I have been using Gentoo for quite some time right now. I'm a huge supporter of any Unix-based platform. I want to step into the world of FreeBSD and I'm not afraid to do so because FreeBSD is very similar to Gentoo. Can anyone go over the differences though between Linux and FreeBSD? I know that BSD is a Unix and Gentoo is a Linux.

1- Ports beats portage.

2- You may choose between 3 different firewall flavours: IPFilter, PF & IPFW. The syntax rules are easier.

3- Most tools are not GNU, so their options are different (when they're not POSIX). You'd need to install the GNU ports and be prepared to use them with a 'g' prepended, ie: gmd5sum, gfind, gcp, guname, etc.

4- Bash is not installed by default, and it is not in /bin/bash when you install it: it'll be in /usr/local/bin/bash

5- FreeBSD has many good tools, look at *stat: vmstat, iostat, fstat (much like a native lsof), sockstat, systat, pstat and so on.

6- There are no journaling filesystems in FreeBSD, just UFS2 with soft-updates which is a different approach. It reads and writes ext2 partitions perfectly and linux reads UFS2 (with no write).

7- FreeBSD executes many of my Linux binaries with the Linux emulation package. I will take the time to make them work with the libraries already installed in my linux partitions rather than the libraries installed by the emul package itself.

In my opinion, they're not "similar": portage just scratchs the power of ports. It's slow. Another thing that makes them similar is /etc/rc.conf, which is a nice feature. Go ahead and install it

With all due respect, ports does not beat portage; they are both useful, powerful tools for adding/updating software. A relative newcomer like Gentoo does not get to be as popular as it has become by basing its core on a weak, ineffective concept, and believe me, portage is neither weak nor ineffective.

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I think you are overreacting. The guy did not say that portage was not powerful and he didn't say that the concept of portage was weak or ineffective. Portage is an idea based on ports, so why would he bash portage, I think was comparing portage to ports and expressing his personal opinion.

Personally I think other than the use of portage and bsd style scripts, Gentoo is just any other Linux distro when compared to FreeBSD. If you have some linux knowledge, you can learn to use FreeBSD very quickly, but those using distros with certain BSD elements like Slack and of course Gentoo may pick it up faster. Just don't expect things to work exactly like they do in Linux and be prepared to configure a lot of stuff manually.

Portage is slow, so much that I can't afford anymore to install it on old boxes when I wanted to maximize their use compiling everything. Portage needs a reimplementation in C (even C++). I don't know why they didn't picked up the ports system completely and extended on it.
See http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?q...SE&format=html

The only resemblance between the two is the hierarchy at /usr/port{s|age}, a few directives and /etc/make.conf, but the beauty and simplicity of ports is not present in portage

Now, i've used Gentoo for quite some time and i have only VERY seldom experienced an ebuild that wouldn't install. they just worked, so to say.

With FreeBSD - which i'm also very fond of - i've had some problems with ports that just didn't compile cleanly
even on relatively freshly intstalled systems (< 1 day old).

One of the things that FreeBSD has that gentoo definitely doesn't is regularily updated "binary" packages.
That's one really nice FreeBSD thing.

Kind Regards Bjerrk

Hmm. I agree, but I have to say, that the ultimate solution would be to keep a Linux, just in case and work on FreeBSD. Just like I did. When I messed sthing up, I just booted to Slack (Yuck, I dislike gentoo) and checked the net for answers.

That is because you are not meant to expect ports to simply work out of the box. The ports are constantly changing and taking a snapshot of them at the moment of the code freeze is a gamble. The release might not be for another 5-6weeks or more. During this time the maintainers of the ports will be addressing bugs, adding and removing source mirrors, updating their ports, and even adding new ports. Expecting the ports to work out of the box is madness it is simply not possible when you consider the implementation of the ports. You need to use cvs-update(The very first thing i do after a fresh install)... Ports are dynamic so update them and you will find that the system works like a charm.

PS: I would be glad to walk you through the correct way to update your ports tree if you are not familiar with the process.

Some basic differences :

1.BSD has a different "disk division system". What Linux and Microsoft Operating Systems call Partitions, BSD calls slices. Slices are divided further into partitions (think of them as sub-partitions).

2.The location of your hardware is different from Linux. For example, a standard IDE disk in FreeBSD would be something like /dev/ad0s1. In Linux, it would be /dev/hda. Another example is ethernet cards. In Linux, it's almost always eth0, eth1 etc. In FreeBSD, it depends on the drivers. For example, an Intel EtherExpress card would be located at /dev/fxp(X) whereas a card with a SiS chipset would be located at /dev/sis(x).

3.BSD was orginally an addon for the orginal Bell Labs UNIX. Due to copyright issues, it no longer has any of the orginial copyrighted UNIX code but it is more "unixey" than Linux.

4.Ports does not use a single command to do everything. In Gentoo, you use the emerge command. With ports, you have a /usr/ports directory that contains sub-directories with catagories of programs and their directories. After finding the program you want to install, you cd into the right directory and compile it as if you were compiling a program manually. Ports will automatically download the required items.

5.FreeBSD is actually easier and faster to install than a lot of Linux distros. I can get FreeBSD installed and to the command line in 10-15 minutes.

6.FreeBSD has a Linux ABI that allows it to run approximentally 90% of Linux binaries. This is mostly for commercial software, most open-source Linux software has been ported.

I recommend reading the following if you are interested in learning more :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD
http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?res...view-freebsd#1