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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: 24 Mar 94 04:51:10 GMT
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa
Lines: 63
Message-ID: <michaelv.764484670@ponderous.cc.iastate.edu>
References: <1994Mar18.084355.19503@atlas.com> <CMzw69.92K@tower.nullnet.fi> <2mmlhpINNc3s@bonnie.sax.de> <Cn3uq0.M15@tower.nullnet.fi>
NNTP-Posting-Host: ponderous.cc.iastate.edu
In <Cn3uq0.M15@tower.nullnet.fi> elandal@tower.nullnet.fi (Ismo Peltonen) writes:
>In article <2mmlhpINNc3s@bonnie.sax.de>
> J Wunsch (j@uriah.sax.de) wrote:
>> elandal@tower.nullnet.fi (Ismo Peltonen) writes:
>> Q:
>> >What do people mean with this (`looks and feels like a beta/not finished')?
>> >What in Linux makes that unfinished look'n'feel?
>> A:
>> > (I have hard time trying to keep
>> >up with updates - last time I got route-binary I noticed I'd better
>> >update my libs, which lead to downloading about 7 megs, some installing,
>> >some compiling, and cursing for not to having yet changed my system to
>> >conform to FSSTND)...
>> What you're describing there *is* the ``beta look'n feel''. Inacceptable
>> for a release. Not that FreeBSD doesn't need beta's or development -
>> but people getting a release are not suspected to run into those upgrade-
>> by-the-patch-of-the-day troubles.
>Oh yes, what's that ``one source distribution, juts make world and all
>utilities You've ever wanted are built and installed'' thing? I know
>I've eliminated things from the distribution I grabbed, added new, and
>so on.. I don't want to have everything, and I know I want to have some
>things that should never belong to normal distributions.. So, I rather
>grab packages I want, compile them, install them, and am happy.
You can do this under {Net,Free}BSD just as easily.
>I know I _could_ write a Makefile to /usr/src that built and installed
>everything, but I don't want to. I want to do it to each package at a
>time, hack and slash here and there, and never install everything in one
>session. And most packages can be forgotten, removed, gzipped, or
>otherwise handled after they are installed once.
The point is, you *can't* just type "make; make install" in /usr/src
and come back the next day and have *everything* completely rebuilt
and installed. I *can*. And I can be sure it was done correctly and
completely.
Sure, I can cd into /usr/src/usr.sbin/traceroute and type "make; make
install" there, and a few minutes later I have a new traceroute and
nothing more. The point is, I have a choice.
This is just one of the things he was referring to. NetBSD just
"feels" to me like a genuine commercial "Unix" product. It is very
well layed out with much careful thought and foresight. My friends
linux boxes, while fine, reliable systems, simply didn't feel that way
to me. They felt to me like something you'd expect to get for free.
Please don't take this as a slam, I'm just trying to give you an idea
of my impressions.
--
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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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