I know that on many BSD-conferences or parties, they like to hang poor little TUX or make fun of Linux.

I was wondering: What's the difference between the two? I've had only a chance to work with linux so far, not anything BSD based (freeBSD).

Are both based on Unix, or is there a mayor difference, like between windows, mac, linux and others?

Thanks

You'll find fundamental design differences between FreeBSD and Linux. FreeBSD is a different kernel altogether. The philosophy is also a lot different.

It's probably closer to a UNIX clone than Linux.

There is a quote somewhere:

"*BSD is what you get when UNIX hackers get together to port their OS to the PC."

"Linux is what you get when PC hackers get together to port UNIX to the PC."

I think that says a lot about the different approaches. With *BSD, you might have to re-learn some concepts from Linux though. Not difficult, just different.

FreeBSD is a derivative of UNIX, from 3.6BSD if memory serves (you can read about FreeBSD's history if you wish), whereas Linux is UNIX-like.

I thought this was a good read:

http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd...bsd4linux1.php

Im running FreeBSD 6.0 as a desktop. Only thing I found that it couldnt do is gaming (cedega) so Linux wins in that area. Other than that, to me everything works faster and more logical in BSD.

I use both and find that performance wise there are more or less the same. My main gripe is that if you are used to the gnu tools, some options are not available if using the bsd tools. In terms of hardware support Linux is the clear winner. Also there are more proprietary apps available for Linux than the BSDs and for some apps, the BSDs have to use a Linux emulation layer. The ports system is my favourite feature on FreeBSD, its so easy to get the latest software, if you don't mind waiting for it to compile from source.