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From: hughes@napa.eng.uop.edu (Ken Hughes)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development,comp.os.linux.development
Subject: Re: We a FAQ: Linux vs. *BSD!!!
Followup-To: comp.os.386bsd.development,comp.os.linux.development
Date: 14 Oct 1994 17:37:53 GMT
Organization: Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of the Pacific
Lines: 46
Message-ID: <37mflh$f6s@unix1.cc.uop.edu>
References: <jmonroyCxLro2.IF6@netcom.com> <JKH.94Oct13042845@freefall.cdrom.com>
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Jordan K. Hubbard (jkh@freefall.cdrom.com) wrote:
: In article <jmonroyCxLro2.IF6@netcom.com> jmonroy@netcom.com (Jesus Monroy Jr) writes:
: This is a weekly question.
: More often than not, we get into a flame war
: on this. Let's stop this silliness!!!
: The only way we're going to stop this silliness is to simply start
: ignoring the querants. If someone asks "Which is better? Which is
: better?", jumping up and down all the while, and everybody just flat
: out _ignores_ the question and goes about their business as if nothing
: happened, folks will eventually get the point and stop asking.
: Consider carefully: It's not the questions that start the bloody flame
: wars, it's everyone's pathetic attempts to answer! "Well, xxx is
: better because of yyy.." "No it's not!" "Yes it is, you moron! Just
: look at blah blah blah!" "Well, you're a complete idiot who obviously
: wouldn't know an operating system if it bit you - yyy is _obviously_
: better because bleh bleh bleh!". And so downhill it goes from there.
: Jordan
Normally I would agree, but in this case I doubt that ignoring the
questions will stop them from being asked. New people come into these
groups all the time and so these questions are bound to keep coming up.
The problem is, as you point out, not the questions but the answers. It's
impossible to answer "Which is better?" without being subjective; there
isn't any one OS which is clearly better or worse than all the others (and
I won't get baited into adding "except that they're all better than
386BSD-1.0", so please don't start THAT thread again either). IMHO, the
only chance for resolving this issue would be for someone to sit down and
compile a list of features that shows which OS has what and which doesn't.
However, there's little hope of keeping this list up to date give the state
of change of each OS, unless someone is willing to form a team for this
purpose.
I wonder how the Windows-DOS-OS/2 people react to these questions? Does
anyone ever ask over in those groups? Or is everyone there resigned to the
fact that OS/2 is best or Windows is best or Chicago/Windows 95 will be best
or that they're all SOL? :-)
--
Ken Hughes | "I can't believe this is my life;
(khughes@uop.edu) | I'm going to have to send my SAT
Electrical and Computer Engr | scores to San Quentin instead of
University of the Pacific | Stanford..." _Heathers_