FreeBSD Quickstart Guide for Linux Users

Heh,<p>You know Linux has been getting soft and Gooey around the edges when there are Unix manuals for Linux users :-)<p>When I went from Slackware to FreeBSD in 1998, the only document you needed was INSTALL and the hardware compatibility list. In fact, FreeBSD was more posh than slack, it had a curses install and came with a luxurious handbook.<p>Speaking of which, I absolutely don't miss the days of taking a list of supported devices to the computer shop, and reading the fine print on boxes looking for chipset specs and firmware versions.

I'm running a production server (RAID setup, i7, so decent specs too) with multiple jails, each with their own ZFS filesystem. Honestly, I may be biased since I've been a FreeBSD fan since about '99, but it is really a sysadmin's dream. The system has been rock-stable for years. I'm currently running FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE. Upgrading from 7 to 8 was not a problem, even from remote.<p>I'm a fulltime developer, so the less time I spend sysadmining on this system, the better it is for me. Upgrading packages, the kernel and even the jails is a quick job and can be set up to happen automatically.

Considering the high-quality and availability of Linux distributions these days, what are some of the advantages of using FreeBSD over Linux? More specifically, are there any competitive advantages that could be obtained from using FreeBSD over Linux that would outweigh the costs of deviating from the Linux standard on web servers?

Great guide. It tells me how. Is there a similar document that tells me why?<p>The main thing I can think of is kqueue, but I'd love to see a list of all the features BSD gives me but linux doesn't (and vice versa).

"Absolute FreeBSD: The Complete Guide to FreeBSD" by Michael Lucas is one of the best technical books I've read:<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Absolute-FreeBSD-Complete-Guide-2nd/dp/1593271514" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Absolute-FreeBSD-Complete-Guide-2nd/dp...</a>

The common commands page[0] lists a few translations for package managers. It would be great if someone could add a FreeBSD column to the much more voluminous Pacman Rosetta page[1] (which is intended for Arch users, but provides a helpful matrix for all the common Linux distros).<p>[0]: <a href="http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/linux-users/commands.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/linux-users/commands....</a><p>[1]: <a href="http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman_Rosetta" rel="nofollow">http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman_Rosetta</a>