*BSD News Article 44417


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From: hjl@nynexst.com (H.J. Lu)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: Linux vs. BSD (NOT a religious question!)
Date: 21 May 1995 04:48:11 GMT
Organization: Nynex Science & Technology, Inc.
Lines: 35
Message-ID: <3pmgmb$9pb@news.nynexst.com>
References: <coveD8qwsL.Mvq@netcom.com> <MICHAELV.95May17222030@MindBender.HeadCandy.com> <3pg08i$qdg@helena.mt.net> <3ph5o4$ith@orion.cc.andrews.edu>
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Andrew Gillham (gillham@andrews.edu) wrote:
: In article <3pg08i$qdg@helena.mt.net> "Nate Williams" <nate@sneezy.sri.com> writes:
: >In article <MICHAELV.95May17222030@MindBender.HeadCandy.com>,
: >Michael L. VanLoon <michaelv@MindBender.HeadCandy.com> wrote:
: >>In article <coveD8qwsL.Mvq@netcom.com> cove@netcom.com (Cove) writes:
: >>
: >>   I am running linux now, but I'm considering switching over to BSD.
: >>   Reason being is that I'd like to learn a more widely used OS, no just
: >>   a PC based one. Could BSD give me this kind of experience over Linux?
: >>In *MY* experience, yes, NetBSD could DEFINITELY do this for you.
: >>FreeBSD also, but to a lesser extent (no offense -- I'm not saying
: >>FreeBSD is a lesser OS).

: Well, he said "more widely used OS, no[t] just a PC based one." That
: would somewhat imply a multi-platform OS, hence Michael's comments
: about NetBSD being perfect.

: >No offense intended, but why do you consider NetBSD a more widely used
: >OS vs. FreeBSD?  Obviously there are no numbers to compare, but I would
: >suspect there are more total users using FreeBSD than NetBSD, and both
: >of them are surpassed by Linux.  However, the *BSD's have the advantage
: >of being enough like a lot of other commercial OS's that 'BSD' is more
: >widely used.

: Unfortunately, even the veteran BSD-based vendor (SUN) is pushing
: SVR4, so I'd say *BSD has the advantage that it is BSD, *NOT* SVR4!

The thing I like the most in SVR4 is ELF. Actually, I like the
Solaris' ELF implementation better. I just released the ELF based
libc, libg++, gcc and binutils for Linux today. You can do so many
things with ELF. I also put an ELF paper on tsx-11.mit.edu in
pub/linux/packages/GCC/elf.ps.gz.


H.J.