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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!newspump.sol.net!ddsw1!news.mcs.net!ddsw1!not-for-mail From: les@MCS.COM (Leslie Mikesell) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.os.linux.setup,comp.unix.bsd.misc Subject: Re: Linux vs BSD Date: 5 Feb 1997 11:05:17 -0600 Organization: /usr/lib/news/organi[sz]ation Lines: 66 Message-ID: <5daekd$f3q$1@Mercury.mcs.net> References: <32DFFEAB.7704@usa.net> <5d7spf$8n6@web.nmti.com> <5d8ikn$801$1@venus.mcs.net> <5d8ncq$jgr@web.nmti.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: mercury.mcs.com Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:156081 comp.os.linux.advocacy:82357 comp.os.linux.setup:95420 comp.unix.bsd.misc:2231 In article <5d8ncq$jgr@web.nmti.com>, Peter da Silva <peter@nmti.com> wrote: >Well "a lot more stable" isn't equivalent in any sense with "has more >drivers". It generally is associated with high uptimes, good response >under load, non-catastrophic failure modes, that sort of thing. OK, I thought perhaps you meant stable in the sense of less frequent code releases. Linux does have frequent changes, but they are at least as much to incorporate new features/drivers as to fix bugs. I'm not sure where tweaking the busmastering EIDE chipset code fits in that respect but it looks like that was responsible for much of the 2.0.0 -> 2.0.28 set. >> I've had trouble with debian on a couple of machines too - they >> hang during the probe for the cm206 CDROM. But you can't condemn >> Linux because a particular distribution screws up the install >> procedure. > >No, of course not. But when Linus recommends Red Hat and it doesn't work, >you have to wonder about the ones he *didn't* recommend. Obviously he doesn't have your particular PC hardware combination. >> It's not quite the same with freeBSD, since there >> wasn't a different package to try when the install failed... > >I've had FreeBSD installs fail and got past it by getting a kernel with >the drivers I needed too. Why on earth *wouldn't* you be able to do that? At the time, an altavista internet search turned up only Linux drivers and boot disks. A few months later I found FreeBSD versions but at that point had no reason to change. Also I saw something that lead me to believe that the Cyclades serial port card driver was better under Linux (which may or may not really be true). >> I suspect that anyone switching from a year-old version of either to >> the current version of the other would see an improvement. Either way. > >I'm running a year old version of FreeBSD and the current version of Linux >and I don't see any improvement. Once you approach the hardware capabilities of a system, how much more can you expect? I guess I'd prefer the BSD filesystem large/small block handling, but since I've always used sysV the Linux way of doing inittab and the rc files seems more natural. >I see a less reliable package system (it >still managed to install packages without their prerequisites, even though >they were supposed to fix that), Debian claims to be better. >a kernel that had to be patched for an >adaptor it claimed to support (Adaptec 1742! Not rocket science), Details please if you don't mind... I'll probably need to do that soon. >and an >awfully scattered source tree that doesn't make it easy to do either >comprehensive builds or partial ones. Debian might improve this too - I haven't recompiled anything from there yet. Les Mikesell les@mcs.com