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View Full Version : [ubuntu] Question about freeBSD



snakeman21
January 16th, 2009, 02:30 AM
I have been a linux user for about two years now, and don't understand how I ever accomplished anything with Windows. I love my dear Intrepid. I love its speed, power, versatility, how smoothly it runs, its clean desktop environment, and I wouldn't change anything about it. But I just want to hear some opinions, how does freeBSD compare to Ubuntu Linux? Speed, memory usage, ease of use, desktop environment. I'm considering installing it to an external HD to try it out. (Right now I have six different OS's on that drive, just because I like to play around with them!) I doubt I'll replace my Intrepid with it, but I love to tinker around with the different Ubuntu flavors and thought I'd try something a little different.

adamlau
January 16th, 2009, 07:21 AM
Hard to answer, depends on how you set up FreeBSD, installation options are particularly flexible. Assuming similar defaults, I figure everything to be very close (my FreeBSD installs tend to be minimal). FreeBSD may have superior memory usage, but then again, much of that depends on the applications used. I find FreeBSD documentation to be vastly superior and the kernel compilation process to be easier by a factor of two. In terms of DE vs. DE, Ubuntu has usability patches in place whereas FreeBSD will depend on the DE and its native quirks for functionality. Compiling applications is definitely faster on FreeBSD. Lack of hardware support for the latest and the greatest is why I run Ubuntu on my primaries with the latest and greatest. In the end, the old adage applies: Give it a shot, you may like it :) .