Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 08:47:23 +0300 From: kallio@jyu.fi (Seppo Kallio) To: "Larry Dolinar" <LARRYD@bldg1.croute.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why freeBSD instead of Linux? Message-ID: <v01530516ac6067697214@[130.234.41.39]>
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At 14:17 22/8/95, Larry Dolinar wrote: >| ** Sorry, I am repeating myself. I understand the nature of FreeBSD, it is >| based on free work. BUT I cannot understand how the first answear to my >| complaints about fdisk+disklabel+newfs complexity was "it is trivial, it >| can be done in 1-2 minutes"! OR I CAN understand it. People who work with >| computers a long time loose the feel what is simple and what is not. > >I would not dispute it. But try to keep something in perspective (at >least in my opinion): Unix in all its various forms is not a trivial OS, >nor is it for novices. To me, you must go in with something of an open >mind. Setting up a disk subsystem is central to its operation, and how you >finetune it can have quite an impact on performance. I question whether >something as simple as size in megabytes is the end-all to the problem. Maybe I am not expert on this but: Tell me how you can improve performance of disk using fdisk ;-) ? Actually you can only move the partition on disk. That is change the order of DOS/FreeBSD/other partitions. More fine tuning you do using disklabel and newfs: changing swap location and block sizes. >... Or are you just >impatient to get the thing running so you can start net-surfing with >something other than MS-Windows-based applications? I have some Linux and FreeBSD (1+2) systems to manage, I do WWW co-ordination, help users build Gopher database and WWW pages, help Macintosh users, keep Mac Net up, help Unix users, help VMS users, try to manage our workgroup (Unix, VMS, LAN). Yes I am impatient, I have very limited time for example to add one disk to some system. When I encounter a software not helping me at all, but giving me wrong info, succesting impossible parameter values, pushing me to use calculator, read manuals and find disk parameters ... I am getting very angry and dissapointed. I am starting to ask why is this program so stupid --- specially if I have seen a lot of better for same job. It does not calm me down when people reply "it is trivial" when I know it is not trivial. >Some of the limitations certainly stem from making Intel-based hardware do >something it wasn't originally designed to do. What if the original "Intel-based" tools are better, as here DOS fdisk? >Your comments seem to suggest that it (FreeBSD) should practically set up >itself. I am sure we hope it all !! ;-) And it does it partially: it has probes on boot etc. (and Linux does it even better, sorry). I have seen systems where you compile the kernel every time after you change the hardware. And Ii can imagine in my wild imagination that when I add one more disk to the FreeBSD system it could ask me these questions: You have one unformated disk on SCSI port 4, do you like to set it up? (y/n) Y Use disk entirely for FreeBSD? (y/n) Y Will you store many small files to the disk or big files? (s/b) B I succest block size 4096 (4096) ? Running fdisk... Running disklabel... Running newfs -u 4096 /dev/sd4a Ready. > Moreover, you seem to have already convinced yourself that the >effort is futile, and that Linux is superior. Linux fdisk is better, probes better. But I like FreeBSD more. And I liked to see it getting more users. But if FreeBSD tools make Linux users laugh ... >Good enough, perhaps your >question is answered. I too have spent many years dealing in different >OS's, but I find it counter-productive to drag preconceived ideas from one >arena of thought to another. I do not. All software develepment have one clear common goal: ease of use. Seppo -- +-- Seppo Kallio ----- kallio@jyu.fi ---+ ! Computing Center ! Fax +358-41-603611 Phone +358-41-603606 ! ! University of Jyvaskyla ! http://www.jyu.fi/~kallio ! +-- Finland --+-- 62.14N 25.44E -- +
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