From: cosmos@yabbs To: all@yabbs Subject: UNIX info sheet Date: Sun Jul 31 14:00:24 1994 Alot of the kids have been asking me what version of UNIX they should run on their computer to learn or be cool or whatever. Rather than repeat myself over and over or perhaps tear them a new arse I thought a short info file on the 3 variants prevailing in the free net implementations would be useful. This document is in no way official or meant to be taken as gospel. This is just my observations. *** The Berkeley Camp *** There are 2 variants of the original 386BSD port done by William Jolitz on the net today. Both are *very* similar in general appearance and contain alot of the same code, however are targeted at a much different audience. The BSD implementations of UNIX are a very popular flavour in the university community and have been for the past 10 years. Many commercial flavours such as SunOS are BSD based. The 2 net implentations are not beginner oriented per se. Both are aimed at a more knowledgeable UNIX base and do not specifically cater to the new or inexperienced user. This is not to say that a new user cannot do anything useful on a BSD variant, just that his hand may not be held very closely. If you have experience in a commercial UNIX environment, especially SunOS or Ultrix you may notice little difference besides vendor crap between your variant and the *BSD versions. FreeBSD: This is the intel specific release of BSD. It relies on a core team for its major development. Install is easy to follow and well documented for new users. Numerous mailing lists serve the FreeBSD community and the freebsd.cdrom.com FTP site contains much to keep a FreeBSD user happy. The FreeBSD team maintains a "package" site there as well which are precompiled binaries for many useful programs and utilities. I recommend this one heartily to someone wanting to do some quality work on a rock solid UNIX os. Currently the last release version was 1.1.5.1 which is still based on 4.3 net/2 code. You can get this release from gatekeeper.dec.com in the /BSD directories. Release 2.0 which will be a 4.4 lite based implementation is due out in late September. NetBSD: This is an architecture independent release of the 386BSD code. It runs on many popular machines like the intel 386/486, Macintosh, Amiga, Sun3 etc... It is currently a working implementation of BSD 4.4 code and within a week or two release 1.0 will be out. This is *not* the beginners OS. The only thing you get with this baby is the OS itself. No ports or packages are maintained, thus the need for a more in depth knowledge of software porting to UNIX and admin skills are needed. I like this release of *BSD the best. If you like hacking around on UNIX and feel comfortable, I urge you to give this one a try. *** Linux *** Linux is an entirely different beast. The BSD variants are technically a real UNIX, they do have original UNIX code in them (which has upset many a Novell/USL lawyer). however Linux is a complete rewrite from the ground up based to look like a System V UNIX. Lets first clear up some myths. LINUX is not System V UNIX. LINUX is not UNIX period. Linux is a very stable UNIX clone which attempts to give the user a System V feel with alot of BSD add ons. Linux has quite a few non standard quarks specific to itself that may confuse and/or piss off a UNIX regular. However, Linux is written and maintained with a user-oriented attitude that serves its community quite well. From the initial install program which is a color menu driven install more user friendly than the Windows install to each individual package, Linux is clearly user oriented. Linux Slackware distribution is very well documented and contains *everything* under the sun you would ever possibly need/want(much too much sometimes ;) ). This is one of its major differences from the older BSD crowd. It is much eaiser to a newbie or novice to install Linux, fire up X and start learning than on one of the *BSD variants. But it has its tradeoffs. You can grab Linux stuff from: sunsite.unc.edu /pub/Linux The bottom line is that each user must make a choice and go from there. Try all three and see which suits you best. But dont expect someone else to spoonfeed you the whole way. Man pages do have a reason for their existance... Cosmos