[PLUG] Anyone care to field a FreeBSD question?

[Geoff Burling]

On Thu, 15 Aug 2002, Preston Crawford wrote:

> My mistake. Then I'll ask away. Thank you.
>
> #1 - I've dabbled in Linux for year. I only made the switch full-time as a
> desktop OS about 10 months. My reasoning, in part, was that doing so would
> force me to learn it better.  After using it for a while I'm a little put
> off by the complexities in configuration files and directory structure
> introduced by the various distros. And after trying out FreeBSD this
> weekend on an extra machine, I REALLY like what I see. However, since part
> of my motivation for what I choose as my desktop OS is learning, I
> consider this like a bet. I don't want to bet on the "wrong" horse, become
> skilled at FreeBSD, but have the market shift increasingly to Linux.
>
> So question #1 (and hopefully this doesn't lead to an ugly long thread) is
> what everyone thinks the future is for Linux vs. FreeBSD. I know skills
> are tranferable, but the bottom line is that since I have limited time I
> will inevitably get to know one better than the other. I know Linux has
> the *buzz* right now, but I get the feeling, especially with the
> popularity of Mac OSX, that as corporations get more comfortable with the
> PC-based Unix-like OSes, FreeBSD may pick up steam. Thoughts on that?
>
So the man wants some opinions, eh?

First, my guess is that Linux will continue to increase its user base &
be more popular than BSD -- Free-, other, or all combined. My reasoning for
this is that all of the major advantages *BSD has over, say, MS -- that
it is less expensive, more reliable, comes with the source code -- are the
same that Linux has. Unfortunately, the *BSDs do not have a user base
close to the size Linux now has, which means finding people as skilled
in any BSD is more difficult than for Linux, & outweigh the advantages
any of the BSDs profess.

Second, BSD will not disappear from the computer world for the same
reason that Linux never will: as long as at least one copy of the source
code exists, & is hacked at by one motivated user, it has the potential
of being rediscovered & starting a new life after a long, cold winter.
No proprietary OS has this ultimate survival plan.

What I feel will happen is that BSD will become more hobbyist-oriented,
the OS for the self-described computer cognescenti, the same sort of
folks who originally embraced Linux & developed it in the pioneering
days. This will keep BSD in a fairly good state of maintenance.

On the other hand, BSD will be of value in terms of strategic deployment
thru a business. Because its internals are different enough from Linux,
it can be useful in building firewalls or an ecommerce web server, where
security is an important consideration. Also, since OpenBSD & NetBSD both
support non-Intel architectures, BSD will be valuable in giving new life
to old hardware that are considered obsolete (e.g., the hardware doesn't
run the latest release of Bloatus 1000 with its 100GB disk & 20GB RAM
requirements), & allow them to be used to meet needs too low on the list
to otherwise justify buying equipment.

(Here, I hope BSD doesn't go into a death spiral, & become marginalized:
because BSD developers are still supporting older hardware architectures --
Sparc, Alpha, MIPS, PPC, Motorola 68xxx -- this provides competition to
prod Linux volunteers into continuing to support the same architectures.
Loss of either camp in this area would end this rewarding competion &
accelerate the destruction of still useable, but slower, computers.)

Now does this mean you shouldn't learn FreeBSD (or one of the other flavors)?
Many of the jobs that advertise for Linux skills, also are looking for
skills in one or more operating systems, & FreeBSD does get mentioned.
I'd say that if you like FreeBSD better than Linux, then learn it, while
keeping a weather eye on how it varies from Linux. And all the while
laugh whenever RMS's peevish argument that ``it's properly GNU/Linux"
comes around again.

Geoff
Geoff