FreeBSD vs Linux

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[edit] Community

Linux has a larger decentralized community. FreeBSD has a smaller centralized community.

This is reflected in the development model. FreeBSD's whole base system is developed by a single group of dedicated developers, while a Linux system incorporates pieces coming from a broad range of teams.

[edit] Compatibility

[edit] Hardware Support

Linux is generally regarded as having a broader range of hardware support, and has been ported to more platforms than FreeBSD. Because of the more unified structure of the FreeBSD base system as contrasted with Linux distributions, however, supported hardware tends to be more easily and uniformly managed and configured with FreeBSD.

[edit] Software Support

The primary compatibility APIs for Linux are POSIX and SysV Unix.

The primary compatibility APIs for FreeBSD are POSIX and BSD Unix.

The majority of open source applications developed for Unix-like systems are easily ported to both FreeBSD and most Linux distributions. Some software designed specifically for FreeBSD is not so easily ported to Linux distributions, and some software designed specifically for Linux-based systems is not so easily ported to FreeBSD, however. Linux-based systems -- particularly Red Hat based systems -- receive more commercial software development support than FreeBSD, however, and tend to enjoy the support of more open source developers as well. As a result, there is arguably more software that runs on Linux-based systems than FreeBSD, at least in theory.

FreeBSD closes the gap significantly by way of a Linux binary compatibility layer, which allows a lot of software developed with Linux in mind to run on FreeBSD without porting the software to FreeBSD. In addition, while the APT archive for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution officially contains the most software of any BSD Unix or Linux distribution software archives, FreeBSD's ports system archive runs a close second.

[edit] Documentation

FreeBSD has a very good handbook and all the documentation is in the same place FreeBSD.org.

FreeBSD comes with the sources for the whole system by default, installed into /usr/src. While Linux (and the GNU userland) is open-source, with sources easily downloadable, it is not as readily available as FreeBSD's.

[edit] File Systems

[edit] Both

  • ext2
  • ext3
  • FAT
  • FUSE
  • ISO9660
  • NFS
  • NTFS (experimental)
  • procfs
  • RAM disk
  • SMBFS
  • swap
  • UDF

FreeBSD and Linux both support encrypted file systems, quotas, and RAID.

[edit] FreeBSD

  • AFS
  • Coda (experimental)
  • ReiserFS (read only)
  • UFS/UFS2
  • XFS (experimental)
  • ZFS
  • FFS
  • others

[edit] Linux

  • ReiserFS
  • UFS (read only)
  • XFS
  • JFS
  • BTRFS
  • SQUASHFS
  • others

[edit] Licensing

Main article: Copyfree vs Copyleft

FreeBSD's preferred license is the BSD license, and this copyfree license is used for the FreeBSD kernel. Some core utilities are part of the GNU tool chain, and as such are licensed GPL or LGPL, though there are development efforts underway to replace GNU utilities.

The Linux kernel is distributed under the terms of the GPLv2, a copyleft license, and most Linux distributions favor the GNU tool chain. A lot of basic software in most Linux distributions was lifted from BSD Unix systems, and still bear the BSD license.

[edit] Security

Access Control
Both Linux and FreeBSD support Unix permissions, Mandatory Access Control, and ACLs, though Linux only supports ACLs on i686 architectures.
Integrated Firewall
Linux uses the Netfilter firewall, normally managed with the iptables front end. FreeBSD supports IPFW2, IPFilter, and PF firewalls.
Vulnerability Assessment
FreeBSD's portaudit tool provides a convenient way to audit software installed from ports for known vulnerabilities.
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