On 09/30/2015 02:50 PM, Sean Caron wrote:
Just the whole idea of so many Linux distributions makes me bang my head against the coffee table. One thing I greatly admire about the *BSD projects has been the strong arm of unification, all contributors are working towards one goal... It just so happened that Linux was the "free UNIX that took off" (just like i386 was the "architecture that won") and we have to live with the repercussions of that in IT ops every day for better or for worse ... But that's just my two cents and no more ... I know this topic can get religious! :O
I find that most of the difference between Linuces lies in the GUI, not in the "guts" of the system. Many, if not, most use a Debian-based kernel with other stuff bolted on--and even that's not cast in Sakrete. I'm sitting at a system now running Ubuntu with the XFCE desktop (I can't stand Unity). At the command-line level, there's little that's substantially different among Linuces.
Anent BSD, you'll find considerable differences in approaches to OpenBSD compared with FreeBSD. OpenBSD is conservative to the point of being almost paranoid, an approach I greatly admire. OpenBSD management seems to despise virtualization in any form, so no Wine for you, much less VirtualBox. Ftp is not officially supported, etc. Compared to OpenBSD, FreeBSD is a painted whore.
It's been a long time since I've updated my systems with NetBSD, so it's hard to say much there.
Linux is getting to be (or has gotten to be) the host of the latest shiny toy. They no longer support older chipsets, such as the VIA 8237A nothbridge (it was just ripped out without commentary, so you have no hard disk access). The BSDs--and even Windows seem to have kept it.
--Chuck
