WHICH BSD ????

[AdmiralAK]

Well, after having loaded OS/2, BeOS, and Linux (Mandrake), I am looking for BSD.  I have copies of OpenBSD and NetBSD (both old).  I am on the prowl for a download, so which one should I get?

NetBSD ?
OpenBSD?
FreeBSD ?


Why ?

Admiral

[Master of Reality]

Well.... OpenBSd is bare bones, high security, nothing included except whats absolutely necassary.
FreeBSD is kinda like linux, its suited for almost everyone.
NetBSD, i havent tryed... well i've tryed to install but i never really played around with it, I belive X11 did.

[TheQuirk]

No, I belive *I* did. People are really obsessed with OpenBSD here, though, so you might aswell try it. It's just a fork of NetBSD written by a paranoid man from Canada that got kicked out of the core NetBSD development team for being a jerk.

[Siplus]

quote:(Cant wait for Slack 9.0)

one of my computer-litterate friends just gave me a slackware9 cd 2 days ago...i'm a redhat user, but slack9 looks cool. i like the 'wtf' command  

[slave]

*BSD is dying!  Netcraft confirms!

 One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

 You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

 FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

 Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

 OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

 Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

 All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

 Fact: *BSD is dying

[runkpock]

FreeBSD is good for a  workstation, and a  server.
NetBSD is great for multi-platform support. Also a
great server  and *snicker* workstation. OpenBSD is great as a  cup coaster (install cdrom). I really
cant belive the (Free|Net)BSD numbers are that low,
i doubt the "sanity" of those numbers, at my office
there are 2 linux boxes, and 1 FreeBSD and 1 NetBSD.
Do your self a favor and learn BSD Unix. And I am
running linux right now, so I'll stop talking.

[Siplus]

i started using linux when i got here not too long ago, so that tells ya that i'm very new. i tried to download FreeBSD 5 i think, but the iso doesn't work  

i don't see why bsd should be doing bad. how can it be that different from linux, which is currently has an inclining userbase?

[choasforages]

i can't wait until FreeBSD 5 stabilizes and gets a few minor bugs kicked out of it, and gets put back to full speed/*operating systems do not run fast with lots and lots of debug code and such*/, not to mention a few more features. have you seen devfs under it, or seen the way /dev works on osx? it works and makes my life easyeir/*but it still needs some work autodetecting partitions on a jaz drive*/

[Calum]

netcraft doesn't seem to realise that the *BSD stuff that's going on now does not need a market share.

*BSD are really stable and secure environments, so they are intrinsically suited for anywhere where a rock solid computer is needed, perhaps with not much user interaction. these machines will always be needed, and *BSD will always be being developed, by its developers who are admirably devoted to *BSD.

i have only tried freeBSD, and even then only a little, but it looked really good, if a little difficult for a linux user (NOT guru) to figure out at first.

Personally i have heard go with FreeBSD over the other four or 5 major BSDs because it is more general purpose than the rest.

and siplus, it's simply because of two things, and both boil down to *BSD people not giving a shit if they conform to people's expectations. first reason, the *BSD stuff is not compatible with stallman's idea of real Free software, and since stallman is cheif Free software evangelist in the world, *BSD doesn't get as much promotion as other systems. second reason: *BSD has a lot of initials in its name, nobody's made the effort to standardise it, to write nice pretty windows-like installers, or to make it in any way palatable to people who have not already used unix or BSD in some way. this is not to say BSD is not great, from all accounts it is excellent, but it doesn't give a shit if anybody knows that!
and that's why linux is the poster child of Free software, and *BSD is the ugly genius that gets kept in the cellar out of sight of the neighbours.

[ March 27, 2003: Message edited by: Calum: crusader for justice & peace ]