*BSD News Article 17338


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From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix,comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.os.386bsd.questions,comp.os.linux,alt.uu.comp.os.linux.questions
Subject: Re: Choosing a Unix like OS for a pc
Date: 20 Jun 1993 13:48:25 +0300
Organization: University of Helsinki
Lines: 21
Message-ID: <201f9p$kkv@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
References: <1993Jun19.125224.17510@colorado.edu> <C8wC29.9qq@world.std.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: klaava.helsinki.fi

In article <C8wC29.9qq@world.std.com> jimr@world.std.com (James A Robinson) writes:
>
>As I understand it Linux has more features then Minix and takes up
>less space then 386bsd.  Apparently the TCP/IP of BSD is more stable
>then Linux, but that may have already changed, as I only have an old
>FAQ.  In any case Linux is one of the hottest unix look-alikes around,
>since Linux seems to have the knack of making the kernel look like it 
>was running on a RISC rather then an 80486. :-)  All the tools run
>very fast, and I can compile the kernel in about 18 minutes, which in
>my opinion is darn fast for a 486sx 25MHz.

To give minix some credit: Bruce Evans told me he was able to recompile
the kernel in less than one minute if I remember correctly.  Of course,
he has a reasonably fast machine and minix sources are smaller, but the
main time-saver is that the minix (and coherent) C-compilers are much
faster than gcc...  Not that I would trade the compilers, but if you are
looking for speed of compilation, minix and coherent both do it faster
than either linux or 386bsd (at the expense of features and code
quality). 

			Linus