Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!metro!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!solace!nntp.uio.no!news.cais.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!reason.cdrom.com!usenet From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@FreeBSD.org> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Linux vs. FreeBSD ... Date: Thu, 09 May 1996 01:46:59 -0700 Organization: Walnut Creek CDROM Lines: 76 Message-ID: <3191B103.167EB0E7@FreeBSD.org> References: <3188C1E2.45AE@onramp.net> <4mnsc5$6qo@sundial.sundial.net> <Dr1wrL.My0@kithrup.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: time.cdrom.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0b2 (X11; I; FreeBSD 2.2-CURRENT i386) To: Sean Eric Fagan <sef@kithrup.com> Sean Eric Fagan wrote: > > In article <4mnsc5$6qo@sundial.sundial.net>, > Bryan J. Smith, E.I. <b.j.smith@ieee.org> wrote: > > just too much disinformation for me to not speak up (as I expect others to). Yeah, no kidding. Bryan's posting had me floored, it was such a masterpiece of disinformation. Sort of like listening to Daffy Duck trying to explain the workings of a nuclear reactor. :-) > FreeBSD and Linux should support the same Adaptec controllers, since the > support originally came from Linux! (It has since, I think, been pounded on > more on the FreeBSD side, but they should still related.) Actually, the information stream has reversed. From what I understand in talking to Justin Gibbs, the maintainer of FreeBSD's Adaptec driver, the Linux folks now take his work from FreeBSD and adapt it back to Linux. Unless someone's slacking seriously in the Linux dept, support should be very close to parity for both OSs. > The FreeBSD team has not signed a non-disclosure agreement with Adaptec; if > they did, they wouldn't be able to give out the sources! (That is what the > "non-disclosure" part means, you know.) Thanks for correcting this. We *can't* sign such things, in fact, having neither the desire nor the legal presence to do so. Bryan is just wrong wrong wrong (did I mention that already? :-). > and it will build the binary. Some of these "ports" are binaries that > cannot be distributed as sources -- netscape, for example, is available as a > "port." (Admittedly, it's the Linux binary 8-).)> Heh? It's the BSDI binary, Sean! Always has been.. :-) > I do not recall when FreeBSD-2.1 came out; it may have been late '94, but I > thought it was closer to early '95. No matter either way. As for the December 1995 / January 1996. > >FreeBSD is only available on CD-ROM from Walnut Creek CD-ROM for $50. Linux $39.95 for a single unit, $24.95 for a subscription, anywhere from $18 - $24 on the street. We sell at deliberately higher prices direct so as to not undercut our own distributors (who wouldn't be our distributors for very long if we did). Admittedly it's a little higher than then $10 "linux big gulp" packs I've been seeing, but most of those are of such poor quality that frankly I'd have no desire whatsoever to see FreeBSD competing at that level. Down in the dregs I'd really rather not go. > There are a couple of other people who make FreeBSD CD-ROMs; they are > typically behind Walnut Creek's distributions, which isn't terribly Actually, the DISCNet product (sold by Infomagic) is getting closer to releasing around the same time as the WC product. Infomagic doesn't have the benefit of me working for them on the CD as well as the net release, but they still do a pretty good job, considering. Not that I'd recommend their release over WC's, of course! :-) > There are more vendors offering Linux on CD-ROM, and that is true. I think > that is a pity for the FreeBSD distribution, however -- the FreeBSD CD-ROM To a point, yes. I'm happy to see the users get a reasonable selection of choices, that's certainly true, but I'm not all that sure if a rabid proliferation of products is in anybody's best interests either. I looked at a recent pack called the "Linux hacker's 10", for example, and "padded out" does not even attempt to describe it. A CD full of MPEG files? Another of wallpaper backgrounds? The GNU CD? [most of which is utterly redundant considering that it's already part of Linux!] I won't even go into amount of redundancy involved in their multiple-CD dumps of TSX-11 and Sunsite. Suffice it to say that there's such a thing as simply inundating the user with data in hopes they'll think they're getting some sort of super deal. More is not always better. -- - Jordan Hubbard President, FreeBSD Project