*BSD News Article 92723


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From: dfox@belvdere.vip.best.com (David E. Fox)
Newsgroups: alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Linux or FreeBSD (or something else?)
Date: 4 Apr 1997 01:53:04 GMT
Organization: Dave's Really K-rad Linux Box
Lines: 33
Message-ID: <slrn5k7et0.9a7.dfox@belvdere.vip.best.com>
References: <5hcbac$r22@news.gvsu.edu> <333cddd8.1017100@news.sprynet.com>
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In article <333cddd8.1017100@news.sprynet.com>, Goatboy wrote:

>>6. Free development tools come standard and are updated for free.
>
>I know. Like gcc. But dos has djgpp, which is the same thing, just
>ported.

But gcc will be on the same CD with every Linux distribution. Dos,
or NT, users have to go out and find djgcc. If an NT port doesn't 
exist, you're stuck (but that, if not here yet, will soon be, I 
would think.) In addition, the last time I looked at djgcc (just before
I switched over to 386BSD and later Linux in fall 1992) wasn't
GPL. It had a rather restrictive license saying if you make any money,
you owe the djgcc person some money.

Lots of free (and shareware) software has been written for DOS, to
be sure, but you have to go find it. If you get a distribution of
Linux, you get a whole slew of tools and apps to go with the kernel. If
you buy DOS (or Win95/NT) it's not very useful out of the box.

>WinNT an 95 aren't at ms's mercy. And if u want to change the OS, you
>can. What's there to stop you?

You are if you depend on them. Case in point - if you want new
fixes from MS for Win95, good luck getting them. The service packs
are only going out to OEMs, which generally means you need to buy
a new computer with the new version of the OS preinstalled. 
-- 
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David E. Fox                 Tax              Thanks for letting me
dfox@belvdere.vip.best.com   the              change magnetic patterns
root@belvedere.sbay.org      churches         on your hard disk.
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