LinuxQuestions.org
Visit Jeremy's Blog.
Go Back   LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux Forums > Linux - General
User Name
Password
Linux - General This Linux forum is for general Linux questions and discussion.
If it is Linux Related and doesn't seem to fit in any other forum then this is the place.

Notices


Reply
  Search this Thread
Old 06-17-2002, 12:42 AM   #1
tarballed
Member
 
Registered: Jun 2002
Distribution: RH, FC, FreeBSD,OpenBSD
Posts: 326

Rep: Reputation: 30
Exclamation 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
 
Old 06-18-2002, 07:48 AM   #2
Thymox
Senior Member
 
Registered: Apr 2001
Location: Plymouth, England.
Distribution: Mostly Debian based systems
Posts: 4,368

Rep: Reputation: 64
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.
 
Old 06-18-2002, 10:38 AM   #3
kahuna
Member
 
Registered: Jun 2002
Location: Grand Rapids, MI
Distribution: Redhat, Slackware
Posts: 78

Rep: Reputation: 15
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.
 
Old 06-18-2002, 10:58 AM   #4
Calum
Member
 
Registered: Mar 2002
Location: London
Distribution: Red Hat 9
Posts: 302

Rep: Reputation: 30
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?
 
Old 06-18-2002, 01:50 PM   #5
Mara
Moderator
 
Registered: Feb 2002
Location: Grenoble
Distribution: Debian
Posts: 9,696

Rep: Reputation: 232Reputation: 232Reputation: 232
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.
 
Old 06-18-2002, 01:57 PM   #6
Stephanie_new
Member
 
Registered: May 2002
Location: Hell, A.K.A. Arizona
Distribution: MD 8x / WIN2K / QNX
Posts: 156

Rep: Reputation: 30
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.
 
Old 06-19-2002, 03:14 AM   #7
tundra
Member
 
Registered: Jun 2002
Location: Koom Valley
Distribution: rh8
Posts: 528

Rep: Reputation: 31
it's like football really. you can try and predict the outcome, but everything boils down to match time.
 
1 members found this post helpful.
Old 04-27-2006, 08:54 AM   #8
Dralnu
Member
 
Registered: Jul 2005
Posts: 335

Rep: Reputation: Disabled
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...
 
Old 12-25-2011, 09:56 PM   #9
faysal76
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Jan 2009
Posts: 1

Rep: Reputation: 0
Thumbs up 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.
 
Old 12-26-2011, 02:58 AM   #10
Sed_Awk
Member
 
Registered: Dec 2011
Location: USA
Distribution: Crux 2.7.1
Posts: 41

Rep: Reputation: 0
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.

Last edited by Sed_Awk; 12-26-2011 at 10:57 AM.
 
Old 12-26-2011, 10:51 AM   #11
DavidMcCann
LQ Veteran
 
Registered: Jul 2006
Location: London
Distribution: PCLinuxOS, Debian
Posts: 6,130

Rep: Reputation: 2302Reputation: 2302Reputation: 2302Reputation: 2302Reputation: 2302Reputation: 2302Reputation: 2302Reputation: 2302Reputation: 2302Reputation: 2302Reputation: 2302
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.
 
Old 12-26-2011, 11:19 AM   #12
Sed_Awk
Member
 
Registered: Dec 2011
Location: USA
Distribution: Crux 2.7.1
Posts: 41

Rep: Reputation: 0
Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidMcCann View Post
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?
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.

Last edited by Sed_Awk; 12-26-2011 at 11:28 AM.
 
Old 12-26-2011, 08:07 PM   #13
rng
Senior Member
 
Registered: Aug 2011
Posts: 1,198

Rep: Reputation: 47
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.
 
Old 12-26-2011, 09:37 PM   #14
Gerard Lally
Senior Member
 
Registered: Sep 2009
Location: Leinster, IE
Distribution: Slackware, NetBSD
Posts: 2,176

Rep: Reputation: 1759Reputation: 1759Reputation: 1759Reputation: 1759Reputation: 1759Reputation: 1759Reputation: 1759Reputation: 1759Reputation: 1759Reputation: 1759Reputation: 1759
Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidMcCann View Post
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.
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.
 
Old 12-26-2011, 10:15 PM   #15
sundialsvcs
LQ Guru
 
Registered: Feb 2004
Location: SE Tennessee, USA
Distribution: Gentoo, LFS
Posts: 10,599
Blog Entries: 4

Rep: Reputation: 3905Reputation: 3905Reputation: 3905Reputation: 3905Reputation: 3905Reputation: 3905Reputation: 3905Reputation: 3905Reputation: 3905Reputation: 3905Reputation: 3905
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.
 
  


Reply


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off



Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
future of linux jkmartha General 3 08-11-2005 05:52 AM
Future of Linux on the Desktop ernesto_cgf Linux - News 38 06-08-2005 07:50 PM
The future of linux. Haniblectre General 2 08-27-2004 07:30 PM
The Future of Linux nuka_t General 48 08-18-2004 08:03 AM
Future of linux prowzen Linux - General 29 12-14-2001 01:23 PM

LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux Forums > Linux - General

All times are GMT -5. The time now is 11:17 PM.

Main Menu
Advertisement
My LQ
Write for LQ
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute content, let us know.
Main Menu
Syndicate
RSS1  Latest Threads
RSS1  LQ News
Twitter: @linuxquestions
Open Source Consulting | Domain Registration