*BSD News Article 10808


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From: mycroft@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Charles Hannum)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd,comp.os.linux
Subject: Re: Linux or 386BSD?
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Date: 6 Feb 93 10:24:47 GMT
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References: <1993Feb5.173617.12501@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> <1993Feb5.211047.16911@serval.net.wsu.edu> <1kv7e4INNc8h@smurf.sti.com>
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In article <1kv7e4INNc8h@smurf.sti.com> dgreen@sti.com (Dan R.
Greening) writes:
>
> Doesn't anyone have an honest opinion?

Here's mine.

386BSD has been around, in other forms, for a long time.  It's high-
level abstractions are well developed and fairly complete (though not
by any means optimal).  It has a full implementation of BSD networking,
NFS, an only slightly outdated file system, etc.

Linux is very new.  It has networking and NFS, but they are rushed,
incomplete implementations.  I find them barely usable.  Until newextfs
is released, it will also not have a reasonable file system.  (The
extfs file system is slow and slightly flaky, and only has one time
stamp per inode; the minix file system is worse.)

The original device drivers in 386BSD were not very good.  It is fairly
clear that the people who wrote them were not all that familiar with PC
hardware.  However, new drivers have been written, and are quite good.

Most Linux device drivers have worked pretty well from the beginning;
this is because Linus appears to understands PCs fairly well.

Of the two, I think 386BSD has less distance to travel before it is at
all usable by a non-hacker.  For the most part, it is now; but it
really does need a good implementation of shared libraries, and better
support for console hackery (like odd SVGA text modes).

I see Linux as needing a lot of work.  I am also concerned, after the
`two files with the same name' thread, about how many other Easter eggs
may be lurking.

-- 
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