Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mira.net.au!yarrina.connect.com.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!solace!nntp.uio.no!news.cais.net!news.jsums.edu!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.MediaCity.com!usenet From: "H.J. Lu" <hjl@gnu.ai.mit.edu> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: FreeBSD vs Linux Date: Mon, 08 Apr 1996 09:35:54 -0700 Organization: Ooops Lines: 48 Message-ID: <3169406A.61F8D18D@gnu.ai.mit.edu> References: <4issad$h1o@nadine.teleport.com> <Pine.PMDF.3.91.960324150948.9390A-100000@plains.uwyo.edu> <4jejjt$cdb@park.uvsc.edu> <315E0F1A.4E3FB53D@lucon.org> <Pine.LNX.3.91.960401105810.31921A-100000@gallup.cia-g.com> <4jso8v$n5i@dyson.iquest.net> <31642098.75AB4317@gnu.ai.mit.edu> <4k2cvc$j8e@park.uvsc.edu> <31657509.5E45C160@gnu.ai.mit.edu> <4k4cfa$ava@uriah.heep.sax.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: jimi.innovix.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=gb2312 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.01 (X11; I; Linux 1.3.81 i586) J Wunsch wrote: > > > It will make commercial software vendors easier to write softwares > > for you. > > That's a claim you cannot proof, however. ELF won't make writing > application software easier. (With the minor potential exception of Some really cool things you can only do with ELF. > > Here are some parts of a message posted by Peter Wemm to the > FreeBSD-core mailing list some time ago. I'm posting this without his > explicit permission, but the opinions mostly agree with mine, and > 3) At this present time, our system and ELF are approximately comparable > feature-wise. I am not sure if I understand the above after reading all those good things for ELF mentioned here. > > 6) the Linux camp is *very* actively developing ELF support, the tools, > compilers, etc. They are already able to convert old static libs to/from > a.out/elf format. That is not accurate. We can convert a static a.out library to a static a.out library which is compatible with ELF. It will be very hard to convert ELF to a.out :-(. > Also, there's the ability to have a static executable that uses no shared > libraries, ld.so, etc, but still has the ability to do runtime loading of > shared objects when linked with -ldl. (This has been asked for several times > on the lists that I've noticed) > I thought FreeBSD could do it. BTW, it is doable under ELF. But it is kind of tricky. You really have to do what you are doing. > Anyway, I'll get to the point of all this waffle... Right at this very > moment, I dont think there's a compelling reason to go to ELF. It's probably > not going to be compelling for some time. [...] Does that mean FreeBSD doesn't need those cool features from ELF? Another reason for me to avoid FreeBSD :-(. H.J.