FreeBSD or Linux

[Floppyman]

Hi all,

I'm planning on setting up a little server machine for my CS buddies and I at college. It will be a dual PIII system with a half gig of ram...a small boot drive and a couple larger drives for storage (all SCSI). There will also be a tape drive for backup later. I'm planning on running Apache off this and also set it up for FTP access. Each user will have an account on the system and the amount of space they can access will be limited quotas that I want to setup. I'm also thinking of possibly doing Samba so they can map their storage (it's on a college LAN so it will be secure enough). I'm torn though as to which OS would be best for the job. I'd like to try FreeBSD if it would work good for this. I've heard that *BSD is good to use on servers. Or should I stick with a good Linux distro like Gentoo or Slack? Thanks in advance for the help.

[mikeL]

Floppyman,

If it were me, I would choose the distro that I felt most comfortable with, the three you have chosen should work nicely.

Another thought is to check what is compatible with the college's LAN.

That would be a real bummer to go through all the work setting up a server, only to find out that the LAN uses a Network Operating System that won't recognize unix/linux.

just my .02¢

Mike

[mairving]

I just finished moving by fourth and final server at work from FreeBSD from Linux. I much prefer FreeBSD. It is rock solid, very fast, updating is easy and it is 'Linux compatible'.

The install is a little more difficult at first since there aren't wizards to take you through the process. The partitioning is different than what you might be used to. Make sure to install cvsup and portupgrade and it will be good to go.

If you do go with FreeBSD, then a must have is Absolute BSD (http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?isbn=1886411743).

[Floppyman]

Thanks for the replies guys. If FreeBSD can do all the things I have mentioned above, I think I will give it a try. I've got a spare box at home (older machine) that I can install it on first to figure things out and get familiar with it.

Also, thanks for the link to the book mairving. Looks to be a great resource to have so I will probably purchase it shortly.

Thanks again for your help guys.

[Xayd]

If you've used Linux you will probably find FreeBSD alot more refined than most distros are. Their package system is the best out there for any free Linux/Unix OS, hands down, and there's very little tinkering required to get things to work properly.

If it's in ports labeled as stable, it WILL work.

The downside is, Linux apps are a tossup. Sometimes they'll work with emulation, sometimes not, depends on what you wanna run on it Linux-wise.

[Floppyman]

Thanks for the reply Xayd. I think I would be fine for the major things like Samba, FTP, and Apache though, right? These are the main things I want to run.

[Xayd]

yeah all of those will run fine on either, maybe a bit better, even, since imo FreeBSD's drive and network access implementations outperform the linux kernel's.

[Floppyman]

Thanks Xayd. One more question: Does FreeBSD support SCSI tape drives (I think I'll be using a SCSI DDS3 drive eventually)? I'm not sure how good the hardware support is in FreeBSD so thought I would ask. Thanks again.

[Xayd]

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/backups-tapebackups.html

[mairving]

Originally posted by Floppyman
Thanks Xayd. One more question: Does FreeBSD support SCSI tape drives (I think I'll be using a SCSI DDS3 drive eventually)? I'm not sure how good the hardware support is in FreeBSD so thought I would ask. Thanks again.
As a general rule, if it is A NIC or SCSI, FreeBSD will support it. Other hardware like Video Cards may be more problematic.

[LocoCoyote]

One of my favorite topics!
FreeBSD will do what you need. I would recommend against the 5.x right now. Stick with the 4.x production. (I use 4.8 still and have no problems) SCSI will work unless you have something bizarre.
Another thing you might want to prepare for is the lack of run levels. I have seen a few old time linux users stumble over this. There is (as far as I can tell) no System V type features (well, it is BSD afterall!)

[mairving]

Originally posted by LocoCoyote
One of my favorite topics!
FreeBSD will do what you need. I would recommend against the 5.x right now. Stick with the 4.x production. (I use 4.8 still and have no problems) SCSI will work unless you have something bizarre.

I haven't had any problems with 5.1 or 5.21. Actually my newly built fileserver is running 5.21 since it is running Samba 3 in an active directory. Versions before that don't support the use of nsswitch and consequently winbind. So it depends on the need.

[LocoCoyote]

The problems I am having with 5.x usally involves instalation. Once I fight through it it seems to work fine. But I do not have the warm and fuzzy that comes with a clean error free install.

[mairving]

Originally posted by LocoCoyote
The problems I am having with 5.x usally involves instalation. Once I fight through it it seems to work fine. But I do not have the warm and fuzzy that comes with a clean error free install.
It's funny about that. I have an Intel Motherboard that has 2 onboard NIC's, one (em0) is a gigabit, the other (fxp0) is a 100. In 4.9, both NIC's worked fine. In 5.1, for some reason, the fxp0 NIC wasn't there. In 5.21, it found the NIC again. There are some known issues with the fxp0 driver and 5.1. Other than that I haven't had any installation issues.

[LocoCoyote]

The joys of migrating to a higher tech, but less finished product!

But then again that's what makes life so intertesting isn't it!

[linuxbullet04]

OK this is what i found out, i have like fedora, mandrake, redhat, knoppix, and what is the differnece in FREEBSD and LINUX isnt it the same i mean they both have the same unix base right and or are the kernals the same and are both upgradable to 2.6 well all i really need to know is what bsd is and what is the differnece. thx alot GO LINUX w00tw00tw00t

P.S. i have linux distros such as the one's i said^^^^^ and i have got to run windows games and installed video drivers from nvidia to ati easy as 123 is there a xfree86 or what in freebsd, because i straight up use winex3 from transgaming for all my gaming and some linux based games. i would really like a response thx

[LocoCoyote]

Bottom line is that you can run anything under FreeBSD that you run under linux. The differences are mainily in the implementation. Think Sys V vs BSD.

[Xayd]

Originally posted by linuxbullet04
OK this is what i found out, i have like fedora, mandrake, redhat, knoppix, and what is the differnece in FREEBSD and LINUX isnt it the same i mean they both have the same unix base right and or are the kernals the same and are both upgradable to 2.6 well all i really need to know is what bsd is and what is the differnece. thx alot GO LINUX w00tw00tw00t

P.S. i have linux distros such as the one's i said^^^^^ and i have got to run windows games and installed video drivers from nvidia to ati easy as 123 is there a xfree86 or what in freebsd, because i straight up use winex3 from transgaming for all my gaming and some linux based games. i would really like a response thx

No, they're not the same. They don't use the same kernel.

FreeBSD is an OS, Linux is basically just a kernel, the varying distros add their own implementations of varying things to make an OS out of the independant parts.

With that scenario in mind, Linux tends to have better support for new hardware, since it's more distributed in development, there are alot more people working on support for new things for it. The downside is compatibility is not always perfect, especially with varying hardware. Some things might work great on some systems, but not on others, due to distro-specific nuances.

FreeBSD on the other hand, and the rest of the BSDs as well, are more centralized. They're not just a kernel, there is an OS under there and it's got a small committee of people who determine its direction and what its kernel supports and doesn't support, and how.

FreeBSD is more of a complete package (OS, utilities, kernel) than Linux is, and the base system therefore is very easy to set up and use since it's very standardized. Linux on the other hand will vary from distro to distro. Some like Slackware are very BSD like in layout, some like Debian have very good package management systems like FreeBSD does, some like Gentoo have very poor package management systems in comparison ;). Some are aimed at source installation and some have prepackaged binaries for everything. Some have graphical installers, some don't.

With FreeBSD you know what you're gonna get, so to speak.

[linuxbullet04]

So lets say i have a Nvidia or ATI Video Card and want to install the drivers from there site. Will that work, i know how on the other linux distros, but will it work on this and if so is the BSD good for gaming and EMULATED steam and games of that sort.


I just hate going from distro to distro. Its really a hassle.


THX , linuxbullet04

[Floppyman]

BSD's primary purpose is to be a server operating system. If you want to game etc., you'd be better off with linux. HTH

[RHLinuxGUY]

But Transgaming has almost completed there port of winex to FreeBSD. When that happens, then I'll try out FreeBSD my self.

[LocoCoyote]

FreeBSD is cool. It does take some getting used to.