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From: peter@nmti.com (Peter da Silva)
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 18:35:15 GMT
Organization: Network/development platform support, NMTI
Lines: 66
Message-ID: <5dajt3$fk@web.nmti.com>
References: <32DFFEAB.7704@usa.net> <5d8ikn$801$1@venus.mcs.net> <5d8ncq$jgr@web.nmti.com> <5daekd$f3q$1@mercury.mcs.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sonic.nmti.com
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:156447 comp.os.linux.advocacy:82598 comp.os.linux.setup:95714 comp.unix.bsd.misc:2293
In article <5daekd$f3q$1@mercury.mcs.net>, Leslie Mikesell <les@MCS.COM> wrote:
> In article <5d8ncq$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.
Nah. FreeBSD has lots of code releases too, they just don't call them
releases until they're sure they're stable. For example, someone commented
that the latest release of FreeBSD was slower than Linux. I don't know if
the 2.1-stable branch (including the latest "release" of FreeBSD, 2.1.6)
is slower, but there are more recent snapshots available... and they're all
still pretty stable.
> >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.
Ah. Bad search model. The best place to get help there is to ask on the
mailing lists. The FreeBSD folks (with a few exceptions) don't hang out on
Usenet.
> >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'm a bad computer owner. I abuse my main computers (though my original Mac
and 3b1 get excellent care... but I keep them for nostalgia value, not for
real use) and do horrible things to them. FreeBSD doesn't mind. I broke Linux
(Red Hat 2.1 at the time) a couple of times, pretty badly, and the latest
Red Hat is giving me the same sorts of warning signals, so I backed off to
wait for Linux binary support in FreeBSD 2.2.
Of course a guy I know managed to trash his root file system with XFree86
when he installed 2.1.6. XFree86 seems to be the least stable part of
FreeBSD, and of course it's almost all the same code as in Linux. Device
bashing from user space is definitely icky.
> 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 much prefer that, too, but it's easy enough to cons it up. With FreeBSD 2.1
you don't much need to beat on the config files, everything's driven by
/etc/sysconfig anyway... it's not as good for third party support, but
it's a big improvement.
> >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.
Someone else has explained what was going on here better than I can.
--
The Reverend Peter da Silva, ULC, COQO, BOFH.
Har du kramat din varg, idag? `-_-'