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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!constellation!convex!convex!cs.utexas.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!saimiri.primate.wisc.edu!usenet.coe.montana.edu!nate From: nate@cs.montana.edu (Nate Williams) Subject: Re: 386BSD v. Linux Message-ID: <1993Mar4.234141.27330@coe.montana.edu> Sender: usenet@coe.montana.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, MSU, Bozeman Mt 59717 References: <1993Feb24.142553.18435@news.usfca.edu> <11567@tivoli.UUCP> Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1993 23:41:41 GMT Lines: 137 In article <11567@tivoli.UUCP> steveb@tivoli.UUCP (Steve Benz) writes: >I tried both. I know this: > > - BSD's installation procedures suck. (I could rattle off about > a dozen reasons why, but I'll just rip off the top 3: The > installation program gets deleted after you install (so you > can't incrementally install the packages); The documentation > sucks (the install notes contain reams & reams of junk not > relevant to the installation process, so if you have to refer > back to the notes, you have to sift through a ton of junk. > Further, there's no notes on exactly what's in all the > assorted packages.); and the kernels on Agate don't work > reliably (or at least they don't work on my machine and > some other folks have reported the same results.) > Hmm, I will agree that installation sucks. You need to be a unix hacker to do a non-standard installation, and you need to do a non-standard installation if you don't want grief when you starting using 386BSD for real work. IMHO, the documentation is great. IF it boots on your machine, and IF you DON'T have IDE translation problems, then things work pretty much as advertised. Type an install, and follows the little bouncing ball. (Note: This is the standard installation, which can cause you grief...) BSD has loads and loads of documentation. If you can find documentation for BSD unix, you aren't looking in the right places. As far as incompatable kernels, I will say there are some problems with the keyboard driver in 386BSD. Unfortunately, one machine's fix breaks a differnt machine. It's pretty easy to work around, and someday I (or someone else) will get around making to making a new set of bootables that have the keyboard fix removed. The patchkit has helped alot in this regard. If you stay within the patchkit most everything works as advertised, with a few exceptions. > - BSD requires about twice as much space as Linux to store > basically the same stuff. (Mostly, I suspect, due to the > lack of shared libraries under BSD.) In any case, you need > around 200Mb to run BSD, whereas 100Mb is a good number for > Linux. (Where the amount of space "needed" is defined as > enough memory to run X, have a load of assorted PD utilities > on hand, and enough space for your own junk.) > > - I never could get X to work on BSD386. (I couldn't figure > a way around the KBDFORCEASCII problem, and in any case, > I didn't have 200Mb of disk.) > That's really funny. I agree, by and large Linux will require less disk space, but someone here challenged me to get a 386BSD filesystem WITH X to be under 40 Meg. W/out even breaking a sweat, we had a 30 Meg file system that contained the server, all the fonts, xterm, xdm, and all of the necessary utilities to run 386BSD. This gave me 10 MB left over for swap. If I had to work harder, I suppose I could go less, but that was about 20 minutes work X under 386BSD is as hard as X under Linux. As Rich pointed out before, there was a little screwup with the kernel's/server's at first, but that is to be expected for such a large distribution as XFree86. Try it again, and you'll probably find that it works better now. > - Linux is easy to install. Someone has taken the time to make installation easier. I wish someone would do the same for 386BSD. People have made progress in that area, but nothing definative yet. > > - Linux is problematic. All the distributions seem to have > known bugs of one sort or another. Linux has some little gotchas that pop up here and there. I wouldn't count this against them. Any project as big as an O.S. is going to have problems. Considering the entire size of the 386BSD distribution, I'm suprised there are as few bugs as there are. (The CSRG folks and the Jolitz's did a pretty good job) Hopefully, the 1.0 distribution of Linux will have most of the bugs out, and then you can start on a whole new group (and find all those little itty bitty nasty ones that always seem to pop up 5 in a couple months, that have been there since day one. :-) > > Of course, if you mention stuff like this on the Linux > newsgroups you'd get buffeted by people telling you "Well, > what you need to do is download <X> and recompile <Y> with > <Z> turned on and all your problems would be solved." > Which only proves that there's just reams of secret knowledge > which you have to keep up with under Linux. > The same sort of thing happens in 386BSD. But, if you want to run a "REAL MAN/WOMAN'S" operating system, you've got to expect to know a little more. If it was easy all the time, it wouldn't be as powerful (There are a lot more issues than this, but I'm ignoring them for this posting.) > From what I can tell, the same applies to BSD, but to a > lesser extent. > > - Linux is missing a number of man pages. (Mostly in section 3.) > Above you complained about lack of documentation, now Linux is missing. > - BSD doesn't do multiple consoles. But then, they have a > utility called 'screens' that perports to do pretty much > the same thing. Pretty much. And there is a console driver that implements virtual consoles, if that's a big deal to you. Personally, I think virtual consoles are pretty nice (I needed to have them under minix, w/out job control), but screen and X do the same thing. > > - Linux supports EGA/VGA modes (i.e. 132x40 characters). If you want graphics, run X. > > - Linux comes up with some bone stupid defaults (the /etc/profile > being the most ridiculous offender.) > No comment. I ran it a LONG time ago, but I do keep up in the Linux groups, to see what bugs and fixes they have done. (Especially the GCC ones. :-) Nate -- osynw@terra.oscs.montana.edu | Still trying to find a good reason for nate@cs.montana.edu | these 'computer' things. Personally, work #: (406) 994-4836 | I don't think they'll catch on - home #: (406) 586-0579 | Don Hammerstrom