*BSD News Article 67311


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From: ev@dolphin.no (Erik Vasaasen)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Linux Vs FreeBSD
Date: 28 Apr 1996 18:01:40 GMT
Organization: I need to put my ORGANIZATION here.
Lines: 47
Message-ID: <4m0bq4$5am@oslo-nntp.eunet.no>
References: <Pine.SUN.3.93.960424160848.29921A-100000@meyer> <4lrkkf$sgj@hermes.cair.du.edu>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:100797 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:18468

In article <4lrkkf$sgj@hermes.cair.du.edu>,
Dave Richards  <dar@phoenix.uchsc.edu> wrote:
>Oh yea I forgot.. they're both extremely stable.
>both have been on-line since sept. 95
>
>the linux one froze up once that I can remember
>the freebsd box has never crashed.. it just keeps on humming
>and it gets alot more work to do also!
>
>freebsd also has a much better, friendlier installation
>process and a great kernel configuration method
>  -I hate linux's kernel config script.
>
>oh yea.. here's the versions we use:
>
>linux 1.2.13
>FreeBSD 2.1
>

Try downloading one of the later 1.3 linux kernels - The 1.2 series
is soon a year old. Somehow I doubt the FreeBSD kernel configuration
holds much of a candle against 'make xconfig' (if you have tk) and
'make menuconfig' (if you don't have X/tk).

Highlights are:

A total of 170k of help available for each kernel configuration option.
Multiple kernel configuration files if you want it.
As the name indicate kernel configuration before compiling is now done
using multiple levels of menus, so you can correct yourself without
restarting as you had to with the old system.


Also, please be aware that there are a number of different Linux
distributions. There is Debian (the OS the GNU people say you should
use until HURD), there is Linux-FT (which has a posix.1 certificate),
and there is RedHat (probably the best install / upgrade options of
the bunch). Also there is Slackware, but that one is getting old now.

Linux is a moving target, and not just because of the large user and
developer community. There are also the rising number of commercial
distributions, who earn enough money to pay for things as certificates
and full time programmers. Because of the GNU licence they simply
can't take the Linux kernel / GNU toolkits, improve them, and then
refuse to release their improvements back into the developer community.

Erik