Linux, BSD (Free, Open, Net)

[vivek]

Hi Friends,

I hope that you will enlighten me on the following

1. Difference between Linux and the BSD OSes
2. Difference between the various types of BSD OSes that are available (FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD)
3. Support for linux applications on BSD.
4. Is it possible to run programs compiled for Linux to run under the BSD Oses ?
5. Is it necessary to "Port" applications from Linux to the various flavors of BSD ? This would mean a huge job of porting all the good development tools + all good applications that are available under Linux.
6. Any ideas about the stability of the BSD OSes? I just saw the FreeBSD box at Fry's. The box claimed that FreeBSD was in development for the past 20 years and was the most mature and stable OS yet.
7. How good is the hardware support in BSD OSes ?
8. Any helpful hint about user experiences that you may have with BSD OSes.
9. Your suggestion about which BSD should be considered among existing BSD OSes.

Thanks in advance.

Warm Regards.

 

[Nothinman]

1. Difference between Linux and the BSD OSes

The main technical difference is the kernel. Linux uses the kernel Linus started writing in his house ~10 years ago, the BSDs use the kernel spawned from 386BSD, although I don't think any of them resemble their original code any longer.

There's also a licensing difference, Linux is under the GPL which says if you make any changes to the source and make the product available you have to also make the changes available. The BSD license says you can do whatever you want with the source as long as you leave the orignal license intact, meaning you can fork closed projects from BSD licensed software.

2. Difference between the various types of BSD OSes that are available (FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD)

I'm not really a BSD user, but generally this is what I see:

FreeBSD: Targetted to be a fast, secure, free unix. Emphasis on software and hardware support.
NetBSD: Like a school project, made to be as portable as possible and runs on anything with a CPU.
OpenBSD: Forked from NetBSD because of personal differences with developers, aims to be as secure as humanly possible out of the box.

3. Support for linux applications on BSD

All of the BSDs have some sort of Linux binary emulation so they can run most all Linux programs. Since almost all the most popular programs are open-source anyway they've already been compiled to run on the BSDs, atleast FreeBSD.

5. Is it necessary to "Port" applications from Linux to the various flavors of BSD ? This would mean a huge job of porting all the good development tools + all good applications that are available under Linux.

Depending on the complication and point of the application little to no work may be needed or it may be virtually impossible, applications that make use of the Linux /proc filesystem become extremely tied to Linux.

6. Any ideas about the stability of the BSD OSes? I just saw the FreeBSD box at Fry's. The box claimed that FreeBSD was in development for the past 20 years and was the most mature and stable OS yet.

They are as stable, if not more, because they're older and a lot less radically changing.

7. How good is the hardware support in BSD OSes ?

Depends on what you mean, you can get NetBSD to run on a VAX. For normal PC hardware you better check the HCL of whichever BSD you want to install.

9. Your suggestion about which BSD should be considered among existing BSD OSes.

They all can do probably much anything you need, I would recommend FreeBSD though because it has a lot more users and gets a lot more "QA" from it's users and it can be made just as secure as OpenBSD for firewall duties.

Just make sure whatever you choose you learn it well and have good security practices, no OS is secure if the admin is an idiot.

 

[cureless]

Nothinman answered a lot of the questions, but I'll add some.

1. The difference lies in the kernel code. The aim of each project is also different. The development model of the system is also different. What we call the system is also different. For examlpe, Linux is really only the kernel. The BSDs include the kernel and basic system. That's why you don't ask "What distribution of FreeBSD are you running?".

2. FreeBSD aims to be the best server OS out there. They limit themselves to the architectures that "matter" for them, x86 and alpha.
NetBSD tries to be as portable as possible, it'll run on your toaster. OpenBSD targets security specifically, it's more like FreeBSD than NetBSD, but offers stuff like encrypted Filesystems and swap, etc.

3. What do you mean "Linux apps"? A lot of the apps that you see in Linux are standard apps to Unix. These are available in source and can normally be compiled in Linux.
4. Some binary Linux programs can run on BSDs. The BSD's provide a Linux compatibility layer. This works best (only?) on the x86 architecture.
5. Porting is normally preaty easy. A lot of programs come ready to be compiled for all of those systems. As Nothinman said, programs that use specific Linux features will not work, for example, /proc or some Linux kernel modules.

6. BSD OSs have _Very_ good stability. They are normally conservative in their STABLE branch, which makes it very stable

7. As mentioned, Linux wants to run on almost everything with everything. FreeBSD aims at the server market, so you might not find some of the more "exotic" drivers that Linux might have. However, it has pretty good support for x86 hardware.
NetBSD tries to run on everything and supports all basic hardware on a gizillion system types. OpenBSD is similar to FreeBSD. The fact that they all share a common code base makes the porting of drivers relatively easy.
Porting from BSD to Linux and viceversa is lots of the times technically possible, but License differences limit this.

8. Try it out for yourself. Read the FreeBSD handbook.

9 Try FreeBSD first. NetBSD is probably not interesting unless you have a variety of architectures. OpenBSD is also an option.

cl

 

[n0cmonkey]

You all basically got it. FreeBSd is also working on a PPC port, and OpenBSD focuses on security and stability. Also, OpenBSD is morelike NetBSD than FreeBSD, but that is alittle point.

OpenBSD has the best documentation between Open and Free (in my opinion), but the documentation for the BSDs has beaten the pants off of the documentation for linux (also in my opinion).

I am a huge openbsd fan, but because of lack of smp I will be running freebsd on my new rig. So if you have questions feel free to ask