Should I Learn Linux Or BSD?

Should I learn Linux or BSD?

Why would you be interested in learning BSD?

BSD has a more open licensing agreement. BSD doesn't make you make your code available to other people.

BSD is similar to Linux, without being designed by Linux hackers.

Say what?

There is a joke that BSD is what you get when you get Unix hackers to move Unix to a PC. Linux is what happens when Microsoft hackers try to write Unix for the PC.

That suggests that BSD is the result of the better hackers. Uh, better programmers.

BSD/OS usage suffered in the 1990s and 2000s because those who wanted open source opted for Unix compatible tools. It is not widely used.

BSD has more stability and testing. While it is open source, you're less likely to be left to bleed to death on the bleeding edge of technology.

Because BSD is so slow, it doesn't support hardware as fast as Linux.

BSD code isn't controlled the way Linux code is controlled by Linus Torvalds.

It isn't controlled by anyone, except maybe Berkley. But it isn't well supported, only well advertised by a few die-hards.

BSD maintains its entire OS. Linux only supports its Kernel.

Wind River stopped supporting BSD back in 2004.

There's GhostBSD.

That has a ghost of a chance of hitting the mainstream.

You don't think I should learn BSD.

At least if you put Linux on your resume, quite a few hiring managers will know to ask if that's related to UNIX.

You don't think there's much work related to BSD.

I'd be surprised to find anything hosted on BSD except a few 1990 era Internet startups that never took off still using it for their OS. You'll find a few diehards running their web servers on BSD just to be more hip than the Unix and Linux people.

That's a fair user community.

They're the IT community's equivalent of pajama boy, people living in their basements with niche interests and little commercial or social value. Go learn Linux, if not Unix.