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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nexus.coast.net!news.kei.com!news.mathworks.com!news.ultranet.com!news.sprintlink.net!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: 23 Jun 1995 15:02:24 GMT Organization: Electrical Engineering Computer Science Department, University of California at Berkeley Lines: 94 Message-ID: <3sel20$fmg@agate.berkeley.edu> References: <marcus.114.00E9749F@ccelab.iastate.edu> <3s8pet$m65@bonnie.tcd-dresden.de> <3s9vmk$f9p@agate.berkeley.edu> <3sdlkf$tl3@felix.junction.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: octans.eecs.berkeley.edu In article <3sdlkf$tl3@felix.junction.net>, Michael Dillon <michael@okjunc.junction.net> wrote: >I think you are right for now. But I have been involved in Linux for the >past three years and it certainly does have its warts such as the NE2000 >bugs and the WWW socket hangs and the Sudden Death Syndrome and a host of >other things. The NE2000 and WWW socket bugs occured in the 1.1.* series of kernels, which everyone knows are development kernels. If you're playing around with the development kernels, and religiously upgrade everytime a new development kernel is released, then there will be problems. The "Sudden Death Syndrome" was a particularly nasty bug (hard to find, only happened in a limited number of cases), and has been fixed in the most recent release kernel. Only the 1.[even].* kernels are release kernels. >I think that anyone who makes any long term decisions based >on the current state of FreeBSD and Linux is making a mistake. The two >efforts have a lot of cross fertilization. Both are continually >developping and improving. For some jobs FreeBSD is better today and for >others Linux is better today. Tomorrow this WILL change. I agree. On cross fertilization: One day, try the following. Download both the Linux kernel ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel/v1.2/linux-1.2.10.tar.gz and the FreeBSD kernel ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/FreeBSD/2.0.5-RELEASE/src/ssys.aa ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/FreeBSD/2.0.5-RELEASE/src/ssys.ab ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/FreeBSD/2.0.5-RELEASE/src/ssys.ac ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/FreeBSD/2.0.5-RELEASE/src/ssys.ad ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/FreeBSD/2.0.5-RELEASE/src/ssys.ae ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/FreeBSD/2.0.5-RELEASE/src/ssys.af ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/FreeBSD/2.0.5-RELEASE/src/ssys.ag ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/FreeBSD/2.0.5-RELEASE/src/ssys.ah ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/FreeBSD/2.0.5-RELEASE/src/ssys.ai ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/FreeBSD/2.0.5-RELEASE/src/ssys.aj ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/FreeBSD/2.0.5-RELEASE/src/ssys.ak ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/FreeBSD/2.0.5-RELEASE/src/ssys.al ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/FreeBSD/2.0.5-RELEASE/src/ssys.am For the FreeBSD kernel, cat them all together using the following: cat ssys.* > kernel.tar.gz At this point you can uncompress both the kernel sources. On the FreeBSD kernel, type "grep -i linux `find . -name '*' -print`" and on the Linux kernel type "grep -i freebsd `find . -name '*' -print`". There is about 4-10 times more references to Linux in the FreeBSD source code then there are references to FreeBSD in the Linux source code. Interesting. >The worst thing that could happen to the software community is for >FreeBSD disappear. Linux would then get fat and sassy with no competition. Perhaps. In some ways, though, I don't think the Linux community is "competing" with the FreeBSD community. Linux seems to be competing with the DOS and OS/2 communities. There is a strong belief among the the Linux community (including myself) that Linux can replace DOS or OS/2 for the desktop market. There is an active effort to make Linux powerful (of which both Linux and FreeBSD are) AND easy to use (of which Linux is). Hopefully powerful + easy to use = productive. That's why there exists the Linux kernel patch summaries, the Linux documentation project, the Linux publicity project, the Linux developers fund (possibly non-existant now), and the thousands of volunteers who are trying to make Linux the best possible OS. >One interesting possibility would >be for Linux to oust POSIX as *THE* UNIX standard and for FreeBSD to oust >BSD4.4 as *THE* BSD standard. This could very well happen within the next >two years or so. One thing I worry about is that multiple competing standards will only cause confusion within the UNIX world. (so what's new, huh? Multiple competing standards exist in the DOS/Mac world too). >Even more important to the free software community are applications. OSes >are nice, but applications are essential. Right now, FreeBSD and Linux >have minimal to no effect on the Windows etc. community. With the recent release of Caldera (a Linux distribution), and WordPerfect's announcement that they are releasing a Wordperfect for Linux (native) this fall, things may begin changing. 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