Freebsd has piqued my interest recently, but I really don't want to leave slackware unless freebsd is really good. I know in the freebsd community, slackware is seen as one of the best Linux distros available. Some freebsders are slackers and vice versa from what I've read. But what keeps you loving slackware, and what do you like or dislike about freebsd? I've installed it once, but gave up way too soon and came back to Linux (luckily, I found slack ). Does it offer anything significant that Linux (specifically slackware) just doesn't provide as well? I really want to know how you guys feel about it.

Hi Allamgir

Plus for FreeBSD : The ports system
Minus for FreeBSD : The Hardware compatibility list ( wirelesses, Graphic card drivers for 64 bits... )

Plus for Slackware : The Hardware compatibility list ( wirelesses, Graphic card drivers for 64 bits... ), and the same as for freeBSD ( excepting the ports system ) : Stability, Reliability,

Minus for Slackware : The number of available SlackBuilds/Packages; despite the outstanding work of AlienBob, Rworkman, and Pat Volkerding, some stuff *MUST* be built from source and packaged if you want to have it installed. But is is not overly difficult to do... There's a thing called src2pkg that does miracles.... and another thing called makepkg...

Anyway, things are easier to fix that when you have a broken port in FreeBSD IMHO...

BRGDS

Alex

Try it in VirtualBox (or whatever you prefer) and see for yourself.

IMHO both FreeBSD and OpenBSD are pretty good operating systems. I would absolutely give them a try if I were you.

In regards to differences: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articl...son/index.html

At least that will give you the FreeBSD side of things.

Thanks for the replies! So is it true to say that FreeBSD is the better choice if your hardware supports it? That seems to be the main negative aspect of it. Also, do you guys know about how well it would fare if I dual booted it with windows vista (I plan to try to recompile the FreeBSD kernel, so I would need a way to select the one I want)?

I use FreeBSD quite heavily. I find the ports tree to be the best package management system I've used, and I really like the fact that the entire operating system feels much more integrated than most linux distributions.

Having said that, FreeBSD is behind Linux in a number of areas, technology wise, that I often find myself frustrated with. Linux supports more webcams and wireless cards. Suspend works fine in FreeBSD, but resume is buggy (for me... Others have no problems with it). The open source video driver development is primarily focused on Linux. FreeBSD really has one Xorg maintainer who is responsible for not only keeping Xorg up-to-date but for porting the DRM components of the open source drivers to FreeBSD.

adamk75, what kind of use do you subject FreeBSD to? Are you running a home server, desktop, workstation, or laptop, and do you have a minimal style desktop or full blown DE? Usually, when people talk about their positive experiences with FreeBSD, they are usually talking about usage on a home server of theirs; some people don't specify that they're not using it for basic home computing.

I've also read about some people having a little trouble with the xf86-video-intel driver, which I plan to use, but I then read that they were trying to subject their card to lots of 3D eye candy work. I just have a simple, minimal setup with dwm, xterm, and no transparency anywhere. Later I found out these intel problems were solved with the latest versions of ports

Also, one thing I've seen is that people complain about the sheer time investment in using the ports system. Compilation can take a long time, but does that bother you? Here on Slackware we have to compile some software, so I guess it shouldn't bother you all so much. As long as the ports don't fail during the process (they normally don't fail to build or install, right?), I should be fine with it.

FreeBSD is great as a work horse, but I wasn't impressed with as a desktop. Linux has better hardware compatibility etc.

So I don't really have anything to gain by ditching slackware on my laptop for it?

FreeBSD is a very robust OS. I've been a FreeBSD user starting with the 5.x branch. FreeBSD lets you install applications using the ports system. For example to install a port named foo:

# cd /usr/ports/pathtofoodirectory

then when you're in the foo directory issue these commands: make install clean

You can also install applications with the pkg_add command: to install gnome

# pkg_add -r gnome2

FreeBSD has an exceptional user manual. I've recently made the switch completely away from FreeBSD to Slackware. This is not a criticism of FreeBSD, but, my personal preference. I am a Slacker.
FreeBSD is an excellent learning opportunity which will greatly benefit you.
FreeBSD is more difficult to configure as a desktop system than Slackware, but, it is a lot of fun.

Yes. Don't migrate to FreeBSD.

However, just to share my experience. I tried FreeBSD and managed to get GNOME running on it without compiling quite easily. I was happy. I was able to use it as a desktop system.
Same for OpenBSD. Never really found anything attractive in it thought.

Ok. So I'm seeing you guys feel that I can go to FreeBSD (or Open or Net or whatever), but there's nothing really great about doing so. I'm not gaining much from all the trouble of throwing Slack to the curb and working my way through FreeBSD, so I might as well stick with Slackware.

I guess what keeps drawing me to it is the professionalism, and how it has a system of plenty of testing for the base system, which reminds me of Slackware, and a rolling-release ports system and handbook, which reminds me of Arch. It seems like the perfect balance between stability, staying up to date, and a centralized software source.

Maybe I'm reaching a stage where I'm trying to find the end of the road, the pinnacle of OSs, after going from Windows to Ubuntu to OpenSUSE to Arch to Mac OS X to Slackware. Is FreeBSD the top of the mountain, or have I reached it with Slackware? I've been trying to answer this question for so long, and still have struggled to find the correct answer. Which is the OS that I can say proudly "I use the best OS available". I know "best" is subjective and loaded and all, but still: I want to feel like I've gotten the best deal out of my dabbling in the open source world.

If only I had a few extra computers laying around so I could try them all simultaneously, but alas, I only have my Vista laptop
I even have to keep Vista on it because of the occasional .docx document or if I have to take my computer to Best Buy if it breaks *shudder*. Maybe if I get a Win7 disc and put that on my other computers, I'll have that ready and I can wipe my laptop...

But now I'm just rambling about my own plans :P

I strongly advice you not to jump on NetBSD. It's a lot more of an embedded system than a desktop system. You will have a lot of trouble with it.

If you're searching for the perfect OS, you're going to be looking for a long, long time. They all have their weaknesses as well as strenghts. I'd encourage you to have a look for yourself and make up your own mind. I triple boot my box with OpenBSD, Vista and Slackware. If you can free up a spare primary partition there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to try OpenBSD or FreeBSD alongside Vista and Slackware. Just be very, very careful when you do the disk partitioning/slicing and use lilo to chain load vista and the *bsd.

oh, forgot to say... OpenBSD's bootloader needs to find the kernel in the first 1024 cylinders of your disk so it really needs to be the first partition of the disk. Not sure if FreeBSD has the same limitation.

I use it in a home desktop environment and server environment at work (for webhosting a java development).

The intel driver does not really have any major issues on FreeBSD at the moment. However, newer versions of the driver require kernel changes that have not happened yet, and the current driver will not work with a newer X server. So it is very possible that intel GPUs will not work properly on FreeBSD in the not too distant future.

Adam

I've also used Arch linux, a nice OS.
You could do what I did. You could dual boot Slackware and FreeBSD. Slackware's lilo is perfectly capable of booting FreeBSD. Just make sure you don't install the FreeBSD boot loader to the MBR when you're installing FreeBSD to a free partition and set-up your lilo.conf to boot your FreeBSD partition.
I recently removed my FreeBSD 8.0 partition on my main work station and I'm now dual booting Slackware 13.0 with Slackware-current.
Edit, added later: Here's my old lilo.conf set-up where I was dual booting Slackware/FreeBSD. Root is sda2 with a home partition on sda3. I installed FreeBSD to sda4. Adjust your own lilo.conf depending on your partition scheme.