Future of Linux, Future of BSD ?
 

Evening everyone. Well, I had a very interesting conversation with a gentlemen I recently meet at a computer convention. We were chatting away about Linux and we came to the subject of BSD.

Before, I go on, a little info. I've been using Linux for about 8 months as my company is a strict Linux enviroment. Over that time I have begun to play with BSD (Which is really cool)

Anyways, we were chatting and I asked what he thought about BSD's future. I was quite taken back by his response being that he was indeed a good operating system, yet Linux would be much better to master and BSD would be a "waste" to learn.

Basically, in a nutshell, was hoping to get some feedback on what people thought about the future of Linux and BSD. I see Linux continuing to climb, but I also see BSD as a very good thing to learn.

Anyone care to comment?

Thanks everyone.

TheTarballedNerd

Well, for my 2p, I'd say learn both! The BSDs are direct descendents of Unix proper, whereas Linux is more of a unix-like OS. Personally I believe that Linux will continue to grow in both the home-user and server market, but I think that although they are very similar, the BSDs will continue to grow in the server market only.

The BSD is dying movement has been going on for years and years now. The funny thing is that the usage of BSD has never declined, only risen.

Personally I don't care if Linux outgrows BSD. The BSD committers do not care either. BSD will continue to do it's own thing and flourish as it always has.

i agree with thymox. for a good while yet, i believe there will be things easier and better to do in BSD than linux.

Besides, i like diversity, and also choice. Plus, having more than one open source community benefits both in the end, if there were only one "open-source-friendly" OS then what would be the point of open source software anyway? it would only get compiled for one system, so why not just make binaries. Therein lies an instant spiral to patents, monopolies and strangleholds.

No, i like the idea of BSD, i just think it's a bit of a shame that so many commercial vendors of other unices are going the linux way, making it look like a linux monopoly may be coming. HP and IBM are all going linux (Sun are not) so do we see the end of AIX and HP-UX?

BSD is nice, but I don't like its license. I prefer GPL. It makes me sure that it's impossible to "close" source. With BSD, it's possible.

Personally, I have played alittle with BSD, and I think it is pretty nice.

But I do think that Linux will flourish more than BSD, because Linux is getting more and more well known. And M$ does not consider BSD a direct threat, only Linux. That helps to increase the penguins visibility.

In the end, I figure one should learn both. Might as well, as if you know one, the other is not totally dissimilar.

it's like football really. you can try and predict the outcome, but everything boils down to match time. ;)

From what little I understand of BSD, it seem to be (and sorry in advance for the analogy, its the best I could come up with) going the way of Mac in the same sense Linux is going the way of 'doze. Both have ther ups and their downs, and both have there place. Ultimatly, (and this is just opinion) I think BSD should focus more on making secure servers, which if I remember, security is close to their #1 goal, which on the 'net would make life alot easier for the poor souls still on 'doze. I'd get a copy of OpenBSD of which I have heard good things, but on an 80 Gb hdd, and installing 3 OSs is a bit of a stretch (even though SuSe has about 38 Gb to itself and only uses about 5-6% of that).
I agree with Calum about having a larger group of Open Source family OSs. On the off chance that 'doze and Mac died out ('doze I wouldn't mind, but Mac is a good OS from what I know of it), and the Linux family is all that there is left, there would be a push by someome to try and take over the whole *nix family, which I know no one wants.

As for the BSD license, I know nothing of that. If you could close source, maybe someone should email the people who keep the license and update it so as to make sure that doesn't happen? That would be a dark day if something were to happen to it...

BSD Future
 

Hi Folks,

I am using BSD for many years. I too had used Linux. Both have their own merits and demerits.But as on internet i am reading many topics about BSD is dying is like someone living in fools paradise.The first topic i read was posted somewhere in 2006 about the death of BSD but 2011 is getting end and still no one could see BSD tomb.

BSD is flourishing,many new projects have been started like MidnightBSD,GhostBSD (Get Host BSD) and many more.

Hope and think positive,the future is BRILLIANT FOR BSD.
Sorry for my weak English.

I like both. But I use linux more even though people say the BSDs are more secure than linux and have a better TCP/IP stack. But, I would use BSD over linux if I were going to setup some kind of server at home.

I'm always skeptical when people say BSD is more secure or more stable. If that's so, then why do all the big names on the internet (except Yahoo) prefer Linux? Why do institutions like the London Stock Exchange, CERN, NASA, and the Gendamerie Française use Linux? Before someone says "usage proves nothing: the majority use Windows", they should remember the majority in that case are recreational home users and office workers whom the management don't want to take out of their comfort zone.

I think BSD is probably becoming a niche thing, like OS9 or Minix.

Maybe it's because linux is more popular than the BSDs and linux supports more hardware and supports more packages and they're more up to date.

As for the secure issue, I can't comment since I don't know much about BSD security. But people have said it is more secure including sysadmins, computer magazines and online articles that compare linux and BSD security.

Being skeptical is not enough to prove otherwise. To really be sure, you'll need to do penetration tests on both linux and BSD and see the outcome.

I tried number of livecd of BSD variants. Some of them could not run on usual computers. Those which ran took a long time starting up.

After installing a number of linux distros on different partitions, I thought I could install PC-BSD. I had a (second) primary partition of an external hard drive free. So I started installing PCBSD there. It did not install, rather corrupted the mbr of main hard disk. After that I did not touch BSD.

I am sure BSD is good in hands of experts but I do not think it is for the average user.

Why not check the statistics regarding the number of vulnerabilities in the BSDs and the number of vulnerabilities in Linux, instead of going on rumour and hearsay?

http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/statistics

I for one have much less faith in the Linux kernel than the OpenBSD and NetBSD BSD kernels, and even less so since the shocking hack attack on kernel.org late last summer. I suspect enterprises will still choose Linux because certification is important to them. But nothing compares to a default install of OpenBSD and NetBSD for security. Their footprint is negligible, and their exposure to attack almost zero. With the headlong rush to incorporate this, that and the other into the Linux kernel I think you can safely say the number of vulnerabilities in a default Linux install is going to end up embarrassingly high in years to come.

Most likely, the reason for choosing one vs. another has more to do with, "well, you have to standardize on something." And then, having done that, you are going to dance with the person who brung 'ya.

I've been Using Linux for about a year now, and have a strong interest in freebsd. I love the concept of ports, and would love to try it, but unfortunately i rely on mobile broadband, and i don't think there's any way to connect to that on any bsd. If i am wrong and some one has more information on this, i'd be much appreciated. I think freebsd could be real nice. As long as there's someone that desires to use it, it will live; the beauty of open source, if the developers decide not to continue work, if the community desires it enough, they will pick up the project from where it ended. A good example of this is the Trinity desktop.

I've used mobile broadband on both NetBSD and OpenBSD. I currently use mobile broadband together with ADSL broadband in a dual-WAN setup on my OpenBSD 5 gateway. For me, here in Ireland with the operator Three, the steps are as follows:

1) Create a file in /etc/peers called three.chat:


3ireland.ie is my APN; you'll have to find out what yours is, together with the number dialled. For convenience get rid of the password on the USB modem if you have one.


2) Create a second file in /etc/ppp/peers called three:

/dev/cuaU0 is the modem device. I am using a Huawei e220. Again, you'll have to dig around to find out what your device is. Sorry I can't help you more with this but I forget how I finally worked this one out.

3) Create /etc/hostname.ppp0 so that the ppp0 interface is brought up at boot.

4) I use the OpenBSD firewall as a caching name server, so my /etc/resolv.conf contains just 127.0.0.1.

5) Restart networking:

6) Connect to your mobile broadband provider:


Hope this helps. There's a bit of tricking around with this but when you figure it out it works well, and mobile broadband is more stable on OpenBSD than any of the Windows machines I tried it on. Dual-WAN is great as well, and if your mobile broadband speed is limited you could try subscribing to a second mobile broadband ISP and pool your two WAN connections. Even if you used a low tariff with the second ISP it would help, because you could use PF firewalling to route all your DNS, for example, down the low-tariff channel and the rest down the other. This would have a very positive impact on web browsing, for example. Bear in mind that some protocols, such as FTP, HTTPS, and secure email do not work with dual-WAN. You need to route these down one channel only.

Though I am a committed linux user I have a lot of respect for the people using *bsds. IMO you need to have more technical skills than an average linux user (apart from some extreme disros like LFS and slackware). The documentation for *bsds is excellent and perhaps something linux users will never have :( .
So I do not think the future of *bsds is bad. If I had the time I would have learned *bsds before I learned linux. Look at openbsd and their record for security - it is almost unbelivable on the other hand look at all the security patches for *bubtus or even debian for that matter and then *bsds would be something of a giant.

How are 'ports' of BSD different from repositories of major linux distros? Also, can *.tar.gz source packages be used in BSDs (if application in not available in bsd ports)?

Excerpt from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD_Ports
As for the second question, as for linux tar.gz on BSD. They're a bit more tricky. I installed adobe flash player on firefox by following these steps

Enabling linux on FreeBSD

• kldload linux
• Install Linux Base (Fedora 10) pkg_add -r linux_base-f10
• Edit the file /etc/rc.conf (this file is the central configuration file for all of FreeBSD) linux_enable=”YES”
• You will also need to edit the file /etc/fstab (This file contains the list of file systems that can be mounted automatically)
  linproc /usr/compat/linux/proc linprocfs rw 0 0
• mount /usr/compat/linux/proc

Installing Firefox and Flash on FreeBSD


1. Install Firefox pkg_add -r firefox or cd /usr/ports/www/firefox
2. Add the netscape plugin wrapper pkg_add -r nspluginwrapper
3. portsnap fetch extract update
4. Install the Adobe Flash Plugin 10.2 cd /usr/ports/www/linux-f10-flashplugin10
5. make all install clean
6. wrap the plugin: (make sure you do this as the regular user, doing it as root does not seem to work properly) 7. Start firefox, visit and make sure the flash plugin shows up.

* NOTE: I did this on FreeBSD 8.0, there's a possibility some things have change like package versions.

@ rng

I know you didn't ask how to install flash on BSD, but I am sortof answering your last question with an example.

JAVA and Flash are more difficult to do on NetBSD and OpenBSD. FreeBSD is closer to desktop usage than the other BSDs.

Thanks for giving a clear explanation. I think PCBSD (freeBSD derivative) is most desktop friendly, but it did not work on my average computer (which easily runs windows and ubuntu).

With PCBSD, you don't need to go through the steps above. PCBSD automates all the techie stuff for you.

I see PCBSD as the linux Mint for BSD users. As for your hardware, it's possible some of your hardware may be incompatible at the moment. Usually, this resolves with some time.

Linux has an advantage over the BSDs as it supports more hardware. PCBSD did worked on my system flawlessly.

However, I am a geek and I like to do things myself which is how I learn. PCBSD wants to do everything like in linux Mint. There is no challenged in there :)

However, I do like the ports jails in PCBSD. This allows installing FreeBSD apps without breaking/conflicting PCBSD's filesystem.

Well, Linux will, by my guess, crash and dissipate rather soon. Remember Linux is only a Temporary thing, it is a place-holder for GNU's Hurd. BSD as I see, will not suffer the same fate; although I see it moving a few spots down on distrowatch when the Hurd comes out then go back to normal.

Gee, if linux is temporary it must be the longest temporary OS ever. Sorry, I don't buy it. Linux is improving each year and is here to stay.

I was talking about the kernel itself, Debian and such is here to stay, Debian actualy already has a port of itself to the Hurd kernel (and BSD's). The GNU website (man I say that alot) says thet GNU is commonly paired with a kernel named Linux because their kernel (Hurd) isn't done.

[ side note: I realize full well that OP wrote this back in '02 ]

I am deeply skeptical of folks who say things like, "[foo] would be a waste of your time to learn". If you glean new knowledge or - better still - new ways of thinking from a learning process, how can it be a waste?

Sorry to toss in a spiteful anecdote, but I worked with a bloke who spoke that way, for several months. He always "knew" which OS, language, framework et al. was going to win out, and he always had an intelligent-sounding assessment of every situation. Know what? He wrote unbelievably sloppy, crappy code, he couldn't get traction on his (rather simple) projects, and management squeezed him until he left. Point is: unless the gentleman you spoke with is an expert in both GNU/Linux and FreeBSD, and/or has a proven track record (not just hot air) of predicting future events in the technology world, forget him.

Getting back to the discussion at hand, I found the process of learning FreeBSD to be extremely rewarding. I didn't quite "get" GNU/Linux until I learned about FreeBSD's boot process, daemon management, and package building. Knowledge from one OS complements the other, and "ah ha" moments often mean knowledge gains on both platforms.

Comeon man, if something as stupid as windoze can stay I believe Linux has a greater chance. I have never heard that the Linux kernel was a placeholder. And I do not believe Linus started Linux with this in mind.
I do not want to get into flames over this but then I resent something like this being said in a linux forum. Linux is here to stay and will continue to live on - forever.

My Last comment. Linus Never Made Linux because GNU was lacking a kernel, second, exactly windows is stupid an stupid/incompetent people want other things to be stupid so it would stop bothering them and just work, they don't want to burn a CD, partion the hard drive, play 20Q with the installer, and then ask "How do I install iTunes?", the win thin is a chicken egg problem for another time, and lastly: Software Has Inertia, there's a reason almost everything low level is written in C(++), theres a reason python got shadowed by java, Linux will take a while to be removed from office but it will start soon, and knowing Debian there will still be Linux-based OSs.

The future of linux is bright, I gotta wear shades... I believe there was an 80's song with that theme.