On Thu, 16 Nov 2006 15:33:43 +1300 (NZDT) Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > * different kernel, so throw your hardware expectations out the > window. > Having said that hardware support is very good in my experience. > Atheros > wireless card works out of the box (more than can be said for linux). One of the FreeBSD developers has signed a NDA to get the Atheros documentation. He then wrote an abstraction layer that both Linux and FreeBSD use. > * file system heavily geared towards /usr. EG /home is a link to > /usr/home. Non core packages tend to be in /usr/local, including their > configs being in /usr/local/etc. - while core packages are configured > in > /etc. Its confusing at first. There are also package that install to /usr/X11R6. These are slowly being moved to /usr/local (eg. Gnome was when they updated to 2.16).
The reason for installing to /usr/local is because there is a distinction between the base system, ie. the parts that are actually FreeBSD, and 3rd party software. > * tightly integrated ports/packaging system and very up to date > packages. > In comparison to gentoo's portage system (which was inspired by BSD > ports) the weakness of BSD's ports is that it is less flexible than > portage, and therefore not as versatile. The strength of ports over > portage is that ports is less flexible, and therefore less prone to > breaking. (this is MHO) It is as versatile as you can wright a Makefile. This is because the ports system is just a collection of Makefile's with some glue to do some common tasks. > > * different file system and partitioning. What you and I call a > partition > is known to FreeBSD as a slice. A slice is divided into partitions. > You > can therefore give over one of your four primary partitions to become > a > BSD slice and then create a number of partitions within that. This can be a hard concept for people used to the standard PC naming scheme. > * different device names, which is really a corollary of the first > point > (different kernel). The first partition on my freeBSD system is > /dev/ad0s1a which translates as the first partiton (a) on the first > slice (s1) on the first hard drive (ad0). It is really an ata drive (ad) on the primary master (0), the first slice (s1) partition a. If it was SCSI it would be da0. Note that the numbers will never change as long as the drive is connected to the same place, ie. The drive connected to the secondary master will always be ad3. > * No graphical install systems to speak of. Sorry, still working on it (I am working on the BSDInstaller that could have a graphical front end or a curses based one) > * At the system level I am sure that there will be API's offered by > the > linux kernel and libraries that are not available on BSD and vice > versa. Yes, http://wiki.freebsd.org/AvoidingLinuxisms. Linux doesn't have strlcpy(3) as the glibc maintainer doesn't like it. * The base system is a separate entity to the software installed with ports/packages. It has a different build system and can be updated separately from any installed ports, eg. 6.2-RELEASE will have Gnome 2.14 as it was the latest when the ports CVS was frozen however I have updated to 2.16 as it was updated after CVS had thawed even though 6.2 has not been released yet. Andrew
