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From: michaelv@iastate.edu (Michael L. VanLoon)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Impressions: FreeBSD vs Linux
Date: 22 Mar 94 16:38:00 GMT
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa
Lines: 56
Message-ID: <michaelv.764354280@ponderous.cc.iastate.edu>
References: <1994Mar18.084355.19503@atlas.com> <CMzw69.92K@tower.nullnet.fi> <Cn1KJ1.9pr@boulder.parcplace.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: ponderous.cc.iastate.edu
In <Cn1KJ1.9pr@boulder.parcplace.com> imp@boulder.parcplace.com (Warner Losh) writes:
>In article <CMzw69.92K@tower.nullnet.fi> Ismo.Peltonen@tower.NullNet.FI writes:
>>> * FreeBSD has a more polished look and feel. Linux definately looks and
>>> feels like a beta product. FreeBSD seems to have consistancy where
>>> Linux does not.
>>What do people mean with this (`looks and feels like a beta/not finished')?
>>What in Linux makes that unfinished look'n'feel?
>From my point of view it is the building of a system. On FreeBSD, all
>I type is "make world," then go out for the night. When I come back,
>all my user level utilities have been build and installed (in addition
>to libraries, include files, etc). For Linux I must have missed
>something because I've never seen a source distribution I could do
>this with (feel free to prove me wrong). This is due, I think, to the
>fact that there is exactly one core distribution and an central group
>running the show that is responsible (as a group) for the entire
>system.
[...]
>Finally, I can get the latest sources to FreeBSD every night and
>rebuild w/minimal effort, since there is one place for the sources for
>the entire system. I just sup new sources, and type make and I'm off.
>I usually get and install new sources about once a week, however,
>because a build does take quite a while.
[...]
>I've also seen various nits wrt files and file placement on Linux that
>may have gone away.
[...]
>P.S. the usual disclaimer about FreeBSD v NetBSD: They are likely the
>same, but I haven't used NetBSD and I indent it no slight by my
>comments.
Everything you've stated does apply exactly the same to NetBSD as it
does FreeBSD -- with one addition. You mentioned the nits about weird
locations of files on Linux, and that being better on FreeBSD. NetBSD
not only has the cleanness of FreeBSD for the main system, but also
has made significant effort to clean up the machine-specific parts of
the sources and move them into architecture-specific sub-trees.
All common parts of the the kernle, libraries, etc. are in the normal
locations, and the machine-specific parts have their own sub-trees.
The build scripts automagically use the right machine-specific
sub-trees to build your system with so you could have one source
repository mounted on several different architecture machines and they
could all build from the one location without conflicts.
--
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Michael L. VanLoon Iowa State University Computation Center
michaelv@iastate.edu Project Vincent Systems Staff
Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free Un*x for PC/Mac/Amiga/etc.
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