
>> distros. 
> 
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