It might be easier to recompile them for FreeBSD, instead of running the
binaries using Linux emulation. As long as you haven't used any
linux-specific system calls, of course. Mostly you shouldn't need to alter
your code much / at all.
Alex
On Thursday 25 July 2002 11:52 am, Daniel Bye wrote:
On Thu, Jul 25, 2002 at 02:12:28PM +0300, Tiago Marques wrote:
Dear Sirs,
I'm a user of Linux, and i do some programming for college, some related
with sockets, processes, and all kinds of linux system programming.
I've been thinking about moving to FreeBSD but i would like to know if
the programs i do in Linux will be compatible with FreeBSD.
I've already installed OpenBSD in another computer but due to some
problems here i didn't have the time to test those things yet...
Also, i'm a regular user, but not very experienced in Linux, i just know
my way around, not much more. Do you think i'll be able to use FreeBSD
easily or is it more complicated to mantain and admin ?
Sorry all this questions
Provided your Linux programs don't make too heavy use of the Linux procfs
(which is significantly different to the BSD implementation), or any of
the extended i386 sys calls, you should be able to run them under FreeBSD,
using the Linux emulation layer. The best thing to do is install FreeBSD,
including the Linux emulation bits and pieces, and try it out.
(There is code in the base system to support linprocfs, but I have never
had call to use it so cannot offer any help or opinions about it)
The name FreeBSD refers to the OS as a whole, unlike Linux, which is the
name of the kernel. Therefore, you can consider FreeBSD in the same terms
as RedHat or SuSE - RedHat's OS is _based_on_ a Linux kernel, but the
specific details of the implementation of the rest of the system are down
to the developers who put the thing together.
Because of this, there is only one FreeBSD distribution, which you can
rely on being sane from one install to the next - whereas the multitude of
Linux distros are effectively different OSen, and you will find
considerable variation in the specifics. (However, that's not to say that
one RedHat install will be vastly different to the next...)
Personally, I like FreeBSD's design. I find it to be clean and systematic,
and yes, pretty easy to keep it going smoothly. It also has this list,
which is a truly marvellous source of help and information for those who
can't find what they need elsewhere. Installing new apps is a breeze
using the Ports system (which is so good, that NetBSD and OpenBSD have
adopted it), and the documentation for the base system is, in my opinion,
some of the best written and maintained documentation I have ever come
across.
But this is all just so much personal opinion. Try it, break it, fix it,
see what you think!
Dan
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