[rescue] Re:EMACS

[Sebastian Marius Kirsch]

On Thu, Jun 28, 2001 at 09:33:15AM -0400, James Fogg wrote:
> On Wed, 27 Jun 2001, THOU SPAKE:
> > On Wed, Jun 27, 2001 at 03:02:22PM -0400, James Fogg wrote:
> > > > Had you been using Debian/GNU/Linux (www.debian.org) you could have typed:
> > > I just can't get used to BSD derivatives. I'm a sysV kinda guy.
> > Labeling Linux as a BSD derivative is ... *strange*. 
> No, I labeled Debian a BSD derivative, which it is. Red Hat and most others are
> sysV derivatives. Solaris is also a sysV derivative.

Beg pardon? Linux is not derived from BSD in any way. The kernel as well
as the userland are mostly written from scratch; the kernel by Torvalds
(et al.) and most of the userland tools by the GNU project. There are a
couple of tools (like cal, col or write) that come from BSD, and the
printing system is a BSD, not a SystemV printing system, but this is in
my opinion not enough to label it as a BSD. And, for your information,
there is virtually no difference in the basic tools between the
different Linux distributions. As regards most of the system calls,
Linux is, as I said, a bastard between BSD and SVR4.

Solaris, by the way, is also not *derived* from SVR4 -- it *is* *a*
SVR4. SVR4 is not a software product from which you can "derive"
something -- it is a specification that is implemented by many different
vendors. All major commercial Unices are SVR4 systems, and many
implement the standards that extended SVR4, like POSIX, XPG4, SUS and
SUSv2 (not too sure about the chronological order.)

If you label Linux as a BSD derivative, and if you make a difference
between the distributions in this regard, you have a somewhat strange
notion of what a BSD derivative is. Perhaps you'd care to explain what
you think constitutes the difference between SVR4 and BSD?

-- 
Yours, Sebastian Kirsch <skirsch at moebius.inka.de>

Real programmers don't document. Documentation is for simps who can't
read the listings or the object deck.