Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 14:17:23 +600 CDT From: "Larry Dolinar" <LARRYD@bldg1.croute.com> To: kallio@jyu.fi (Seppo Kallio) Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why freeBSD instead of Linux? Message-ID: <1F52D062452@bldg1.croute.com>
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Thus spake kallio@jyu.fi (Seppo Kallio) (Tue, 22 Aug 1995):
<stuff deleted>
| It seems that you all have used years BSD disklabel and fdisk. You see no
| problems in it's use. I have not used it years. To me all these
| cylinders, sectors, heads, blocks, geometry, are quite hard to understand
| and I am expecting that the programs help me how to define some simple
| partitions to the disk. Some days ago I wanted one 100MB swap and 3900MB
| filesystem.
|
| Even in DOS fdisk is in principle quite easy. You just tell what size of
| partitions you want. You do not have to define geometry, or calculate head,
| cyl, sector start and end points. Why is it so complicated in FreeBSD?
It was not always so with DOS, which remains a useful but limited OS. In
time, the disk tools for BSD will doubtless improve. It's always a
question of priorities, and adding disks to a system is not a common
activity, compared to what you really intend the system to do.
<more praises of Linux deleted>
| In Linux the "root" "usr" "swap" "dos" etc. partitons are all defined in
| one program -- well -- the structure of the disk is a little different.
Once you get off the boot disk in a multi-disk system it's safer not to
rely on assumptions. SunOS' format is not exactly for the faint of heart,
yet it encompasses labelling, partitioning, formatting, etc. in one
program. Nonetheless, you must know quite a bit of technical info to make
it succeed.
|
| FreeBSD fdisk does not know the geometry of the disk, you must define it by
| hand -- read disk manuals etc. if you are novice. Or you may use DOS fdisk
| to give to the FreeBSD fdisk some hints about the geometry.
<even more stuff deleted -- so much it's not even humorous>
| ** 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.
Do you have the time to delve into some background? Read Evi Nemeth's
chapter 12 in Unix System Administration Handbook, Prentice Hall
Publishers, ISBN 0-13-933441-6.
Perhaps you already know the material, but it's only 22 pages (including
tables, examples, and illustrations); it might prove more productive than
all these complaints about what the program doesn't do. Or are you just
impatient to get the thing running so you can start net-surfing with
something other than MS-Windows-based applications?
Some of the limitations certainly stem from making Intel-based hardware do
something it wasn't originally designed to do.
Your comments seem to suggest that it (FreeBSD) should practically set up
itself. Moreover, you seem to have already convinced yourself that the
effort is futile, and that Linux is superior. 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.
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