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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.uwa.edu.au!disco.iinet.net.au!news.uoregon.edu!news.dacom.co.kr!usenet.seri.re.kr!news.cais.net!news1.erols.com!news.enteract.com!news.inap.net!uwm.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!lerc.nasa.gov!purdue!news.bu.edu!transfer.stratus.com!news3.near.net!news.ner.bbnplanet.net!public.x.org!kaleb From: kaleb@x.org (Kaleb KEITHLEY) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: FreeBSD vs Linux Date: 7 Apr 96 11:50:28 GMT Organization: X Consortium Lines: 58 Message-ID: <kaleb.828877828@exalt> References: <4issad$h1o@nadine.teleport.com> <4jsua0$6oc@dyson.iquest.net> <4jtet8$on2@agate.berkeley.edu> <4k0m87$7vi@dyson.iquest.net> <4k6gt3$1et@agate.berkeley.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: exalt.x.org X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #5 nickkral@america.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Nick Kralevich) writes: >I am simply arguing that, as ELF compilers and development tools >become more prominent, the development and maintance of AOUT tools >is going to slow down. Bugs are going to get fixed slower in the AOUT >versions and maintaining a *BSD release of the tools is going to get >more complicated. Non sequitur. FreeBSD doesn't use the current GNU tools, notably ld. Maintenance, when needed, is done by FreeBSD, not GNU. BTW, what's an ELF compiler? >I'm not trying to argue the relative merits of AOUT vs ELF. (Other >people have already shown the advantage of ELF over AOUT). I am saying >that the development tools that FreeBSD uses are going to become >out of date, harder to maintain, and, eventually, the core team of >FreeBSD will be forced to upgrade to ELF. Non sequitur. They're already out of date by your standards, but that has little or no bearing on their usability, and less to do with whether FreeBSD will ever be "forced" to "upgrade" to ELF. >In this respect, Linux is better suited to the future than FreeBSD. Non sequitur. This is your highly subjective opinion. When you have objective evidence that FreeBSD is better or worse suited to the "future" (whatever that means) than Linux is, then post it. Otherwise it's just another Linux vs. FreeBSD troll. >The core team of FreeBSD will _eventually_ have to upgrade FreeBSD >to ELF, and until it does so, it is only doing it's users a disservice. Non sequitur. To whom is it a disservice? Breaking running systems is a disservice too. Which is the greater disservice? SunOS doesn't do ELF and never will. AIX and HPUX don't do ELF. Digital UNIX (nee OSF/1) doesn't do ELF (maybe it really is ELF and their tools just lie???) These companies have paying customers lined up to be disserviced. So FreeBSD seems to me to be in pretty good company. I also understand that there's a new batch of changes to Linux ELF that are going to break the X build **again**. >I can understand now why there are personality conflicts between the >various *BSD groups. :-) And, as if that weren't enough, now you add FreeBSD vs Linux personality conflicts. There is ELF support in the works for FreeBSD. If you were genuinely interested in helping with the effort you could have joined the FreeBSD hackers mailing list and gotten involved with it. But instead you've chosen to troll here for flames. It's easy to see what you're really interested in. -- Kaleb KEITHLEY