On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 10:00 AM, Christopher Sawtell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 2008/11/5 Brett Davidson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >> Nick Rout wrote: >>> >>> On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 8:46 AM, Brett Davidson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> >>> >>>> >>>> Similar code - different foci. >>>> >>>> PcBSD is the desktop version. Nice but I still prefer Linux. >>>> FreeBSD is the server version. I run this both at work and home for my >>>> servers. >>>> OpenBSD is the paranoically secure version. Never needed this. >>>> >>>> hth >>>> Brett. >>>> >>> >>> Getting rather OT but freebsd on its own works fine as a desktop. >>> PCBSD screws it up by trying to introduce a packaging system which is >>> ultimately at odds with the underlying portage system. (IMHO) > >> Agree with you there. > > Indeed, but in my exp, PC-BSD works very well provided you limit your > selection of packages to the mainline ones provided by the PC-BSD PBI > packaging system.
One of the huge attractions of the free/open software world is the sheer number of solutions to any given problem. I don't want to limit myself to the limited number of packages offered by the PBI system, nor would I want their broken packaging system. IIRC in PBI a package and all its dependent libraries are offered as one meta package, in the same way that windows developers often provide their own idea of which versions .dll's they think you should run. In other words its a path to dll hell, which was a great relief to get away from on moving to linux. > > IMHO, _In practice_, there's now not much difference between Linux and > the *BSDs, provided you can remember the differences in the utility > programs' flags and options. There are lots of differences in programs that are available. A of software wil run under any posix compliant OS (ie linux or *BSD), and there are surprisingly good drivers available in the BSDs for things like wireless cards. However there are some things that will drive you crazy such as flash support in browsers. Some things really p*** you off when using BSD occasionally. eg in linux you can go: ls /var/log -l ; or ls -l /var/log in BSD you HAVE to put the -l before the directory/file name, most annoying if you aren't used to it [1]. Similar little traps abound. Nick [1] of course you'd never write a script that put the options on the end, but interactively it can be useful.
