FreeBSD vs. Linux on TechTV! The OffMyServer OS Shootout.

FreeBSD and Linux go head to head on live television in a battle for the best operating system.

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) September 5, 2003 -- OffMyServer CTO, Matt Olander, and FreeBSD Mall VP of Engineering and Release Engineer, Murray Stokely appeared on TechTV, a major technology network, for a segment entitled FreeBSD vs. Linux. The segment appeared on The Screen Savers show, which is one of TechTV's most popular programs.

The purpose of the show was to see how FreeBSD stacked up against Linux in a desktop environment. Matt and Murray were invited to represent FreeBSD, while Linux Journal's Chief Editor, Don Marti showed off SuSE Linux. Chris DiBona, formerly of VA Linux, was there to referee the challenge.

OffMyServer provided four systems to each team for demonstration purposes. Each team installed live on the air on one box and then showed some applications that they had a bit of time to setup on the other system. When Leo Laporte, the host of the show, came back to check on the installation, he reported that the FreeBSD side finished their installation first and were already configuring their window manager by the time the Linux guys were putting in disk 3 of their installation.

TechTV has posted an article regarding the segment that can be found here:
http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/linux/story/0,24330,3511343,00.html

"I'm glad that we had a chance to show that FreeBSD is a viable desktop operating system," said Matt Olander. "We found that most people weren't even aware that FreeBSD could run many of the same applications as Linux."

The FreeBSD team showed off the Fluxbox desktop (http://www.fluxbox.org) running mplayer playing Ace Ventura Pet Detective, AbiWord, Gnumeric, XChat, Konqueror, KOffice, and other applications. Combined with some transparent multi-colored tinted aterm terminal windows, Leo thought that the Fluxbox desktop looked very sexy and professional when compared to the vanilla KDE installation on the Linux desktop.

"We had the opportunity to discuss the FreeBSD ports collection on live television," stated Murray Stokely. "When compared to Linux, this is truly one of the areas that FreeBSD stands out."

In the end, Chris officially considered the comparison a tie, although this caused many of the TechTV audience members to boo and hiss the decision. Whether or not it's because they would've preferred to see FreeBSD win, we'll never know.

About FreeBSD Mall
FreeBSD Mall, formerly known as Walnut Creek CDROM, is a provider of high quality FreeBSD software, documentation, support and services.

Find out more about FreeBSD Mall products and services at http://www.freebsdmall.com

About OffMyServer, Inc.
Offmyserver provides internet infrastructure grade rackmount servers, security appliances, and managed hosting to a global marketplace. The Offmyserver management team consists of executives and employees from BSDi and iXsystems. Offmyserver's goal is to provide leading edge hardware solutions and managed hosting on opensource operating systems including FreeBSD and Linux. Offmyserver has developed optimized web servers, email servers and file servers to meet their customers needs. New products include a variety of security appliances including firewall and intrusion detection.
For more information:

Visit the website:http://www.offmyserver.com
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