*BSD general
 

hello,

i just want to know what are *BSD's. are theses free OS's available for download. what else are the priviledges available with it.....i mean what new can one leanr from it. if it is available free for download, then pls let me know..

cheers

http://www.freebsd.org
http://www.netbsd.org
http://www.openbsd.org


I think those are the links. Those are the three free *bsd's that i know of. There are other commercial one's i think and probably even more free ones but these are the main three.

Edit: Yes they are free os's which you can download as iso's. Except for openbsd which has some weird way of downloading which i dont have any experience with.

With OpenBSD, the layout of the CD images are copyrighted, so you're not allowed to redistributed them; however, you're absolutely allowed to download the bootable file system and download the necessary sets from the FTP site. It sounds complicated, but it's actually extremely simple. If you've ever lived through the nightmare of a Debian install, OpenBSD is easier by a factor of 10.

As for what BSD is, how it compares to Linux, etc just search this forum (use the seach feature at the top of the site and choose to search only in the BSD forum). Those questions have been answered dozens of times already.

BSDs are mostly used as servers. OpenBSD is very security-oriented and makes an excellent firewall. FreeBSD has very good network performance, it's ideal for file servers. NetBSD is ... well, it's your basic free Unix-like operating system and it runs on many hardware platforms.

BSDs can also be used as desktop/workstations. In this case, FreeBSD is perhaps your main candidate. FreeBSD 5.2.1 has more flexible installer, more detailed documentation (the FreeBSD Handbook), and support for newer hardware than the other BSDs. There's also a FreeBSD based LiveCD called 'FreeSBIE' ( http://www.freesbie.org/ ) that allows you to take a look at what FreeBSD feels like on the desktop, without the need to install it to your hard disk first.

Personally, I prefer NetBSD because it's so ... well, it's just so BASIC. But I'm using NetBSD mainly to learn more about Unix and people who have different interests may prefer some other flavour of BSD. :)

@chort: 'the nightmare of a Debian install' -- I agree with you there :D but you should know that the new Sarge Debian-installer is currently at the state of beta testing, and it will be a bit easier. :p

I can't agree with nightmare install of debian. :-) it is just fine. Personally i like the old installer :-)

you will learn from bsd*, and you will learn a lot quicker if you don't have X installed...or don't use it often.

I usually try most "Live cd's" just to see how neat they are. Freesbie is the first *BSD one. I tried it and an quite impressed with the hardware detection. Its based on the latest 5.2.1 curent. This is the first time that I didn't have to add my sound card after the fact :) I did, however install Debian with the Sarge installer cd and the only required with it is to tell it whether to takethe whole disk or to partition yourself, how did I network (static) since I don't DHCP, and whether I wanted to pick lots of packages or do it later. It took 1/2 hour to have a running Debian system (I picked it myself - small drive so I chose X with XFCE4 and my own browser). Even ap-getting the 2.6 kernel and alsa after the fact (since I chose a bare start) was too easy. Deb's come a long way.


As far as learning about *nix, NetBSD is likely the most correct of them all (read their constitution), but any *BSD install will show you pretty much how all the *nix-like OS's act.

BTW, of the 20 or so Linux's, BeOS, and FreeBSD/NetBSD I have used, NetBSD seems to take the fewest resources once installed. Perhaps its the installed packages, perhaps other reasons (it also booted 2nd fastest - BeOS is king there - too bad its just a toy OS).

My $0.02 with interest...