From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Dec 3 9: 8:16 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from epistolic.cynic.net (epistolic.cynic.net [199.175.137.136]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5F9E61504A for ; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 09:08:03 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from cjs@cynic.net) Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by epistolic.cynic.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with SMTP id JAA10535; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 09:05:52 -0800 (PST) Date: Fri, 3 Dec 1999 12:05:51 -0500 (EST) From: Curt Sampson To: Dave Barr Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, misc@openbsd.org, netbsd-users@netbsd.org Subject: Re: Why so many BSDs? In-Reply-To: <38454D5E.8E166B93@visi.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Wed, 1 Dec 1999, Dave Barr wrote: > 3. Given the same criteria that Theo no doubt uses to get > the 240 or 260 number, one cannot say that there is only > 3 versions of BSD. You'd have to get a number in the > 60-100 range. (add all the *BSD flavors, multiply all the > branches they have, multiply all the architectures they > support.... That's a bit much. NetBSD running on, say, a VAX, sparc and i386 are all compiled from the same source, excepting the MD kernel parts and perhaps the odd utility here and there, and produced and released by the same people. Without using uname or compiling non-portable code, it's very difficult even to tell which one you're using. This is even sillier than saying that Red Hat from Red Hat and Red Hat from cheapbytes are different distributions. (At least the latter two differ in *some* way, if only the extra software that comes with it.) While I agree with you that one can go too far with counting different distributions, this is a ludicrous example. Christian Gruber makes a really good point about the sort of stability and predictability you want in a commercial environment. Having now worked with Linux in production applications, I've got to say that the number of distributions out there is a real problem; it's very hard to know what you're getting, especially in terms of libraries and kernel versions (or at least I find it so, after the quite stable single-source-tree build system of BSDs). If I were deploying Linux in an Enterprise on a wide basis, I'd seriously consider rolling my own distribution. I've found the bugs in what's out there pretty frustrating (RH 6.1 makes NetBSD 1.4.0 look like a fantastic release), and upgrading bits here and there on hundreds of machines would be quite a nightmare. It wouldn't be cheap to do, but then again, your basic Red Hat support contract is $45K/year. cjs -- Curt Sampson 917 532 4208 De gustibus, aut bene aut nihil. The most widely ported operating system in the world: http://www.netbsd.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message