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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nexus.coast.net!zombie.ncsc.mil!news.mathworks.com!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!nickkral From: nickkral@octans.EECS.Berkeley.EDU (Nick Kralevich) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: When did this become linux.advocacy Date: 21 Jun 1995 20:33:24 GMT Organization: Electrical Engineering Computer Science Department, University of California at Berkeley Lines: 86 Message-ID: <3s9vmk$f9p@agate.berkeley.edu> References: <marcus.114.00E9749F@ccelab.iastate.edu> <3s8pet$m65@bonnie.tcd-dresden.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: octans.eecs.berkeley.edu In article <3s8pet$m65@bonnie.tcd-dresden.de>, J Wunsch <joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de> wrote: >Marcus, my serious advise: you are absolutely right, but you certainly >won't convince people like nickkral@sextans.EECS.Berkeley.EDU (Nick >Kralevich) stop shouting their unwanted opinions here. So the very >best you can do is hitting the `d' key (or entering his name into your >KILL file). First of all, let me apologize in advance for even posting here again. However, I feel that I've been dragged back into this. My first experiences with FreeBSD were bad. My roommate initially had 2.0_RELEASE installed. When I tried compiling programs (pine and lynx) I had lots of problems that I didn't have when I installed them on my Linux computer. In another one of my articles (not here, but on comp.os.linux.advocacy) I complained how sluggish I/O felt (30 seconds to recursively delete a directory in Linux took 45 seconds in FreeBSD 2.0_RELEASE). The I/O problem improved when my roommate installed FreeBSD 2.0.5_RELEASE, and so did the compiling problems. However, there were still other problems that either went unaddressed or that I didn't know the solution to. For example, I was trying to find a program simular to "strace" under FreeBSD, and I was frustrated to not be able to find the program (note: Other people have told me about "ktrace", so now I know better). I also thought it was amazing that you couldn't change the serial port interrupt without recompiling a kernel (linux has a utility called "setserial". I still may be wrong about having to recompile the kernel, though). Other problems were annoying: The FreeBSD distribution didn't come with a full collection of precompiled binaries, like "pine" and "lynx". I guess it's more of a "do it yourself" attitude among BSD users (which isn't necessarly bad). Or the fact that the kernel compiling isn't more automatic like the Linux kernel config utilities. I want a system that works out of the box, and doesn't take hours to tune or install important programs. Other problems were just plain baffling, like "ifconfig" not being able to turn on the BROADCAST flag for the loopback device, or the SLIP bug that I found. (note: I received e-mail from the FreeBSD development team telling me that they have fixed this bug due to my bug report, and that the fix should be in the next FreeBSD release. And it's debatable whether or not the BROADCAST flag should even be able to be changed on the loopback device). Someone e-mailed me, asking me if I "get this kind of service/response from a Linux group?" My experiences with Linux have been very good. For example, when I found a bug with their serial driver (probing the serial device caused a spurrious interrupt) I reported the bug to the serial code maintainer. Within 12 hours I had a patch from the maintainer, and within 3 days a new kernel, with the serial port patch, was released. The FreeBSD group was almost as good, only taking 3 days to get the bug patched. Both the Linux and FreeBSD code developers are an incredible group, no questions. My frustrations with FreeBSD carried over into my articles. I didn't mean to come across as a raving Linux maniac foaming at the mouth. As I reread my articles, perhaps I did come across that way. My apologies to anyone I upset. The FreeBSD people have treated me with (almost) nothing but respect. I still feel that Linux is better, however. To me, the Linux communities seem more profession and better run. Businesses are starting to jump on the Linux bandwagon, and a host of new applications are planning to come out. My opinions on Linux are just that, opinions. Again, I apologize for any hard feelings between the myself and this newsgroup. My experiences with FreeBSD were not the best, and my frustration came out in my articles. There are a number of ways that the Linux and FreeBSD groups can cooperate better, and I look forward to that. >Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-) Well, I'm glad we can agree on that. :) Take care, -- Nick Kralevich nickkral@cory.eecs.berkeley.edu -- LINUX, the FREE | University of California at | Nick Kralevich Operating System of the | Berkeley. Department of | nickkral@cory.eecs. future available via anon | Electrical Engineering and | berkeley.edu FTP. Ask me about it. | Computer Science. | finger for PGP