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From: mandtbac@news.abo.fi (Mats Andtbacka)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linux vs FreeBSD
Date: 6 Dec 1995 18:16:14 GMT
Organization: Unorganized Usenet Postings UnInc.
Lines: 89
Distribution: comp
Message-ID: <4a4mle$jj5@josie.abo.fi>
References: <489kuu$rbo@pelican.cs.ucla.edu> <49smvs$8gd@josie.abo.fi> <49tban$978@times.tfs.com> <4a10kr$k06@mark.ucdavis.edu>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.advocacy:29398 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:9884 comp.unix.advocacy:11788
David E. O'Brien, in <4a10kr$k06@mark.ucdavis.edu>:
>In article <49smvs$8gd@josie.abo.fi>, Mats Andtbacka <mandtbac@abo.fi> wrote:
[...]
>>Am I correct to think that the FreeBSD "equivalent", this CVS or
>>whatever you called it, can't be _read_ except by a small core team?
>>Whatever for? Keeping people from making their own changes and writing
>>to it I can see, but...?
>I believe what we have here is basically a misunderstanding (or total lack
>of knowledge of source code revision control systems).
It's a total lack of knowledge of source code revision control
systems; I am not a programmer either professional or amateur, so
expecting me to know such things is IMHO not reasonable.
>A code revision system simply tracks the *CHANGES* to the source code.
>This allows you to get a copy of that file/system foo looked like last
>Tuesday.
It appears the Linux source has no central, single such system,
although I hear some of the ports of it (the Sparc one, at least) use
something like this. What *does* exist is brute force; ftp.funet.fi
has copies of most if not every source tree officially released.
They're about 3 megs a piece these days, so maybe it's not *that* big
a waste of disk space.
> This could be useful to see how a file changed, or to go back to
>an older version of a file because you make changes that were bad.
A Linuxite would back out the patch. I suppose it's maybe not as
versatile, but it's not entirely undoable.
[...]
>As stated so many times, the *latest* source is always available for *BSD,
>just like for Linux. EXCEPT, that for *BSD it is one-stop-shopping. For
>Linux I would have to visit WAY too many ftp sites for my tastes.
Whatever floats your goat - I could harp about *BSD being a
prepackaged, prechewed, predigested system without flexibility; I
_like_ the fact that with Linux I can grab the latest version of only
that piece of software I wish to upgrade, and not worry about getting
"out of sync" with the rest of the official software tree.
I want to upgrade my kernel, I upgrade the kernel; my getty gets
outdated, I update only it. I see very little reason, myself, to
bundle *everything* and its dog and _its_ fleas in one big tree.
>To reiterate, the reason having a Core team is show below. This is a post
>to the Lcc compiler mail list from a Linux user. (lcc is a conforming
>ANSI-C compiler available in source form and has a text book written about
>it).
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Subject: Re: FYI linux lcc
>
>> In short, I feel that there are two things about ``LINUX: The Operating
>> System'' that will forever prevent it from truly becoming a Big Success
>> (i.e. bigger than it is now among innumerable hobbyists), and these two
>> things are both tightly interrelated:
>>
>> 1) The lack of a central authority for the entire OS, and
Meanwhile, in another posting, some other BSD advocate was complaining
about Linux having _too much_ central authority...
>> 2) the lack of any single party who is concerned about (and who
>> takes personal/corporate responsibility for) the level of
>> standard conformance (both ANSI and POSIX) for the entire OS.
I thought Linus had standard conformance as a fairly high personal
priority, no?
>[..stuff deleted..]
>> tape operations. Grrrr. I did however find a number of man pages which
>> had dangling ``SEE ALSO'' pointers which pointed off to other relevant
>> man pages that didn't exist on my system. Again, this is an example of
>> a _global_ problem with ``LINUX: The OS''... one which I might be willing
>> to help solve if only I could identify a single authoritative maintainer
>> for the entire set of Linux man pages. :-(
This person ought to have asked Matt Welsh, the Linux Doc Project
coordinator, for the email address of whoever maintains the man pages.
Individual people's ignorance is not a shortcoming of their operating
system.
--
" ... got to contaminate to alleviate this loneliness
i now know the depths i reach are limitless... "
-- nin