Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!news.sprintlink.net!cs.utexas.edu!news.cs.utah.edu!news.cc.utah.edu!park.uvsc.edu!usenet From: Terry Lambert <terry@cs.weber.edu> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Linux or FreeBSD Date: 23 Sep 1995 03:15:21 GMT Organization: Utah Valley State College, Orem, Utah Lines: 85 Message-ID: <43vu49$cpj@park.uvsc.edu> References: <409iah$inf@galaxy.ucr.edu> <41ogs7$jui@park.uvsc.edu> <1995Sep7.221221.28091@state.systems.sa.gov.au> <43dm5r$638@park.uvsc.edu> <43hqa7$3rk@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: hecate.artisoft.com tzs@u.washington.edu (Tim Smith) wrote: ] ] Terry Lambert <terry@cs.weber.edu> wrote: ] >I mean I find it hard to believe that Linux has "10 times as many ] >people" ] ] I don't. First, consider non-net sources. Linux seems to be much ] more widely available. Walk into any reasonable bookstore, and there ] are Linux books that include Linux on CD-ROM. The closest thing you'll ] find in most of those stores to any flavor of Berkeley Unix is the 4.4 ] BSD CD-ROM. Refutations: 1) "Seems" is subjective. 2) BSD (and Linux) don't require books to use. 3) I don't necessarily want to pay for both a book and a CDROM. 4) You shop at the wrong bookstore. The one I go to has it. ] Second, what does get out to stores is too out of date to run on many ] people's systems. I've not been able to find a store that caries anything ] later than FreeBSD 2.0. Since then, IDE CD-ROM has become the norm on ] PC hardware, and is not supported in FreeBSD 2.0. Refutations: 1) This is a channel marketing problem for all products everywhere. 2) You can go to the FTP site for "most recent" if you in fact want that. 3) You can call Walnut Creek CDROM directly. 4) Software is not fresness dated. ] Third, Linux used to get along better with DOS. You could try it out ] using the UMSDOS file system if you had no unpartitioned space on your ] hard disk. If you did have unpartitioned space, you could add a real ] Linux partition, but use LOADLIN or BOOTLIN to start Linux, so you didn't ] have to worry that Linux would mess up your other operating systems. ] FreeBSD, on the other hand, appeared to want to take over the boot ] process, and there was no obvious way to load it some other way (e.g., ] nothing like LOADLIN). I understand that some or all of these issues ] have been addressed, but given the lag between the latest FreeBSD and ] what is available in stores, they are probably still real issues for ] a lot of potential FreeBSD users. Refutations: 1) If it's been addressed, it's no longer an issue. 2) The "past lag" is no indicator of future or even current ternds. 3) Linux less "net friendly" than BSD. The argument cuts both ways equally and is therefore zero sum. ] Combining all of the above, I'd expect Linux to be overwhelmingly ] more common among those who are buying CD-ROMs in bookstores or ] computer stores. ] ] I have no idea what the numbers are like for people who obtain their ] first system from the net rather than from stores. Refutations: 1) There is no figure of merit for market skew based on where the media was purchased. Even if we were to grant you the argument of "more common among those who are buying CD-ROMs in bookstores or computer stores" (which we won't), there is no evidence of the division of sales on this basis. 2) You admit that you have no idea of the relative distribution ratio via network distribution, so in fact some potentially huge percentage of a unknown skew ratio prefer BSD. 3) You can't combine "all of the above" and come up with a valid argument for the combined reasons above. Terry Lambert terry@cs.weber.edu --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.