Comparison of FreeBSD & Linux

Free Software Magazine has a short article describing the differences and similarities between FreeBSD and GNU/Linux (generic linux). It is fairly rudimentary but good for those that are unfamiliar with the subject.

Enjoy

 

Nice find.

An afterthought, but I'd be interesting to compare OS X to *BSD and Linux, as it's in the same vein.

 

That would be interesting. OSX does seem to be very different though. Only it's UNIX tools are from FreeBSD.

 

OS X uses a Mach microkernel, which can't really perform up to par with a monolithic kernel like FreeBSD or Linux. Also, the BSD userland is quite limited. So while under the hood it is a UNIX system, it's a fairly primitive one.

 

How is the userland limited? Is it the lack of GNU userland tools?

 

Not really, since the GNU tools are pretty portable. To me, it's primarily that there's no easy way to manage and maintain any tools which aren't provided with OS X.

 

I agree. I thought you were talking about FreeBSD.

It's hard to imagine an OSX 'package manager'.

 

No, ports makes GNU tools a snap in FreeBSD. Looking back, it does look like I was referring to BSD, but I was really talking about the BSD userland in OS X.