[geeks] A Real OS? (was: Re: my capitalization.. etc.)

[Eric Dittman]

> Okay, I'll bite...
> 
> > I'm sure you'll find that IBM, Sun, HPaq (and Digital and Compaq
> > before they were swallowed) knew about *BSD.
> 
> Which is probably why their commercial OSes (except for Tru64, from 
> what I've heard) contain so much BSD code.  I'd bet you that they wouldn't
> use Linux code even if it weren't GPVed.  Try reading the Linux source
> code some time.  There are portions of it that make you feel like it was
> deliberately obfuscated.

Didn't Sun make the move from BSD with Solaris?

I have read through the Linux source code.  I agree that the
coding isn't the best, but it does support the hardware I
have, while *BSD doesn't.  I could use *BSD with the standard
XFree86 nVidia driver, but if I want to use the card with
any of the extended features I have to use Linux.

> Remember that Sun used to -ship- a BSD derivative and that at least one of
> Sun's founders -created- BSD, back when BSD was just a set of userland
> utilities.

And yet Sun is on the bandwagon.

> > I think what hurts *BSD most is the fragmentation.
> 
> Only if you think that more than one BSD is too many.  They each have
> their focus areas.  I kind-of like that.

If they'd put all this together and drop the ego trips then
you'd have the best of all three.  Instead you have to use
the one closest to what you need and wait for the other features
you want to get copied over from the other two.

> Contrast this to the Linux distributions, where you basically have
> Slackware which tries to be BSD, Debian which tries to be Stallman's fan
> club, RedHat (I still haven't figured out their angle), and an uncountable
> number of "it's like RedHat but with a different $feature $characteristic"
> distributions.

There's two big players in the Linux market, RedHat and SuSE.
The big companies focus on those two (mostly RedHat).

> Yes, the kernel is unfragmented (except for the non-Linus patch
> collections), but that doesn't amount to anything if the environment's
> different everywhere.  And the LSB doesn't address issues like RPM vs DEB
> vs TGZ and init schemes and lots of other administration topics.

The LSB is a work in progress.

> > The long-time lack of a decent installer probably hurt, too, along
> > with the kernel rebuild being like playing a text adventure game.
> 
> cd /usr/src/sys/arch/conf/$arch
> vi $hostname
> config $hostname
> cd ../compile/$hostname
> make depend all install
> 
> That's so bad?  Linux is:
> 
> cd /usr/src/sys/linux
> make config (or menuconfig or xconfig)
> gmake depend clean bzlilo modules modules_install
> 
> Provided that everything's properly documented, I'd rather edit a textfile
> than deal with menuconfig, which hates most of the terminals I use.  "make
> config" is okay if you don't mind playing twenty (thousand) questions.
> Lately, I've been using xconfig, primarily because menuconfig doesn't like
> iris-ansi-net, even with the proper terminfo files.

I primarily use xconfig.  What I find irritating is when trying to
build a BSD kernel I have to look around to find out what I do and
don't need, and if I miss something I find out after the compile
fails or when the boot doesn't work.  I want an interactive kernel
build until I'm comfortable with the config files.  When I'm
building a new Linux kernel, I'll directly edit .config if I
know what I need.

> I'm with alex on this one.  The Linux hype is all about flavor-of-the-
> week.  Linux is good stuff, and I used to use it on everything, but
> OpenBSD and NetBSD are just so much more polished.  If the BSDs got some
> of Linux's dynamic module tricks, it'd absolutely be no contest--right now
> that's the only thing Linux has ahead of BSD.

What flavor-of-the-week?  The Linux hype is really mostly Redhat
hype.

The BSDs need more hardware vendor support, too.

> Well, that and the widespread name-recognition.  It's almost like
> companies are taking Linus seriously in his response to "Other than the
> fact Linux has a cool name, could someone explain why I should use Linux
> over BSD?"  Or, uhm, was he serious?

What *BSD has over Linux is the lack of the Stallman disease.
Why the BSD groups aren't working with major companies to get
them to realize this I don't know.

The above mentioned nVidia driver issue is a perfect one.  The
only driver RedHat provides is the one from XFree86.  People
are complaining that nVidia's driver isn't there, while other
people are complaining that the driver isn't open source.  The
BSD people should be working with nVidia to get their driver
ported over.  The same goes for other hardware vendors.

I'm not a Stallman fan.  I'm comfortable with Linux, and I
prefer SysV init files and layout.  I'd really prefer to
use Solaris x86, but give me a BSD with support for my
hardware and I'll switch in a heartbeat.
-- 
Eric Dittman
dittman at dittman.net
Check out the DEC Enthusiasts Club at http://www.dittman.net/