Hi!
I'm a linux's and now using red hat 9.0 but I want to change in the future to try bsd, or linux: debian or slackware.
I would like to know if Bsd is an OS faster and stable than this
linux distributios like debian or slackware, or if is similar.
I use my pc for home: programming, multimedia, all the applications.
I've seen that there aren't as many drivers for multimedia devices on
bsd than on Linux.
I have a intel p4 machine and I want a OS that will be stable, and
runs the faster as posible.
Other question I have, is if is better bsd for the internet connection,
if it goes faster than the linux dritributions?

Cheers!
Gerardo

well they are all linux distributions, my advice try out gentoo. You can compile your base system and the emerge package manager is definetly awesome. I love the distro and i used to use RedHat SuSE, and even Mandrake, aswell as debian. This personally is my favorite.

http://www.gentoo.org

Many people say that bsd does run faster and more stable, but i have never benchmarked it and to do a meaningful test would be hard and contreversial , personally i prefer bsd but i love both bsd and linux. Try it out and find what you like. The reasons i prefer bsd are : consistant filesystem layout , practice of least astonishment, ports , It isn't as rash with its changes , more mature , the development is more focused, it just makes sense to me,....
Reasons i love linux, the gpl, hetrogenity, RMS , cutting edge , daring , Hardware support is better(not to much though and excepting netbsd)
As long as you aren't switching to windows its all good.

coondog - i don't know wtf you are talking about. Bsd is not a linux distro by any means . If i remember right emerge pkg is a fork/takeoff of the bsd ports idea.

I'm sorry man I didn't realize that I had written that, you are correct in essence they are similar but are not. One was developed and maintained currently I beleive at berkeley. Sorry about the misadvice, it was late that night and I was trying to help someone out. What BSD do you use ? I'm eventually going setup a server with FreeBSD. As a matter of fact, people like Yahoo! and I believe even Google are running BSD systems. So as far as if there is anything said i believe it's coming from reputable companies who are doing well on the web.

Oh yes and the idea with linux for the emerge does come from BSD or so i believe, but you should try it out. Definetly an awesome packaging system. It's a must check out.

Yes, i have heard good things about what gentoo and debian have done with the ports idea ,I am going to install gentoo or debian next. (if i can manage to break one of my freebsd installs). Yeahh i am sure yahoo is bsd but i am pretty sure google is on linux (i can't even imagine how many machines they have!)

A modified version of Red Hat IIRC

Apparently BSD is for you if you want a nice secure and stable environment. I plan on giving it a go, I just need a new box to put it on first

I recommend Gentoo though, especially seeing that you have linux experience already. Everything will run as fast as possible on your system because Gentoo is a source based linux distro. Every time you install something, source code is downloaded and compiled and installed. Oh yeah dependencies are automatically installed for you too

sus out www.gentoo.org and have a read about portage. It's what sets gentoo apart from the rest IMHO.

Erm, the Gentoo package system sounds like a direct copy of the FreeBSD ports system. I don't see how that is an advantage over FreeBSD. In fact, OpenBSD, and I think all the other BSDs have the ports system, so again it's not a selling point over BSD.

If you look at Netcraft.com and check out some of their graphs and tracking information, you'll quickly realize that ALL the top 50 or so most stable sites are running a version of BSD. Even though BSD makes up a small percentage of the site platforms when compared to Win2K(3) and Linux, it's the BSD sites that always come out on top for performance and especially reliability.

I'm slowly switching my entire home network to BSD (mostly OpenBSD) to replace my Linux boxes. The Linux systems need to be patched too frequently and Linux in general strikes me as barely contained chaos. BSD is a much more thoughtful and rational OS and you don't have the wild flux that you do with Linux. OpenBSD especially has a obsession with correctness and as a result the security is MUCH better.

Wait so are you saying that the fact there are more people patching and working on linux that is not a better operating system. I mean I don't understand basically it's UNIX/LINUX your choice. Now UNIX has been around longer does that mean it's more stable as a result of that, because I believe the market is emerging with Linux and is the good way to go, but I could be wrong. As far as user end, I've tried both and I love my Gentoo linux box and my FreeBSD box. Both are my picks of all the litters. Actually I don't know where but i'll try to see if i can find that site i was looking at. Basically there is a show called <a href="http://www.techtv.com">Tech TV</a> that had a show of a SuSE linux vs. BSD install. It was entertaining to watch the ease of use in an installer versus the more complex install, with more power and flexibility. Should check it out, definetly proves that BSD is much better. Hey it was developed/maintained where I want to complete my college years

I wouldn't rely on netcraft's uptime charts as a true indicator of stability and performance, especially since there are several OS's which have a max uptime and will go back to zero once that point has been reached.

From Netcrafts FAQ:
So those "longest uptime" charts will be skewed towards the OS's which don't cycle uptime. That being said, I think you can find some Linux distro's which will give FreeBSD a run for it's money in terms of stability and reliability. In the end I think FreeBSD wins, but not by a whole heck of alot.

Obviously if you want your system to have that latest NVIDIA GE Mega-Foo-bar-tastic VideoCard, then you going to run into reliablity problems with bleeding-edge drivers. And FreeBSD just flat out doesn't support the latest hardware (which is pretty common for the other Unix and Unix-derivative platforms) whereas some of the Linux distros support just about anything. So that is definitely a trade-off.

Depends on what you want. I like to run services and I'm not particularly demanding as a desktop user. For desktop all I want is web browsing, e-mail, and ocasionally chat. On the other hand, I want servers that stay up forever and never need patched.

My beef with Linux is that I need to keep patching vulnerabilities constantly. My Mandrake 9.0 box has just as many, or MORE security fixes than my WinXP laptop (not my choice, it's a work issued machine). On the other hand, the only thing I've had to patch recently on my BSD boxes was OpenSSH (and I had one less patch on BSD than Linux because I run the BSD-native OpenSSH, not the portable version that Linux and most other OSs use).

Sure Linux is bleeding edge, but who needs the latest nVidia or ATI card in their server? Server technology doesn't move at nearly the same pace as desktop (mostly gaming) technology. The most impressive breakthroughs are with processors (64-bit architecture) and those are being supported by all OSs so Linux has no advantage there.

My point with BSD is that it doesn't NEED to patch often because it doesn't have as many FLAWS! Don't be fooled into thinking you're getting a better deal with Linux just because you get way more "updates", most of those are security patches to fix very real and very exploitable problems.

By the way to Capt_Caveman, according to the Netcraft info that would actually handicap FreeBSD versus Linux and Windows, but dispite that FBSD still manages to come out in the top performing sites over and over.

Alright, so what you two are saying is that FreeBSD is winning on the server end, but when it comes down to a more home use desktop linux is a better option. Here's one question, would both of you consider something like Gentoo a cross between the two. That's what I was trying to establish if Gentoo in essence gave you the best of both worlds, because from your base system up you're compiling the progs, and then the packaging system is similar to BSD systems. As far as setting up linux servers ?? are there more security risks, because don't both in essence run similar server software (apache2, and so on). And don't most higher end machines come with ATI and NVIDIA graphics cards (desktops atleast), wouldn't it make sense for FBSD to implicate some changes to support the hardware ... By the way both of your input has been insightful and definetly helping.

peace and mad love

Chort, I totally agree with you in terms of the server side of the spectrum. In fact my webserver is a FreeBSD box and the thing is rock solid. But I had to actually downgrade the hardware to get it to run. KVM switch...forget it, Tracball mouse...sorry, etc. But if I had to choose an OS to run a website that couldn't have downtime, I would pick a BSD any day of the week.

It's all the extra functionality (or crap depending on your outlook) that's included with Linux that leads to all those patches. That's why distros like Mandrake and Redhat that do have alot of bloat need to be patched so often. *BSD gets away without so few patches simply because it's a minimalistic design and the software that is included is screened pretty extensively. It also helps that security and stability are primary concern rather than having universal hardware support.

If you read that post again, it's only newer FreeBSD releases that cycle the uptime back to zero. So it's likely that all the top uptime boxes are older FreeBSD releases or one of the other *BSDs (their uptimes are in the 800+days). Newer FreeBSDs, Linux, HP-UX and Solaris shouldn't have an uptime of greater than 497 days. Windows shouldn't have an uptime longer than the next security patch release (which at the current rate is about every 4 seconds). But no, those FreeBSD boxes on the uptime list actually have an advantage because older FreeBSD releases don't reset their uptime.

coondog I've never tried Gentoo, so I can't really say. But there are some minimalistic Linux distros available that would be more like a BSD. Slackware comes to mind. Plus remember that most distros will give you the option of selecting the packages you want, so if you're concerned about security just install only what you need.

Well, you can never have a Linux distro that's totally free from Linux security problems. What you're forgetting, coondog, is that BSD and Linux are totally different kernels. They have different executable binary support (although BSD can run Linux binaries and in fact OpenBSD is switching to the ELF format), they run different file systems, etc. The Linux KERNEL by it's nature is much less controlled than the BSD kernel, and that's mostly where I find fault. Sure you get hardware support a little faster, but that doesn't matter to me in the least.

For the point about high-end systems having high-end video accelerators, that's largely not true. Servers only need to run basic VGA graphics (if that even). The high-end video cards are used for two things: games, and graphics rendering. The graphics rendering cards are completely different than what you buy in the store, and usually there are dedicated workstations built for them with proprietary hardware, so that's another story entirely. So basically the only people who use cutting edge nVidia and ATI cards are gamers. You're not going to be playing Quake on the company's web server (you BETTER not be) so that's not an issue.

For my taste the Linux kernel itself is too immature and hasn't stablized enough. Supposedly someone a little more strict is taking over the final approver control for the 2.6 kernel, so maybe we will see less chaos and more thoughtfullness when the RCs for 2.6 start coming out.

I still do not in any way see Linux as a good alternative to BSD at the enterprise level. For desktop users who want the latest and greatest Linux may be a better option, but remember there is a lot of cutting edge support in FreeBSD 5.1 as well so it's not all Linux. By the way I just discovered last night that nVidia is making FreeBSD drivers now.

Just for clarification, a netcraft of google shows:

The site google.com is running GWS/2.1 on Linux