Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 14:58:57 -0400 (EDT) From: Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com>
----- Original Message -----
From: "Walter Vaughan" <wvaughan@steelerubber.com>
You most definately will want to make sure your user id's are identical between the two systems, otherwise stuff like @CB will have wrong information.
Excellent point.
Also, do you have any expertise maintaing a linux box? If you want something closer to SCO in mentality, FreeBSD and SCO have the same grandparents. Linux is like the cute girl that moved into town. Stuff isn't always where you expect to find it, and you may get a surprise if you reach into the wrong place.
Oh, don't *even* send him to BSD.
CentOS and SuSE 11 are the only rational free Linuces for business use.
*Any* of the BSDs are so much less well supported that they'll drive you straight up a wall.
Depends on what he is doing. BSDs tend to be far more mature than any Linux. They are poor systems for desktops or anything like that. They are heavily used as servers by many vary large providers and as the basis for many products like Ironport (Cisco) and JunOS (Juniper). (I'll admit that I run FreeBSD on my laptop with great success, but you have to REALLY want it.) That said, the BSD community is smaller and the addition of features and the latest hardware support is slower on BSDs. If you are very concerned with security, I'd never hesitate to recommend OpenBSD. For more general use, FreeBSD. For an "unusual" platform, NetBSD. For a walk on the wild side, try DragonFly and Hammer. That said, I run both Linux and FreeBSD regularly and they both have their place. You want the right tool for the job. The one Linux distro I don't recommend for experienced users is Ubuntu. I don't like Windows because it presumes it know how I want to do things better than I do and Ubuntu does the same. If my sister was planing to play with Linux, I'd send her directly to Ubuntu, though. (Tool...job. She does not get along well with computers.) -- R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) E-mail: oberman@es.net Phone: +1 510 486-8634 Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4 EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751