*BSD News Article 36658


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From: raoul@cssc-syd.tansu.com.au (Raoul Golan)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.386bsd.misc
Subject: Re: Nailed down to 386bsd or linux, now which one?
Date: 7 Oct 1994 15:34:03 +1000
Organization: Telecom Australia - CSSC
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Distribution: world
Message-ID: <372mkb$n0d@eland.cssc-syd.tansu.com.au>
References: <36djkn$nm8@girtab.usc.edu> <36nd1u$d80@pdq.coe.montana.edu>
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Keywords: mosaic term telnet

nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu (Nate Williams) writes:

>In article <36djkn$nm8@girtab.usc.edu>, Po-Han Lin <plin@girtab.usc.edu> wrote:
>>386bsd is monolithic (controlled I guess), while linux is non-monolithic.

>You were misinformed.  Both Linux and the BSD's use monolithic kernels. 
>For a fun discussion of this, there is a series of articles were Linus
>and Andy Tanenbaum 'discussed' the merits of both of these when Linux
>was in it's infancy.

I think Po-Han misunderstood what 'monolithic' means.  He referred
to monolithic as meaning controlled, whereas monolithic - as opposed
to microkernel - is really a description of the OS design.
Both BSD and Linux are monolithic in this respect.  

In any case, one has to qualify what is mean by "controlled".
Many say that BSD is tightly controlled by the BSD core team,
whereas Linux is developed through a loose, uncentralised,
group of programmers.

My understanding is that anyone can contribute to BSD as well,
so that the real difference is that whereas a team decides
what goes into BSD, only one person decides what goes into
Linux (namely, Linus).  Big deal.


-- 
Raoul Golan, Consultant for Object Oriented P/L, at   =Those who have put out 
Intelligent Networks Development, Telecom Australia   =the people's eyes 
Also student at Macquarie Univ. School of History,    =despise them for their
Philosophy and Politics. EMAIL:raoul@ind.tansu.com.au =blindness. - Milton