*BSD News Article 88611


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From: kevinb@aic1.accesscom.com (Kevin Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Linux vs BSD
Date: 8 Feb 1997 04:49:53 GMT
Organization: Access Internet Communications
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Message-ID: <5dh0lh$rlt@news.accesscom.com>
References: <32DFFEAB.7704@usa.net> <5dao3t$t7a@cynic.portal.ca> <5dd624$b05@oden.abc.se> <5dg6kt$fil@cynic.portal.ca>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.advocacy:82784 comp.unix.bsd.misc:2357 comp.os.linux.misc:156787

In article <5dg6kt$fil@cynic.portal.ca>,
Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.portal.ca> wrote:
>In article <5dd624$b05@oden.abc.se>, Jonas Bofjall <m9418@abc.se> wrote:

[...]

>>Also, I think the *BSD people have more internal fights, otherwise we
>>wouldn't have *three* (at least) BSD derived freeware OS'es.
>
>No, by that argument, given that there are more than a dozen
>GNU/Linux systems out there, there are more internal fights in the
>Linux camp. Not to mention things like duplicated drivers in the
>kernel itself.

I think the difference is that although under Linux it is possible to
find device drivers and such that aren't integrated into the kernel,
there don't seem to be separately maintained kernel source trees the
way there are under the *BSDs.

Furthermore, it's widely known that the reasons for the divergence
between the BSD camps were largely political (The creation of OpenBSD,
in particular, seems to be more politically motivated than technically
motivated).

I do realize that the BSDs are technically different from each other
(FreeBSD from NetBSD, in particular), but are they so technically
different that they really do require separate source distributions??


Note, too, that a "distribution" under Linux is a Linux kernel along
with a collection of utilities and other programs, all packaged
together into a (more or less) coherent form.  What primarily differs
is the selection of programs and the mechanism used to install and
maintain them.  Because of that, the different distributions tend to
be good for different things and each targets a different audience.

On the BSD side, each kernel comes with a single distribution, and the
kernels themselves are separately maintained.  Changes, bugfixes,
etc. that make it into one distribution probably aren't necessarily
integrated into any of the others, even if the changes are applicable.


Neither way is better or worse, they're just different and target
different needs.

I do sometimes wonder how much cross-pollenization of ideas there is
between the BSD camps, however.  How much does the FreeBSD camp learn
about portability from the NetBSD camp?  Since FreeBSD runs only on
the x86 platform, how can you tell that the portability ideas are even
well-tested on that platform?  How much does the NetBSD camp learn
from the FreeBSD camp about kernel performance and stability?  How
many performance improvements that are made in FreeBSD manage to make
their way into the NetBSD kernel?


I'm not being critical here, I'm genuinely curious.  The BSD side of
things has always seemed to be a bit fragmented to me.  The Linux
community *feels* more whole, even if perhaps it's not.

-- 
Kevin Brown						kevinb@netcom.com
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