[PLUG] Anyone using / can advise on FreeBSD/NetBSD?

[Mayuresh]

On Fri, Jul 01, 2011 at 09:08:12PM +0530, Shridhar Daithankar wrote:

I did install FreeBSD yesterday (8.2). The installation was pretty smooth
and quick - quicker than what I am used to seeing for Fedora. Of course
this just installed base and no applications. But then even on Fedora I
choose a minimal install and then install things as needed. Considering
that I found installation to be much quicker.

> - I hate ports. I don't/didn't have horse power to compile everything I need 
> from port and back then(2004-2005), using a 64 bit KDE desktop mean compile a 
> lot of packages by hand because binary packages weren't available always.

I do agree. I started with ports, though could not withstand the time it
takes to get things ready. Both network bandwidth and CPU become a
bottleneck. Certainly so when you have installed this system for the first
time and are very eager to try it out.

Then I switched to packages, a lot of which were available on the DVD.

The ports organization made by FreeBSD seem technically very attractive
though. Must be the same with Linux flavors you mentioned.

Wonder whether there are situations when the customizability really pays
off for the time spent on building ports. Do not know, whether cutting
down on features that are not needed or compiling for the exact hardware
you have greatly pays off for average general purpose desktops.


I have a question: I am having FreeBSD and Linux on 2 separate partitions
on a disk and my home directories on a 3rd ext3 partition.

FreeBSD has ext2fs driver using which I can mount my ext3 home directory
partition. Firstly I don't know whether it is alright to do so i.e. given
it's an ext2 driver. Probably it has something to do with journaling not
being available. Can it cause any other problems - besides possible loss
due to lack of journaling in event of unclean shutdown.

Secondly, I'd like to try to have same home directory on both Linux and
FreeBSD. Is it possible? I could probably tweak the uids to be same for a
login on both the systems, though I find that FreeBSD doesn't seem to care
about uid. It just shows root as owner of all files.

Any clues on this?

Mayuresh.