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purevil:
Ok i'm wanting to break in to unix/linux I have redhat 9. I hear that support for redhat will soon dry up. So i was wondering what distro should i go to? And what about Free BSD? is it as stable as the bsd that os x is built on or does anyone know or not?

slave:
Use Fedora Linux.  It's a community-supported and redhat-sponsored linux distribution.  It is pretty much the contiunation of the red hat linux distribution, just under a new brand.

Why they renamed "Red Hat Linux" to "Fedora Core" is beyond me, really.  It just seems to have caused confusion, and a bunch of stupid comments by ignorant people.

Laukev7:

quote: And what about Free BSD? is it as stable as the bsd that os x is built on or does anyone know or not?
--- End quote ---


Yes, FreeBSD is very stable. It's one of the most stable OSes out there, as shown by netcraft. It's also much easier to install applications on FreeBSD than on Linux, especially Apt/RPM based distributions like Redhat and SuSE. It is also very well organised and consistent.

FreeBSD even has Linux compatibility offered by the installation, in case you want to use a Linux-specific application.

purevil:
Does free BSD have good support and does it have a good number of apps like mp3 players and usual apps i.e. mail, web browser, office apps, the usual shit?
and i will be able to install linux apps like mozilla? If so then i believe i might have found a great os for me. but im not sure yet, is it easy to run for a noob unix nobody like myself? if not then how are the other distros for noobs? I know i want to get into something other than winderz on this box. I know unix is a stable beast "I have os x"

Laukev7:
FreeBSD has almost the same software support as Linux. And Mozilla is not a Linux app; it's a browser evolved from Netscape, and available for virtually every platform.

Since you already have Red Hat 9, I assume you already know about KDE / GNOME. FreeBSD is not designed with beginners in mind, but it is certainly manageable if you already used Linux and Mac OS X. Once FreeBSD is installed, day to day use on the desktop should be comparable to what you're used to on Red Hat, as it uses the same desktop managers.

The not-so-easy part of FreeBSD is the installation, which is menu-based and not graphical. Despite the looks of the Sysinstall interface, the installation is pretty straightforward, and you will get all the necessary instructions as you go on. Also, you get generic KDE / GNOME interfaces instead of the customised Red Hat versions. On the other hand, applications are much less a hassle to install on FreeBSD, because every application available for FreeBSD can be installed from the Sysinstall utility, and you won't get problems like package or repository dependencies that can become growing pains on Linux.

By all means, give it a try. It's not a noob OS, but you can learn a lot about UNIX through FreeBSD (although you don't really need to). If it's really too taxing for you, then you could always try Mandrake Linux. Heck, you can always dual boot between the two.

[ November 04, 2003: Message edited by: Laukev7 ]

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