Date: Sat, 22 Mar 1997 15:35:26 -0600 (CST) From: "Jay D. Nelson" <jdn@qiv.com> To: Jeff Roberts <jroberts@ashland.edu> Cc: Bob Dole <fbaseball@hotmail.com>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why FreeBSD? Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.3.95.970322135334.437A-100000@acp.qiv.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.OS2.3.95.970321230112.25B-100000@warp4>
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Any response to a question like this is bound to upset someone. I'll answer with the caveat that this is my opinion that developed over the past three years following them both as well as other commercial OSs. Those of you offended in any way by this, please cat flames > /dev/null. That said -- the differences between FreeBSD and Linux can best be understood in the context of American politics. There are essentially two philosophies: Republican (FreeBSD) and Democrat (Linux). The FreeBSD organization is a republican structure -- we have our say as users, but the final decisions devolve to the core team who take the final responsibility for their decisions. FreeBSD takes a conservative approach. In other words, better things should work correctly at the expense of a minorities desires, than to please all of the people all of the time and have unexpected components of the OS breaking on a regular basis. We are free to vote our approval or disapproval by changing our OS. Linux is a democratic group. There is no single authority to accept final responsibility except for Linus as it relates to the kernel. Linux adopted early on a consensus approach (POSIX, etc.). In a sense, Linux is much like current Democratic politics -- the mob pretty much rules. The end result is that there is really no such thing as Linux -- there are distributions that use the Linux kernel and from then on you have essentially different operating systems. Slackware, for example, doesn't look at all like Red Hat. Describing Linux is much like describing Mach. (There isn't much - both are just micro kernels. _Anything_ can be implemented over them.) So as I see it, it comes down to this: vote for the philosophy that appeals to you. I use FreeBSD because I rely on my machine for many other uses besides tinkering with operating systems. FreeBSD doesn't change the world on me every 6 months. Linux is in constant change. New things are showing up all the time. If you like tinkering with operating systems and having things that used to work break, Linux may be your answer. If you don't know Unix -- pick one and get started. You'll learn how to pick the best choice. No matter which one you pick, it will be infinitely better that Micros**t anything. Enjoy. -- Jay On Fri, 21 Mar 1997, Jeff Roberts wrote: ->On Fri, 21 Mar 1997, Bob Dole wrote: -> ->> Hi, I plan on changing to UNIX and I wonder wether I should take Linux or ->> FreeBSD... ->> Both seem to be an excellent choice, so you can't say one is better than ->> the other. But in what are they different, in what is each specialized? -> ->Will whomever replies to Mr. Dole be sure the list gets a copy? I'd like ->to hear some views on this as well! -> ->Thanks, =) -> ->Jeff -> ->___________________________________________________________________ -> -> Jeff Roberts jroberts@!ashland.edu strider@!acm.org ->___________________________________________________________________ -> ->
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