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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!inferno.mpx.com.au!nsw1.news.telstra.net!news.telstra.net!news-out.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.emf.net!gatech!csulb.edu!hammer.uoregon.edu!news-xfer.netaxs.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!worldnet.att.net!howland.erols.net!math.ohio-state.edu!jussieu.fr!nef.ens.fr!drakkar!espel From: espel@drakkar.ens.fr (Roger Espel Llima) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.sys.sgi.misc Subject: Re: no such thing as a "general user community" Date: 2 Apr 1997 23:38:29 GMT Organization: Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris Lines: 68 Message-ID: <5huqll$h73$1@nef.ens.fr> References: <331BB7DD.28EC@net5.net> <333F45A6.41C67EA6@FreeBSD.org> <5hplcv$6lf@fido.asd.sgi.com> <5htaev$fv7$1@moon> NNTP-Posting-Host: drakkar.ens.fr Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:38371 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:6572 comp.sys.sgi.misc:29652 In article <5htaev$fv7$1@moon>, Dan Petersen <DPete@why.net> wrote: >Being new here, I may not yet fully understand. But from what I have >picked up cruising news groups and web sites, this is how I see it: > >-- *BSD is a group of slightly divergent Unix-like operating systems, > FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD, derived from BSD4.4 Lite. All are > freely available and freely distributable. FreeBSD and NetBSD are > so close that they should be combined -- the differences seem to > be political rather than functional. OpenBSD is based in Canada, > so has fewer problems distributing encryption software. I was under the impression that it's OpenBSD and NetBSD that were so close that they could be combined -- esp. considering that Open split from Net not too long ago. FreeBSD's kernel code isn't necessarily very portable, since it runs only on the Intel platform; merging that with NetBSD's cross-platform code would probably be quite hard. >-- Linux is a kernel written by Linus Torvald. There is no Linux OS. > The kernel(s) is freely available and distributable under the GPL. > This has encouraged several different for-profit and a couple of > non-profit distributions of the Linux kernel(s). > >-- Linux distributions are the OS's. So far I have discovered Debian, > Red Hat, Ygdrasil, SlackWare, Caldera, Linux-FT, a flame war over > whether all Linux distributions should be called GNU/Linux (since > they mostly use GNU software at the system administration and > user application level) and, finally (?), the GNU HURD. Right, except that the GNU HURD doesn't have anything to do with Linux directly; in fact, the GNU HURD *is* a completely different kernel developped by the FSF (although they re-used the odd bit of Linux code, in some drivers and for the ext2 filesystem, I believe). >From my point of view, there are three *BSD distributions and at least >seven *Linux distributions. The Linux people always point out that the >*BSD people live in warring camps. The *BSD people seem not to notice >that the Linux people have internicene warfare as well. The comparison isn't really fair; the various Linux distributions are much closer to each other than the BSD OSes. You don't have to port your programs "to RedHat, and then to Debian"; they use strictly the same kernel and libraries (with the odd exception, like Linux-FT's POSIX extensions) and they can run exactly the same binaries. >If the Linux people don't hang together, they could become irrelevant >just as quickly as anyone else. If the *BSD people and the Linux people >could get together, the result could be spectacular. The Linux and the BSD people are already together in that free apps for one OS will usually be ported to the other. Just why do you want the OS's themselves to merge? They don't have the same goals, and they don't particularily hinder each other. >As it is, though, Bill Gates will probably win. There is only ONE >MicroSoft, after all. Why are people so concerned with "winning"? The various free OS's have their niches, which are expanding, and in all foreseeable future, they will survive because they have value and the hackers are there. I couldn't care less if most PC's use some microslothz OS, as long as I have a choice and there is a significant community behind that choice, which is the case already now with Linux, and each of the BSDs. Roger -- e-mail: roger.espel.llima@pobox.com WWW page & PGP key: http://www.eleves.ens.fr:8080/home/espel/index.html