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Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!sgiblab!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!uunet!boulder!kinglear!drew From: drew@kinglear.cs.colorado.edu (Drew Eckhardt) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: 386BSD or LINUX? Message-ID: <1992Nov4.205620.8184@colorado.edu> Date: 4 Nov 92 20:56:20 GMT References: <Nov.2.20.33.38.1992.18690@remus.rutgers.edu> Sender: news@colorado.edu (The Daily Planet) Organization: University of Colorado at Boulder Lines: 83 Nntp-Posting-Host: kinglear.cs.colorado.edu In article <Nov.2.20.33.38.1992.18690@remus.rutgers.edu> glenw@remus.rutgers.edu (Glenn Wasserman) writes: >As the subject heading says, which is it? Which is the better,more >supported operating system (I know I'm going to get a lot on this >one!) I'd say that Linux and 386BSD are "different", but that neither is "better". I personally use Linux, since at this point, networking is not important to me, and disk space is at a premium. If I had more space, more memory, and needed networking, I would probably lean towards BSD. Linux +'s : Shared libraries. This results in a significant disk space savings, especially in the case of 'X' applications that can shrink by an order of magnitude when compiled with shared libraries. Modern VM, with a unified buffer cache and user memory pool. This improves performance for very memory intensive or very I/O instensive tasks as the balanace between the two can shift dynamically. Many kernel structures, such as pty's, are dynamically allocated. This increases the amount of pageable memory that is available. More "odd" hardware is supported in the stock distribution. For instance, SCSI support is there for Seagate, WD7000, Future Domain, Ultrastor 14f, and Adaptec boards. There are more WhizzyFeatures (tm), such as /proc. Linux supports the MSDOS file system, and can run vm86 tasks such as the DOS emulator, if you consider these +'s. Linux -'s : NFS is not yet stable. SUNRPC is not yet stable. It's not BSD. BSD +'s : The networking code is BSD, and quite stable. This means SLIP, NFS, RPC, etc all work fine. It's BSD. BSD -'s : No shared libraries means you can't fit as many toys onto a small system. A larger kernel means that you have less space for user programs. >I have Linux running on my machine now, and I'm just wondering if this >is the right choice. Maybe. >Is 386BSD more stable? That depends on what you define as "Linux" and what you define as "386BSD". If you compare Linux alpha code, such as the NFS implemention, Sun RPC, Xenix fs, etc, chances are that you'll find BSD more stable. If you only look at beta code, one user posted a "success story" to the mailing list detailing how they'd run a patient tracking system on a network of Linux and Xenix machines, and that a Linux system hadn't crashed after 40 days of being up and running with a real load. >Is there any reason to >switch? I'd say that if you want BSD, because it's BSD, or if you want stable NFS NOW, and not in two weeks, that it might be worthwhile. -- Microsoft is responsible for propogating the evils it calls DOS and Windows, IBM for AIX (appropriately called Aches by those having to administer it), but marketing's sins don't come close to those of legal departments. Boycott AT&T for their absurd anti-BSDI lawsuit.