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Xref: sserve comp.os.linux:47862 comp.os.386bsd.questions:3788 Newsgroups: comp.os.linux,comp.os.386bsd.questions Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!pipex!uknet!gdt!aber!fronta.aber.ac.uk!pcg From: pcg@aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) Subject: Re: SUMMARY: 486DX2/66 for Unix conclusions (fairly long) In-Reply-To: metcalf@CATFISH.LCS.MIT.EDU's message of 12 Jul 1993 01: 54:28 GMT Message-ID: <PCG.93Jul13212000@decb.aber.ac.uk> Followup-To: comp.os.linux,comp.os.386bsd.questions Sender: news@aber.ac.uk (USENET news service) Nntp-Posting-Host: decb.aber.ac.uk Reply-To: pcg@aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) Organization: Prifysgol Cymru, Aberystwyth References: <21k903$3q4@GRAPEVINE.LCS.MIT.EDU> <PCG.93Jul12003233@decb.aber.ac.uk> <21qg8k$ra3@GRAPEVINE.LCS.MIT.EDU> Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1993 20:19:59 GMT Lines: 58 >>> On 12 Jul 1993 01:54:28 GMT, metcalf@CATFISH.LCS.MIT.EDU (Chris >>> Metcalf) said: Chris> I've set followups on this thread to the OS groups only. Chris> In article <PCG.93Jul12003233@decb.aber.ac.uk> pcg@aber.ac.uk Chris> (Piercarlo Grandi) writes: pcg> The main difference is that the BSd kernel is stable, and BSD 4.4 pcg> has been vastlu cleaned up and made more coherent and more general; pcg> the Linux kernel is not badly written, but its organization is far pcg> more haphazard. Chris> I'm not convinced there's much difference in stability; I've Chris> heard many people say their Linux systems stay up many months at Chris> a time. Well, I was not considering the stability in terms of kernel crashes, but in architectural terms. The distinction of BSD and Linux is that source is available, i.e. they are ideally suited to kernel work. The way the Linux kernel is structured is not as stable (and elegant) as that of the BSD kernel; some good people have given quite a bit of thought to that over the past half a dozen years. Major subsystems are still being tossed into the Linux kernel by the day... Linus writes nice code, but it is still moving rather rapidly. Most of the BSD kernel is rather stable, in this sense. For example the FFS, and the networking code, and the space allocators, and ... Linux is nice, but BSD4 has the benefits of a longer and maybe more distinguished history behind it. Chris> As for architectural elegance, my impression is that this is not Chris> something that Linus was initially shooting for---but perhaps Chris> something that will grow as, [ ... ] By contrast, 386BSD seems to Chris> have gone the opposite direction, with lots of grim Chris> architecture-dependent hacks in it, and NetBSD trying to pull Chris> back the other way. Well, Linux is a much newer technolopgy than BSD; I'd say that Linux is currently at about the BSD4.1c level, i.e. circa 1982 in the BSD evolution. I regard 386BSD as a temporary hack waiting for the much dreamt-of release of BSD4.4-Lite. As such the Jolitz team is doing a very nice work; most of it, I reckon, will be folded back into BSD4.4, especially drivers and the like. Chris> and about the wonderfully cheap price of 340M disks these days; The cheap small capacity drives are all IDE, and I don't like IDE drives, simply because it seems that in the long run a single SCSI host adapter is the better bet. ISA slots are not that abundant a resource in many baby AT motherboards; and as somebody reminded me by mail, in practice only SCSI boards do bus mastering, which can be a big win. Chris> The last point to address is SCSI. I did consider this for a Chris> while, but today (this year, nor probably next year) I just don't Chris> need a CRROM or a backup device; if I did, I would have paid up Chris> for SCSI. Ah, if you are lucky enough to be able to rely on some net connected system for both... But my machine is, for example, standalone, and so are many personal use machines...