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Date:      Fri, 25 Jun 1999 14:56:19 -0700
From:      Kent Stewart <kstewart@3-cities.com>
To:        Source Code <usmc_rules@hotmail.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: 
Message-ID:  <3773FB03.AF3B7310@3-cities.com>
References:  <19990625203445.73559.qmail@hotmail.com>

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> Source Code wrote:
> 
> I'm just curious what is the difference between FreeBSD and all the
> other Linux and Unix operating systems out there?  I was just curious
> I just ordered FreeBSD 3.2 or 3.1 one or the other.  Well thank you
> for your time.

The main difference is the ancestry. Historically we had two versions of
Unix. AT&T did things one way and BSD did things slightly differently.
Then features started being merged. It was very similar to comparing a
AMD-K-2 to a P-II Pentium. They execute the same commands but core code
is unique to both. FreeBSD is based on BSD 4.4 lite, which gives it a
BSD flavor of Unix. My last big iron was a Cray XM/P with UniCOS, which
is Cray's version of Unix. Cray is now a division of SGI. It was mostly
based on AT&T Unix with BSD enhancements. I was also using some HP-7xx
computers running HP-UX 10.x, which I think was a similar combo to
UniCOS. In the environment I was working in, HP-UX usually required so
many patches that we thought Packard should have insisted his name come
first. Once you had the system patched, it ran flawlessly for days.  I
can't say months because it was an industrial environment and a power
outage occurred too often. UniCOS didn't have some of the same features
because it was designed to do calculations very quickly. Character
manipulations were bad on the Cray because you had 8 bytes in a 64-bit
word. Memory was all word oriented. Moving one of the bytes around
required significant time. A slower HP did byte manipulations twice as
fast. Editing on the HP was faster and had less impact on the system
than the same editor did on the Cray. The Cray had the same uptime as
the HP's did. Linux has it's own development path. It stands for Linux
Is Not UniX but they have most if not all Unix commands implemented.
There are always subtle changes in how something works. When you
identify a subtlety, you can tell the primary ancestor.

Every system I have ever used has a number of walk_on_water features and
a couple of brain_dead ones. I think the 1024 cylinder rule on a FreeBSD
boot is a brain_dead feature. Stability under stress is one of it's
walk_on_water features. The control of the source code being included in
the system is another plus for FreeBSD. With Linux you have all of these
different versions. It is like the human reciting the Drak's 800+
generation heritage in Enemy Mine. In FreeBSD you have
x.x-release/stable and that is it. Stable is a sliding window that
everyone understands.

FreeBSD is supposed to be more stable under heavy stress than Linux but
if you aren't pressing either, you may never notice the difference. I
have a FreeBSD system that has been running at a 1.00 load for over 26
days. I don't have a Linux system to try that on at the same time. I
have two NT systems that have been processing 1/3 more data at the same
load for the same amount of time. The NT version of SetiAThome has a
pretty display, which I have turned off. I went from 35 hours per work
unit with the pretty display to an average under 10 hours with it turned
off. FreeBSD runs right around 15 cpu hours per WU. I did a buildworld
one time while it was running and only lost a couple of minutes in
processing time. The wall clock time was almost twice as long but that
was expected. The difference between systems seems to be PC66 memory
versus PC100 memory related. The NT systems have the PC100 memory but
are P-II 400's versus a Celeron 433 on FreeBSD. PC66 memory is 50%
slower than PC100 memory and that works out to 1/3 more data being
processed. People claim 10-15% in a normal environment but I'm seeing
the 50% because the data can't be cached. If I had a Xeon with 2MB of
cache, it would be a different story. Eventually, the Celeron will be
replaced with a P-II or P-III and PC100 memory and we will see what
happens.

I think there are more desktop features in Linux than there are in
FreeBSD. I don't need them. I probably wouldn't use them and so I don't
miss them. Things that work well under a window are typically down with
MS windows because that is where the market is producing products that I
want to use. I do have a version of WordPerfect 8 for Linux running on
FreeBSD. FreeBSD feels more like the systems I got used to Unix on and
that is why I run FreeBSD. I have a 3GB Western Digital HD sitting in a
box on a shelf that I could install into my system as my primary master
and I would be running Linux 5.2 with a downtime of less than 5 minutes.
I just don't have any desire to do that.

The diversity of systems lets you choose an appropriate system. You
don't choose one that requires a work around because the feature you
need is functional but mostly useless on your system of choice. If you
do, you made a really bad choice.

Kent

> 
> Danny

-- 
Kent Stewart
Richland, WA

mailto:kstewart@3-cities.com
http://www.3-cities.com/~kstewart/index.html


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