BSD vs. *NIX

[Master of Reality]

i want to try out alternative operating systems.
I have Red Hat as my main computer and server, but i would like to try an operating system that differs from red hat. Do any of the other *nix operating systems differ very much from Red hat? Has anyone else used several different *nix's?

How about BSD, I have a copy of FreeBSD and used it from the command line for a couple minutes, but thats it. Whats is the differences between NetBSD, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD?

[askani]

BSD is basically UNIX. That means waaaay better secrity than Linux and a totally different kernel. My recomendation for you would be to get Open BSD for your server, cause that's pretty much the most secure (free)OS for servers. If you wanna know what it's like without actually trying one out look at Slackware Linux. That's the Linux distro that most resembles UNIX. You'll se it's got a different strartup process and all, but the packages are pretty much identical to Linux.I'm personally running mandrake, but that's just because OpenBSD only comes on CDs when you buy it, no ISO images for download.     Ah well, Linux ain't half bad....  :cool:

[askani]

Oh, and that's pretty much it for the UNIXe. There's also Solaris but that's quite user-unfriendly, HP-UX but that's only on HP graphic stations, and IRIX which is used on SGI comps (most of these aren't even made for i386 processors).

[voidmain]

HP-UX is not only for HP Graphics stations. HP has some massive hardware and most of it doesn't even have a video card. See http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/scalableservers/superdome/index.html usually used for very large scale Database servers and the like.

Then of course there is AIX (IBM RS/6000 servers and the fastest super computers in the world), SCO, Darwin, AT&T, Minix, Xenix, Alpha UNIX, and many many many others..  But you are limited on what you can run on x86 hardware. Most *NIX like OSs are designed to run on vendor specific hardware.

[ April 20, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[MikeU]

BSD differs from linux in that BSD was derived from the original AT&T/bell labs unix.  But was worked on so much at berkely that none of the original code exists within BSD today.

BSD is a microkernel, while linux is a monolithic kernel.  microkernel = a lot of smaller programs, while monolithic kernel = one big program.  Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but BSD is a lot more mature than Linux, and probably more stable, secure, etc.

All BSD variants are pretty similar ( so I hear ), but I've only used FreeBSD.  FreeBSD strives to be the best BSD for i386 and Alpha processors.  NetBSD strives to be the most portable BSD, works on pretty much any processor, ( again, so I hear ), and I'm not sure about OpenBSD, I haven't read much about it other than that it is really secure.

I hope that helps.

Mike

[Calum]

openBSD is the one where all the code has been thoroughly checked and is almost 100% guaranteed to be bug free, or so i've heard.

[askani]

bug free is not the most important part of Open BSD. if you look at their site, it says there "x years without a remote hole". don't confuse bugs with holes.

Open BSD, to sum up, is the most secure out-of-the-box BSD. Other than the kernel, BSDs are also way more stable than Linux (hard to beleive, eh?) because of their different startup procedure. The Linux startup is based on System V, an old, old operating system. The only good thing to com out of it is this startup procedure which uses symlinks to programs for each runlevel. The BSD style startup uses some batch files that have the direct command lines for the daemons that need to be run. This is also used with Slackware, and that's why ksysv (the startup editor) is pretty much useless in slackware, and yet it keeps being included, for some reason.

[voidmain]

I use both BSD init and SysV init and have for over 10 years and I'll stick with SysV any day of the week thank you very much. And by the way, that has nothing to do with stability.  I certainly won't argue that BSD has the better TCP/IP stack though among other things.

And ksysv is worthless even if you do have a SysV init. RedHat's "chkconfig" is the best SysV utility I have seen, next to managing it manually.  And SysV scripts call daemons directly just like BSD scripts but it is my opinion that things are much more organized in SysV init.

I must admit that I started with the BSD style init over 10 years ago and when I first ran into SysV init I didn't like it, that is until I understood it.  Now I *much* prefer it.

By the way, I have several BSD boxes as well as Linux boxes. I enjoy playing with Linux more though, if for no other reason maybe because at times it can be more of a challenge.  

[ April 22, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[Calum]

that's exactly it, isn't it, that is a reason why linux is almost trying NOT to become a desktop OS, because then there'd be no challenge.

quote:From: [email protected] (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Free minix-like kernel sources for 386-AT
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 5 Oct 91 05:41:06 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki
Do you pine for the nice days of minix-1.1, when men were men and wrote their own device drivers? Are you without a nice project and just dying to cut your teeth on a OS you can try to modify for your; needs? Are you finding it frustrating when everything works on minix? No more all-nighters to get a nifty program working? Then this post might be just for you
As I mentioned a month(?) ago, I'm working on a free version of a minix-lookalike for AT-386 computers. It has finally reached the stage where it's even usable (though may not be depending on what you want), and I am willing to put out the sources for wider distribution. It is  just version 0.02 (+1 (very small) patch already), but I've successfully run bash/gcc/gnu-make/gnu-sed/compress etc under it.
Sources for this pet project of mine can be found at nic.funet.fi (128.214.6.100) in the directory /pub/OS/Linux.
The directory also contains some README-file and a couple of binaries to work under linux (bash, update and gcc, what more can you ask for . Full kernel source is provided, as no minix code has been used. Library sources are only partially free, so that cannot be distributed currently. The system is able to compile "as-is" and has been known to work. Heh. Sources to the binaries (bash and gcc) can be found at the same place in /pub/gnu.

Therein lies the challenge factor, linux users will often be people who want to be able to make their OS better, this means it will always be improving, but it also means it will also always be a step behind its own capabilities, or else if it does catch up. a lot of developers will go elsewhere, until it falls behind again.

If on the other hand you want something other than a challenge, an alternative unix style OS may be for you.

Actually a lot of it is moot, because one particular area of linux (or some other OS like it) may be developed to the point where it is usable or even foolproof for certain uses, and if those uses are all you plan to use that OS for, then fine.