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Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.misc Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au!news.apana.org.au!cantor.edge.net.au!news.mira.net.au!news.vbc.net!vbcnet-west!samba.rahul.net!rahul.net!a2i!hustle.rahul.net!rahul.net!a2i!truffula!cls From: mhall@homecom.com (Not my real address) Subject: Re: Linux vs BSD Sender: cls@truffula.sj.ca.us (root) Organization: Habitat of the Lorax Message-ID: <E6sIEF.1qE@truffula.sj.ca.us> References: <32DFFEAB.7704@usa.net> <5dadfr$cnu@web.nmti.com> <n4stf5.tq2.ln@zen> Date: Sun, 9 Mar 1997 19:06:15 GMT Lines: 43 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:163741 comp.os.linux.advocacy:87629 comp.unix.bsd.misc:2774 In article <n4stf5.tq2.ln@zen>, Robert Brockway <s316674@student.uq.edu.au> wrote: >Peter da Silva (peter@nmti.com) wrote: > >: How should I put this: > >: I'm a bad pet-owner when it comes to operating systems. I abuse them. I >: make them run two concurrent X servers (on different VCs) with Netscape >: and Xkobo and other horrid programs bashing away all at the same time. >: And that's on a fairly 486 with 16M running 3 mailing lists, 3 MUDs, and >: a website. I've got gobs of swap, but I'll run it out of that, and come >: home to see that it's been running out of swap on and off all day. > >Been there done that on Linux. 2 or more X servers on different VCs isn't >hard to do, and then i've gone one to compile kernels,etc. Linux keeps >running. One data point each :-) I think these stability arguments can >go a bit silly. Linux does what I want, and never falls over for me >unless I do something really stupid. I'm not convinced running badblocks -w /dev/sda7 100000 on an about-to-be-added partition is "really stupid" but it brings Linux 2.0.28 to its knees. The system comes back when the command is done, but while it's running Linux can't move mail or change consoles or anything. Evidently the write buffer cache expands till there's no physical memory left for init or shell. Any command that tries to write a file all at once that's much bigger than physical memory can do roughly the same thing. Does FreeBSD have a similar weakness? My choice of Linux over FreeBSD was an accident: at the time I was giving up on SCO I couldn't find any information about FreeBSD while alt.os.linux was pretty busy. How many advocates for one or the other will admit their choice was similarly arbitrary? Linux has served me well for almost five years. I'll bet FreeBSD would have done just as well. Let us not waste a minute on "the circular firing squad" when the real enemy is The Dark Side of the Force, in Redmond. -- I am Cameron Spitzer, cls at truffula. sj. ca. us. My "From:" line is bait for address harvesters; *don't use it*. Does ginger@darrington.net read his mail? (That's bait, too.)