Roland's UNIX pages
Roland's UNIX pages |
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Like a lot of people in those days, I started my computing career on MS-DOS. I might even still have some DOS 5.0 floppies around. (If you need DOS today, try FreeDOS instead!) I took a look at windows 3.0, but didn’t like it much. It crashed a lot. When OS/2 2.0 came out, I switched to that. I started programming on it with the IBM VisualAge C++ compiler, bought the Describe word processor and several hobbes OS/2 archive CDs. After an expensive upgrade of the IBM compiler didn’t really work well, I tried Slackware Linux on the advice of a friend in 1996. (Thanks, Richard!) I was immediately sold. This was certainly a learning experience! But the fact that Linux distribution came with a complete development environment, including scripting languages, made it very attractive. It was also my introduction to the TeX typesetting system. And I’m still glad I found that.
After having used Slackware Linux since 1996, I switched to FreeBSD when I bought a PC with an athlon64 processor in 2004 because Slackware was (at that time) i386 only, and I wanted to try and run a 64-bit OS and applications. There are several things that keep me using FreeBSD;
Almost every file, command, driver and library function comes with a manual page! That was not something I was used to im my Linux days, to put it mildly.
Imagine almost every application you would want available with only a couple
of commands. Without you having to check which libraries you need and having
to fix compiles that don’t work. E.g, to install the GIMP, I would do ‘cd
/usr/ports/graphics/gimp’ followed by ‘make install clean’, and that’s
it. It will ask me about which optional features I want, and then download
the source code, compile and install it. Best thing since sliced bread.
On the mailing-lists like freebsd-questions, people are generally helpful and polite. Even the developers keep an eye on these lists and answer inquiries.
There is a database and a tool for submitting problem reports. If you do a proper assessment of the problem, and especially if you have an idea how or a patch to to fix it, these are tackled quickly.
These pages were originally intended to document the things that I have learned about the FreeBSD operating system after I switched from Linux. Initially this was a single page but it was growing too long. So I’ve split it up into parts. And in doing that I realized a lot of things can be applied to other UNIX-like operating systems as well, because most of the free en open source software available is quite portable amongst them. So I renamed the page.
Below are a list of topics covered on their separate page;
—– Copyright © 2010, Roland Smith rsmith@xs4all.nl
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