I am running SuSE 9.1 64 bit and WinXP.

Is there any reason for me to tri boot with FreeBSD or something? and what would be the gains of using a BSD?

I have a 160Gig HDD so space is not an option (I'm not a gamer, so i'll probably use 4 at maximum :P)

If for the trial sake only, then Slackware is the closest Linux distro standing next to BSD.
If you really imply to run server then FreeBSD is the best choise. I have FreeBSD 5.3 as server and it behaves absolutely stunning

It's not so much space as a primary partition - you can have oodles of space but if your primes are full, you'll have to redo your disk. If you have a free primary partition, though, go for it. It's different enough that you might pick up some new tricks and perspectives.

That said, you certainly don't *need* to. For a learning experience, killing time, whatever. But there are plenty of things to do besides installing operating systems. (So I hear.)

Please, share this unfinished proposition of yours.
According to psychology what essentual for human specie is the progress, the race of GETTING. Because after "you got it" we become bored and seek new race for GETTING
Pretty much the same as human females and their race for genocode...

Why not?

Anyways following urls may help you

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...-bsd/x119.html (read Which should I use, BSD or Linux?)

http://people.freebsd.org/~murray/bsd_flier.html

http://librenix.com/?inode=3871

http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/ rants/bsd4linux/bsd4linux1.php


Hope this helps !

I love freeBSD. I think you should try it. Especially for server purposes.

Have fun!

Definitely try it. And if FreeBSD does not work for you, there's always NetBSD, OpenBSD... there's even a Live BSD called freesbie:

http://www.freesbie.org/

FreeBSD is a much superior OS then GNU/Linux in many ways: stability, security, documentation and package management. Indeed, all the above arguments are arguable... the only 2 Linux distributions that come close are Slackware(stability and simplicity) and Gentoo (portage and documentation), but I still prefer BSD...

Now let's see how long this thread takes till someone flames me .

Hey thanks, I ordered it and it should be arriving soon

FreeBSD = Why? 5 is so unstable it's not funny... you must have the specifically supported hardware or something.
Anyway, if you're familiar with the console, you can use BSD directly, and as implied here Slackware's pretty close the BSD.. (It's what I used before the jump)
Then again, Arch Linux is also close to BSD...
I suggest that if you're going to try a BSD on that 64-bit, try out NetBSD since it'll give you a mouth-ful of BSD action and you gotta love its kernel recompile system.

I notice a lot of people feel Slack is a good comparison, but to me I think Gentoo is a much better comparison. The whole portage concept is very BSD.

I agree with that. All three have differences and similarities with each other but Gentoo seems more BSD-ish to me in significant ways. Which is not necessarily a good thing from my point of view - though I do prefer any of them to Microhat-like distros. In some cases, wandering about the filesystem and issuing certain commands and dealing with certain files, Slack and BSD might feel closer but I think the overall portage/ports impact makes Gentoo and BSD feel closer. And I gather Daniel Robbins was directly involved with BSD before his Stampede/Gentoo activities. I don't think Patrick Volkerding was into the BSDs to that extent.

However, neither one are really much like BSD, to me. Just far closer than SysV/rpm/corporate distros.

This is all vague, though - I only used Gentoo a little and use BSD less at this point. Just impressions.

I suggest you to try FreeBSD .
It's very excellence.

BSD, I have tried other linux distributions and it was because of a friends recommendation and support that I know prefer BSD over everything else. Its not just because I am familiar with it, everything BSD stands for and how it operates appeals to me.

I use FreeBSD 5.3 in dual with windows xp and experience no stability issues. I have no reason to try slack(persuaded by a friend) or any other distro if I am so satisfied with bsd.

I just wish they would finally finish development of FreeBSD for PPC so I can buy a sleek Ibook and run FBSD on it.

Your problem is already solved. Mac OS X :-P :-P

I am curious...I know OS X was based on FreeBSD but I have never tried it. I wonder how similar they are. Does OS X have a ports collection? Will software made by apple for OS X run on FreeBSD? I don't know that I would have any need to try that...just curious.