BSD vs Linux

[K.J.]

I've never used BSD, but I've used Linux and am wondering what the differences/similarities between BSD and Linux are.

When I say BSD, I mean FreeBSD, OpenBSD, or NetBSD.

K.J.

[df]

I've never used BSD, but I've used Linux and am wondering what the differences/similarities between BSD and Linux are.

When I say BSD, I mean FreeBSD, OpenBSD, or NetBSD.

both are unix-a-likes. the BSD's have more 'heritage' or 'lineage' if you like, free/net/openbsd are based on the bsd4.4 series of releases, and prior to that, all the way back down the Berkerly release tree right down to the K&R original unix.

politically they differ in the license (BSD/GPL).

probably the most significant difference is the BSD's are each a complete system that is all maintained by the same people who maintain kernel and userland. whereas Linux being kernel and each distribution has a different userland, different layout (changing with more people coming into line with the LSB, making things more uniform etc).

the BSDs have their own package system, and like anything, you will get rabid advocates for the BSD way or the RPM way or the Debian way. To me its just another packaging system. I have not used linux since way back in the 0.9 kernel days and tarballs and lots of floppy disks. I had a brief encounter with redhat and RPMS. My only use of debians package system and install system was its sparc port. Lets just say I found it the worst thing ever, and quickly put netbsd over the top of it.

personally I really like the cohesiveness of having the same people handle the kernel and userland. It feels far more 'complete'.
(and I really love doing makeworld which I run about once every two weeks, and recompile my whole system, ports excepted.)

also, if you admin a unix machine, the big difference is the bsd's use the BSD init system, linux distributions use the SYSV init system (althrough Slackware has a semi bsd style init system).

I think FreeBSD is going to move to use the new init style system that NetBSD uses.

If you dont really 'config' your base startup scripts, the BSD/SYSV thing is irrelevant.

If you have used a Linux machine and not found it entirly too dificult, then using a BSD system would prove no trouble. All the skills translate over.