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From: nickkral@america.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Nick Kralevich)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: FreeBSD vs Linux
Date: 4 Apr 1996 05:19:51 GMT
Organization: Electrical Engineering Computer Science Department, University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 88
Message-ID: <4jvm5n$2v8@agate.berkeley.edu>
References: <4issad$h1o@nadine.teleport.com> <Pine.LNX.3.91.960401105810.31921A-100000@gallup.cia-g.com> <4jqpn8$euv@agate.berkeley.edu> <4jsq5i$5ko@main.gbdata.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: america.cs.berkeley.edu
In article <4jsq5i$5ko@main.gbdata.com>,
Gary Clark II <gclarkii@main.gbdata.com> wrote:
>Ok who? When sos and sef announced the addition of ELF into FreeBSD
>I saw nothing like this. Just some questions here and there.
FreeBSD will eventually have to move to ELF. What's where all the
new development is going to be headed. Bugs are less likely
to be fixed in the a.out format, because most people won't be using
that format. ELF based tools (compilers, etc) will be released,
and the a.out ones won't be as well supported. The future
seems to be ELF based.
Eventually, FreeBSD _has_ to switch to ELF. That's why the ELF code
is being added to FreeBSD. I disagree with the notion that switching
binary formats will be easy for the FreeBSD team. It won't be.
Also, from a software development point of view, knowing that FreeBSD
is going to change binary formats is a disincentive to developing
commercial software for FreeBSD.
Of course, I have no way of predicting the future, so I might be
wrong.
>Ok Nick, one question for you that I've been wanting to ask a Linux person
>for a long time. Why is that none of the major distribution sites for
>Linux run Linux? Here are the sites that I know of:
>
>Name: Sunsite.unc.edu OS: SysVr4 Distribution: MCC and TAMU
>Name: TSX-11.mit.edu OS: OSF/1 Distribution: SLS and Debian
Sunsite and tsx-11 were the original homes of Linux. They were there
when Linux was in the early stages of being developed, when only a few
hundred people used Linux. At that time, Linux wasn't sufficient
enough to be a full scale server.
The sunsite.unc.edu and tsx-11.mit.edu computers were volunteered
in the early days of Linux. They work fine, so why fix somthing that's
not broken.
>Name: ftp.CDROM.com OS: FreeBSD Distribution: Slackware
Walnut Creek CD-ROM hired Patrick Vouldrick (horrible mispelling, sorry).
I don't know if he is working for them anymore. Walnut Creek is
happy running FreeBSD, and since Patrick works for them, he puts
Slackware wherever they tell him to. (of course, I can't speak for
Walnut Creek CD-ROM).
>Name: ftp.funet.fi OS: Dec Unix Distribution: Major software archive
ftp.funet.fi is one of those computers that has been around for a
long time too. That computer, too, held Linux in the early days
before Linux was stable enough to act as a heavy duty server.
As for major sites running and distributing Linux:
ftp.redhat.com OS: Linux 1.3.81 Distribution: RedHat Linux
ftp.caldera.com OS: Linux 1.2.13 Distribution: Caldera Linux
RedHat Linux mirror
As for major sites running Linux:
ftp.winsite.com OS: Linux 1.3.45 Major Windows FTP archive
(previously known as
ftp.cica.indiana.edu)
garbo.uwasa.fi OS: Linux ??? Major DOS FTP archive
Linux mirror.
More sites available upon request.
>NOTE: This is a question to Nick. If you want to send mail fine.
Nope, that's OK, I'll answer via newsgroups. I hope I answered your
questions sufficiently.
My personal belief is that FreeBSD is behind the times, and that
Linux is the superior choice, for lots of reasons, none of which I
will go into here (unless someone really wants me to. After all,
the title of this thread is "FreeBSD vs Linux").
Both operating systems, and both development groups, are excellent.
I just think the future lies with Linux, and not FreeBSD. Of course,
you are welcome to disagree with my opinion (and I suspect many people
will).
Take care,
-- Nick Kralevich
nickkral@cory.eecs.berkeley.edu