[TAG] Re: Gentoo Installation

[Mike Orr]

[Cc'ing The Answer Gang so it can be published.]

On Fri, Sep 10, 2004 at 04:48:31PM -0700, William Lutts wrote:
> what
> keeps occurring to me is, since I am doing all this the long way around, why
> am I not installing FreeBSD instead? Keeping in mind that I am starving and
> the question may not be rational:
>  
> Eh ... not putting you on the spot ... but in a sentence or two, why would I
> want to run Gentoo instead of FreeBSD, nevermind that one is Linux and one is
> Berkeley UNIX. And both Gentoo and FreeBSD seem to have outstandingly
> brilliant groups of people supporting them. Just curious.

I've been on BSD systems occasionally as a user but I've never run it.
I have friends who prefer FreeBSD over Linux, and one who was running
Linux then FreeBSD and has now switched to Gentoo.  He *says* Portage 
is not just an imitation of the BSD ports system but it also has unique
features that make it better.  I'm not sure if BSD has USE flags, for
instance.  

I personally prefer Linux because its file locations seem more
standardized and adhered to.  Config files go in /etc no matter whether
the program is in /bin, /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, or /opt/bin.
Executables don't go into /usr/lib (although Gentoo does; e.g., 
/usr/lib/apache2/bin/apache2ctl).  The BSD systems I've seen have been
looser, with monstrosities like /usr/local/etc and overuse of /opt.
Now granted, that's just an aesthetic thing, and if there was a critical
performance reason I'd use FreeBSD.  The BSD networking code has a 
reputation of being extremely solid and high peformance.  That would
be a consideration for extremely high traffic servers, but I don't have
any extremely high traffic servers.  ftp.cdrom.com was the
highest-traffic FTP site in the world in the mid 1990s, and it was
running BSD.  (And maybe still is for all I know.)  

I've also heard Linux supports a wider variety of hardware than BSD.
Linux is more in the limelight so vendors tend to port their drivers
to Linux first.  Regarding application programs, BSD has compatibility
libraries so it can run software compiled for Linux, but not vice-versa.
So BSD developers don't discourage companies from porting software to
Linux first because they'll be able to use it anyway.  BSD users seem
content to stay out of the limelight and quietly improve their OS.

All this is secondhand information.  Maybe somebody in the Gang will
pipe up and tell me I'm all wrong.

-- 
-Mike Orr (aka. Sluggo), mso at oz.net  (iron at sense-sea-MegaSub-1-465.oz.net)
   http://sluggo.kicks-ass.org/                  Cxu vi parolas Esperante?