From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Nov 19 23:39:55 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from obscurity.org (obscurity.org [209.17.177.240]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id AD6A814DCB for ; Fri, 19 Nov 1999 23:39:51 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from cengland@obscurity.org) Received: (qmail 4772 invoked by uid 1003); 20 Nov 1999 07:51:23 -0000 Received: from localhost (sendmail-bs@127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 20 Nov 1999 07:51:23 -0000 Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1999 23:51:23 -0800 (PST) From: Chris England To: Jonathon McKitrick Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: General thoughts and questions on FreeBSD In-Reply-To: <3835DD2A.5E9751AE@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> 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 I don't want to start a religious war here, but there is a few comments I cannot resist to poke in. On Fri, 19 Nov 1999, Jonathon McKitrick wrote: > A 'hacker' friend of mine who is quite a Unix guru and who loves Linux > gave FreeBSD a try recently. These were his comments: > > I *really* dislike the kernel configuration -- enabling/disabling > features causes the compile to crap out in different areas, so In other words, he likes a user-friendly kernel configuration such as the 'make menuconfig' feature of linux - so much for being hackerish. > doing anything fancy becomes a time-intensive trial-and-error > job. Awful. And inflexible too; I was not able to select a Trial and error is guessing, guessing is a sign of not knowing what an individual is doing. > > I like linux better even thouhg the bsd daemon is cooler ;) Linux > seems more flexible and seems to be a general unix with > enhancements --like vim is to vi-- Yes, we all love Chucky more than that silly penguin thing :-) > Any thoughts on his kernel issues? Those seem to be the only ones that > are major issues here. Is FreeBSD 'quirky' ? And what > advantages/disadvantages does FreeBSD kernel configuration have compared > to Linux ? > Your friend would have to define examples of 'quirkyness'. I've been using FreeBSD for a good 3 years, and Linux for 4 years or so. I've pulled out a lot more hair with Linux instabilities and itty bitty problems. I've never had a problem with FreeBSD until just recently after upgrading to 3.3-STABLE - it has locked up twice for no particular reason. Although FreeBSD always seemed a bit more hardware picky. For example, Linux seems to give you a little more slack if you have some faulty hardware (or a Cyrix processor for that matter) As far as the advantages and disadvantages of the kernel configuration, I am assuming you mean the features which can be enabled rather than the actual configuration format itself. One could go on and on forever about that. Your best option is to take a look at /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/LINT file, and compare it to the configuration options of Linux. Hope this will make good arguing with your friend, Cheers, -Chris England To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message