FreeBSD for Linux Users

Overview

4.4BSD-Lite is a derivative of BSD Unix which is certified as unencumbered since the Novell/Berkeley settlement.

Not officially "UNIX"
- "UNIX" is a trademark of The Open Group.
- None of the BSDs have licensed the trademark.
- Neither has Linux.
- Unlike Linux, however, the BSDs are direct descendents of original Unix.
Closely related to NetBSD and OpenBSD
"BSD is what you get when a bunch of Unix hackers sit down to try to port a Unix system to the PC. Linux is what you get when a bunch of PC hackers sit down and try to write a Unix system for the PC."

Base system: the kernel and the userland, all developed together.
- Includes a shell (csh), an editor (vi), cvs, compilers, etc.
- Sufficient in itself to provide a running system.
Ports: Third-party applications.
- Over 12,000 ports as of this writing.
- Well-known ports include X.org, KDE, Gnome, XFCE, Apache, PHP, Samba, vim, bash (ick), ...
- Most (but not all) applications you'd run on Linux also exist as FreeBSD ports.
The Linux way: everything except the kernel is a port.
- It's up to the distribution maintainer to assemble a kernel and a collection of third-party applications and hope they all work together.
cvsup and portupgrade

The myth of hardware support
- A common question: "Is my video card supported in FreeBSD?"
- The answer: if X.org supports it, then X.org supports it, regardless of whether you're in FreeBSD or Linux.
- Yes, nVidia cards do work.
Most other hardware (sound cards, network cards, wifi, USB, firewire, etc) works fine too.
WPA doesn't work yet, but it's not really there in Linux, either (as of August).
- Update: WPA support is in FreeBSD 6. A FreeBSD 6 release candidate build appeared on the download mirrors yesterday.

The Handbook on building the kernel
Simple text config file
- No need for "make xconfig" or "make menuconfig"
make buildkernel KERNCONF=myconfig
make installkernel KERNCONF=myconfig
If you're just building a new config of your existing kernel version, that's it!
If you're building a new kernel version then you also need to build the rest of the base system. See the handbook!!!

Three different branches of the base system
-RELEASE is the one to use in most cases.
-STABLE is a testing branch. It's likely to work, but no guarantees.
- Not recommended for your main machine.
- Use at your own risk.
-CURRENT is the development branch. It's likely to break.
- DON'T use -CURRENT on your main system!
- -CURRENT is NOT intended to give you the latest feature before everyone else gets it.

In addition to the resources mentioned before, credits are due:
This presentation is composed entirely of HTML and CSS, based on Eric Meyer's S5 presentation system: http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/