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From: cantrick@rintintin.Colorado.EDU (Ben Cantrick (alias Macky Stingray))
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.networking,comp.os.linux.setup,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc
Subject: Re: Linux vs BSD
Date: 24 Jan 1997 01:43:32 GMT
Organization: Silky Doll Women's Lingerie, MegaTokyo, JP
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In article <5c8jlm$50u@cynic.portal.ca>,
Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.portal.ca> wrote:
>There are a number of people out there who use both. I don't see
>a comparison being very useful because it's not generally the
>factors that are being discussed here (`stability' and `network
>performance') that people are interested in. It seems to me that
>people tend to use those factors to justify decisions they've made
>for personal or emotional reasons.
Absolutely. Even as the rabid linuxer I am, I can plainly see what we
have here is a holy war.
>The stability and performance of a system depends a great deal on
>the person running it. Both from reading the usenet and from personal
>experience, it appears to me that many of the more experienced
>system administrators perfer BSD systems to Linux systems, which
>may explain why BSD systems often have the appearance of being more
>stable than Linux systems.
I'd be curious to see a Linux and BSD machine, both on equal hardware and
with good admins, go head-to-head in performance tests. I suspect the
differences would end up being pretty negligible except in a few scattered
areas.
I've only had experience with one BSD box and one Linux box. (and
addmittedly a hundred times more with the linux box, although a good
bit with the BSD box, too) But, It feels to me that the BSD box
had a scheduler optimized for foreground/console kind of tasks.
When I sat at the console, response was blinding. When I telnetted
in, I would sometimes encounter mysterious half-second delays in screen
redraw and other I/O. Usually, this was when someone was at the console.
Of course, this could easily have been an artifact of the ethernet
card, or a million other things. And aside from that, I have seen very
little difference between the day to day operation two OSes. If someone
walked into my room during the night and replaced my linux kernel with a
bsd kernel, I would probably never know.
>1. Design and source code quality. The quality of the design and
>source code in the BSD kernels is far, far above that of Linux.
>This is important only to kernel hackers or would-be kernel hackers,
>a very, very small percentage of users.
I think that's true. Although, having dug through the Linux
internals only a bit and the BSD not at all, I doubt I'm qualified
to judge.
>2. Binary-focus vs. source-focus. Linux is focused on people who
>prefer to avoid compilers if at all possible.
Now... wait a minute here! :]
I dunno what kind of Linux users you know, but I personally compiled
my kernel, gcc, X, and several of my libraries from source. I think you've
been afflicted by the abundance of RedHat users, some of whom, in my
biased opinion, ARE afraid of their compilers.
However, just personally, I'm not. I enjoy getting my hands dirty in
the internals and grunge of my OS, and have no problem with compiling
that newer, more secure version (ha!) of sendmail on a weekly basis,
patching my kernel, and other assorted tasks that might not be
associated with the kind of Linux users you know.
>I don't know anyone who regularly builds a full Linux userland from
>source. (I'm not even sure a buildable full userland source tree
>exists.) The installation tools for binary packages tend to be better
>than those under BSD systems. The BSD developers have much better
>configuration and source code control, and much better build systems.
I guess I'd say this same thing another way. I'd say that BSD comes
with a bunch of stuff out of the box that, if you want it for Linux, you
have to FTP it and compile it yourself.
>3. Advocacy. The Linux folks are a lot more rabid. :-)
Well of course we are. We run the best OS on the planet! ;]
"These are my opinions. If you don't like them, I have others."
-Ben
--
"BGC: Because some of us believe women over 14 are still sexy."
=--------- http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~cantrick/home.html -------------=
*Ben Cantrick, diehard BGC otaku and Priss fan. ---> THE BGC DUBS SUCK! <---*
*Mac? Ha. "When I want to spend 50% of my time fighting an OS, I'll use VMS."*