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Linux vs. BSD| Category | | | Summary | | Both Linux and BSD have become great options as operating systems over the past five years or so. With the maturity of the open source industry, we are seeing more and more home users switching to either of these two operating systems. |
| | Body | Linux actually stands for GNU/Linux because of the invaluable contribution of the GNU organization in its development. BSD stands for Berkeley System Distribution.
Both systems come in various flavors. The three important distributions of Linux are Fedora Core (Red Hat Inc.), Debian and Suse, whereas the three important flavors of BSD are Free-BSD, Open-BSD and Net-BSD.
In terms of development, both systems are open source. But their licensing policy differs somewhat. BSD uses BSD licensing whereas Linux follows GPL (General Public License). The development team of BSD is somewhat more tightly knitted, whereas the developers of the Linux system function as a more informal body.
Support of hardware is pretty good in both systems, since some drivers are shared by both. But in general, the Linux system supports a wider variety of hardware, though it may be noticed that the quality may differ from driver to driver. BSD is regarded to have a more robust TCP/IP stack, and is thus better at performing under trying conditions. Heavy load servers such as Yahoo use BSD to run their systems.
Since both Linux and BSD are open source in nature, the amount of documentation is quite sufficient. A large number of books are available for both Linux and BSD, though the number is significantly larger in the case of the former. Free tutorials and articles are also available in large number through websites and magazines. Forums are a great way to solve any problem that you may encounter, though it is commonly seen that the Linux community is generally more tolerant to the new user.
A wide variety of platforms are supported by both systems like x86, Alpha and even SPARC. But in this regard Linux emerges as a winner, since its portability is considered far better than some of the BSD's.
In my personal opinion, Linux is a good choice for any average user for any application, especially Fedora Core systems. In BSD's use Free-BSD if you want the latest applications, but still have reliability as one of your major goals. Open-BSD is a great option if you are paranoid about security.
Choosing an operating system is an individualistic choice. Both Linux and BSD have evolved enough to be seen as quality products for the home desktop and the office workstation enviornment. Of course, the real utility of these work horse systems lie in high performance servers. So, choose whichever system you like, read up on it and soon you'll be on your way to becoming an open source guru.
Useful Links
http://www.freebsd.org
http://www.bsdi.com
http://www.newsforge.com
http://www.linuxgazette.net
http://www.tldp.org |
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This article was imported from zZine. (original author: Rae)
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