Hi The short answer is that the BSDs are quite a bit different from Linux, and that speakup will not work with BSD. I've provided more detailed responses under each of your questions. On Jun 8, 2007, at 8:56 PM, Jeremy wrote: > . First of all, what are the biggest > differences between the bsd systems such as FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, > and the linux distros, gentoo, debian, etc? From researching and > reading it seems that there are people that either love or hate one > or the other. Now, this is quite a large area for discussion. The biggest difference, as I see it having used both Linux and the avrious other flavors of UNIX, is that BSD is an entire operating system (kernel, tools, utilities, etc), while Linux is simply the kernel. The rest of what most people consider "Linux," is what a particular Linux distribution decides to provide. The basics are always the same, such as some of the core unix commands like ls, cp, rm, mv, etc. However, beyond that, many things are specific to one distribution or another, such as system maintenance tools, configuration file locations, the way certain subsystems are configured by default, and things like that. Also, Linux is based almost entirely around the GNU project for its utilities, while the various flavors of BSD are less so. For instance, in Linux most of your basic commands are provided by the GNU project, via packages such as fileutils (for ls and similar). In BSD, these basic commands are not written by the GNU project, rather they are either written or adapted from the original BSD by the development teams. This usually isn't important to most people, except for some slight syntactical differences in which command-line options are used and in what order arguments should be given. When these differences become important, however, is when you're trying to explore the system, and/or troubleshoot it. If you're using Linux, you have to worry about what distribution and all the factors that go into that. Among some of the lesser-used distributions, information is not always as easy to find. In addition, the problem of different packaging formats comes up much more often between various Linux distributions, as does the issue of binary compatibility (what was compiled for one set of libraries will not necessarily work with another version of the same libraries provided by another distribution). In contrast, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD are operating systems, not different distributions of BSD. If you say you're using FreeBSD, then that's it. No worrying about distributions, libraries, binaries, and where the files are located. You just need to look up information pertaining to the version of FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD you have, and you've got the information you need. > From a security standpoint, what is more secure? That's a question not easily answered. Statistically, however, judging by the amount of holes reported in one system or the other, OpenBSD seems to have a slight edge so far in this field. It's the smallest and least hand-holding of the BSD systems, though there's plenty of documentation if you want to use it. Incidentally, it's my personal favorite for servers, since if you know what you're doing it doesn't get in your way at all. > > Also, > if bsd is like linux, as it seems to be, could speakup ever be made > to work with it? The current version of speakup couldn't just be ported over to BSD, as speakup is a patch to the Linux kernel and the BSD kernels are so different that comparing them would be like comparing apples and oranges. I have no doubt that a screen reader like speakup could be written for the various BSD systems, but you can't just run speakup on BSD. This is not to say that BSD isn't useable the way Linux is. While there's no screen reader for the BSD command line (save for YASR which I've seen no work done on in a few years), you can install BSD via serial console using a Linux computer over a serial connection. This renders the BSD installation process just as accessible as Linux, and once you have the system running you can ssh into it from the network. As far as the GUI screen readers go, you can install gnome on BSD easily enough and, so long as you have a speech engine supported that works on whichever BSD flavor you're using, the Gnome screen readers will work. Wow, I'm out of breath now. Grin.
