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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!spool.mu.edu!nigel.msen.com!zib-berlin.de!news.belwue.de!newsserv.zdv.uni-tuebingen.de!iptc!news.wsi!usenet From: gabara@Informatik.Uni-Tuebingen.DE (Andrej Gabara) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc Subject: Re: Usefulness of BSD/Linux Source Knowledg Date: 27 Jul 1994 21:52:16 GMT Organization: Wilhelm Schickard Institut, Tuebingen Lines: 54 Message-ID: <316kug$ea9@wsiserv.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de> References: <cln.775305310@dynamo> Reply-To: gabara@Informatik.Uni-Tuebingen.DE NNTP-Posting-Host: helga.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de In article 775305310@dynamo, mrg@mame.mu.OZ.AU (matthew green) writes: >why is bsd dead? there are _several_ commercial bsd >unixes available, but no linux ones. i don't see why >you think bsd is dead. > Sun switched from BSD to SYSV, DEC's moving away from ULTRIX (BSD) to OSF/1 (Mach), AIX is based on SYSV, HP-UX is based on SYSV, IRIX is based on SYSV, and most of the PC commercial Unices are (Esix, Dell, Solaris i386, SCO) -- BSDI being an exception. Look at Apollo Domain/OS, which is BSD based, it does not exist anymore either. Why did HP put HP-UX on the HP/Apollo architecture and not further developed Domain/OS? I'm sure they have a reason. Maybe BSD is not dead, but it is dying. An no panacea in sight, is there? >>Anyway, the two are fine Unices so you should choose what you like best. >>What you learn in either one is good for you and the differences between >>the two are shrinking because SVR4.2 and Linux have most of BSD in them >>and BSD is getting a lot of the stuff from SysV in it. Like I said, >>all OS are merging and your learning won't be wasted either way. > >you claim that bsd is dead, above, and then state here >that it is `getting a lot of the stuff from SysV' in it. > > >i wish at&t would die, and take svr4 with it. it's >really sad that svr4 is the ``industry standard.'' > >..mrg. You want AT&T to die? Why? Don't you know that Novell purchased USL? AT&T's UNIX is called Plan9, and not SYSV! BSD has not developed a lot during 10 years. No dynamic loading of device drivers. I really like how IBM AIX does this. You install a drive by putting in the hardware, reboot, and voila, the system detects the drive, sets up the device files in /dev, dynamically loads the device driver, and you're set. The logical volumes are way cool. Have you ever created partitions for BSD? When you run out of space of one partition, how do you enlarge it? Easy ;-) backup the drive, change the partition sizes, and do a restore (taking hours at least). The AIX filesystem sizes grow on demand (since they are virtual, somewhat like virtual memory). People think this causes a lot of overhead, but I foud the AIX filesystem extremely fast. If BSD 4.5 would include the following: - Dynamic loading and configuration of devices (so people won't have to recompile kernels) - Logical volumes such as in AIX then I'm sure people will find BSD a lot more attractive than right now. -Andrej --- Just my opinion, not the opinion of my employer, since I got none ;-)