*BSD News Article 71735


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Linux versus FreeBSD
Date: 22 Jun 1996 12:43:14 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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David Zakai <zakaid99@hscbklyn.edu> wrote:

> Would some FreeBSD users offer reasons why you have chosen this
> OS over Linux?

I'm a FreeBSD developer, and now (for more than a year again) also a
member of its core team.  Do i still count as ``FreeBSD user''? :-)


Two reasons that i could state here.  The first is that i've been
interested in a freeware BSD by Bill Jolitz' article series ``Porting
Unix to the 386'', published in Dr. Dobb's Journal around 1990/1.
This series has been translated into German and published with an
offset of a few months in the German Unix-Magazin (which is now dead).

The system made me curious, so i fetched it once 386BSD 0.0 was
available for FTP (and stumpled across Linux 0.12 or something like
this on the same server -- a totally unknown enterprise by that time).
I've then made it through all steps, and have been asked to join the
FreeBSD team later (in order to bring my floppy formatter into it :).


There's a second reason, justifying why we prefer it over Linux at
work.  The decision for using FreeBSD has been made there _before_ i
joint them.  My colleagues simply found it more orthogonal to use and
maintain, with its single distribution, and controlled development.
They considered it ``more serious'', by development strategy, not by
features etc.  (Does Linus finally use at least RCS for his kernels?)
And, it's maintained by the developers as a complete, monolithic
system, not just a kernel only, with all the tools scattered across
the net.


Of course, all of the above is just my opinion, my very personal one.
*Don't* start a flame war upon it, or you risk being ignored!

Your mileage may vary.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)