[leglug-users] BSD vs. Linux

[Hisham Mardam Bey]

Hey Abdallah,

On 2/27/07, Abdallah <abdallah.deeb at gmail.com> wrote:
> OK, let's think about it for a bit. On what criteria do you base your OS choice?
>
> for me it was one of two things:
> 1- Mood
> 2- Work needs
>
> Talking about the later, if you run linux on your laptop you can't
> force the company(ies) you're working with to stop using OS/2 and
> switch over! It's outdated, it's ugly, etc... it doesn't matter, they
> spent a lot of money to buy it so they won't switch over just because
> someone says so... So, along the years, I've had to deal with the
> whole Windows family (the interface and the API) while working for
> many companies in Lebanon and outside. Why am I not one of the lucky
> ones who get to choose the OS for their clients? or get to work on
> high-end systems for a living? I guess we're not all born with a gold
> plated RAM on our motherboard.
>

Good question. The answer to that question varies a lot from person to
person, here's what I personally think about the matter.

At any one time, I usually have more than one OS running on my (main)
system. As mentioned in a previous email, my main reason for
installing FreeBSD (at first) was the fact it supported all of my
hardware with its default out of the box kernel. Once I had that, it
was something I was willing to build up until I liked. I did not go
with any of the more popular Linux distros because of a personal
characteristic of mine, I do not like mainstream "items". So another
one of the criteria I base my OS selection on is how "exotic" it is.
Mind you, this is for my personal use. I would recommend Ubuntu or any
of the "more commercial" (more mainstream if you will) distros to
people walking into the Linux/OSS domain be it on a personal or
enterprise level.

I have always been the sort of person that liked finding out new
things and liked using software that was considered experimental
simply because, well, I like to experiment.

In regard to the part of your answer about companies adopting Linux (I
assume you are mainly referring to desktop adoption), what you state
is valid. After a certain company pays bucket loads of money for a
(not always good) OS, it is not a simple task to convince them to
choose otherwise. Their decision might have been influenced by several
factors. Some of these factors may include:

1) Wanting to be able to "blame" someone for their problems. The trend
these days is to be able to blame someone for your mistakes. People
want to buy a thousand dollar software and will pay ten times as much
in terms of support and maintenance . The day something go wrong, they
want to be able to throw all the blame on the company they bought if
from and walk away without a scratch. Unfortunately, this has become
the mentality (at least in this part of the world) when it comes to
companies on the large scale and to their employees.

2) Standards and "going with the trend" is also another one of those
factors. Although not all standards are good, the fact remains that
they are out there. Companies (and individuals) will not make an
effort to try to push something else because people will simply refuse
to work with them. If PDF is the standard for read-only documents,
then if you use PS no one (or very few) are going to be able to view
your documents.

3) Relations between companies and other companies (and in this part
of the world, individuals) always have an influence on the decision
making process. Why do certain universities or organizations always
buy their hardware from a particular vendor? Because one of their
highly ranked staff member has some form of relationship with that
vendor and they end up influencing the decision making process.

Those among several more factors are some of the reasons why we have
not seen Linux pushed to the desktop in the corporate market.

> Now, to go back to the first criterion, I admit I've been able to run
> Linux on my laptop on and off for year. It's the main OS on the laptop
> these days (gentoo). Why is it dependent on mood? Well, simply because
> sometimes you have the stamina to fix everything manually and get
> things running in a couple of keystrokes, and sometimes, you simply
> want to get things happening easier for the "others" who would use the
> computer...

Agreed. If you go to a certain client and they have this printer, or
scanner, and you need to print or scan something right there and then,
you might not have the time to fiddle around with your OS in order to
get it to work. The same principle applies to everything else, both
hardware and software. Sometimes you want things to "just work", and
thats when you decide on going with an OS that is generally more
mainstream and more commercial (or commercially oriented).

> Will I switch to *bsd? why not! Will I have to go over a couple of
> hundred pages to get started? Dunno, I'll ask the pros... is it gentoo
> all over again? hisham?
>

If you end up making the switch, you will find that a lot of what you
know from the Linux world will still apply to the *BSD family of
operating systems. What I can tell you is that *BSD is usually more
"raw". Unless you pick one of the desktop oriented BSDs, like PC-BSD
(there are others as well), you are going to find yourself with a base
system that you have to build up as you go. Several things are done
differently than a Linux system. Somethings are nice, others more
annoying. You will have to get used to a very raw startup system, and
by raw I mean basic-ish. If you are one of the people that set up a
firewall (or a personal one) and you decide not to use a tool for
that, you are about to learn about a new firewall, new traffic shaper,
etc... You will also find that since *BSD do not use all the GNU
tools, things like:

ls foo -l

will not work as opposed to:

ls -l foo

Command / switch / argument ordering is very strict. Some differences
here and there on this level might be a bit annoying if you have been
working with Linux for a long time.

On the other, once you get everything set up the way you like it and
you fire up your favorite desktop environment, you are not going to
feel like you are using a *BSD system anymore. The more time you spend
learning its little tweaks, ins and outs, and its differences from
what you have been using, the more you're going to like it and
appreciate it (that was the case with me).

So what now? Well, if you want to dive into a new OS and experience
its positives, negatives, and most certainly acquire more knowledge,
then I would definitely advise you to dive in there head first (wear a
helmet!) right now.

Best regards,

hisham.

-- 
Hisham Mardam Bey
MSc (Computer Science)
http://hisham.cc/
+9613609386
Codito Ergo Sum (I Code Therefore I Am)