[GNUz] FreeNix workshop

[Rik Tindall]

Good links, thanks Nick.

Nick Rout wrote:

>A comparison article here if you are interested.
>
>http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/linux-comparison/article.html
>
>  
>
Waking up, roses in the air.. No, it's coffee.

Let's say it's deploy-for-purpose training time..

E.g. in my business, where there's a horticulture base link, the 
platform that brings in scientific background - and allows for product 
spinoff - is BSD (FreeBSD, apparently).

But in another venture, trying to systematise Win-user induction to *nix 
(as training), gradations of O/S difficulty ease the process - start 
with Ubuntu (or Suse etc), and move upwards in the direction of Gentoo 
(or similar). The intermediary step/s might be Debian (or similar), but 
now I'd be suggesting FreeBSD also (as entree to NetBSD & OpenBSD options).

But certainly LNX is where beginners are easiest accomodated (quickly). 
Comparing FreeBSD would teach them good and necessary habits, nice & 
early though - on a clean & compact system (best use for old hardware).

>You'll also be aware that freebsd provides the longest uptime severs on
>the web (and has for years and years)
>
>http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html
>  
>
Not one LNX in the top 50, outranked by three M$?!?!?!!

What the ..?

That's a total revelation.

Stuff I learnt yesterday (typical of BSD immersion), is think processes 
through more fully.. don't create a new user account and then upgrade 
from Bash 2 to 3 (after changing from default sh) - doing it the other 
way around would be smoother.

Spent ages trying to fathom #pw to sort the users' shell; penny drop = 
#chpass user -s bash

Obscure, but straightforward once you know how. - Had never heard of 
those on LNX.

- A very sharp manouever that BSD has a 'wheel' group, to put yourself & 
other sysads into. Root becomes a lot less busy & exposed.

- A real treat to discover this last message after logoff/shutdown this 
morning: 'Uptime 10.xx hours'

Life is looking up. :-)

Will we see you Wednesday?

P.S. I got the dvd playback sorted on Ubuntu (looks differently 
complicated on FreeBSD tho), and will write some notes for CLUG list 
from that platform tomorrow.

Cheers,

-- 
Rik Tindall, InfoHelp Services <http://www.infohelp.co.nz>, on:
FreeBSD 5.4-Release free O/S, GDM + GNOME 2.10.0 desktop,
Mozilla 1.7.7 email + browser, gedit 2.10.0 editor, gFTP 2.0.18