Date: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 23:16:45 -0800 From: Josef Grosch <jgrosch@ontario.mooseriver.com> To: "Robert A. Bruce" <rab@pike.cdrom.com> Cc: Dave Yost <Dave@Yost.com>, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The Linux PR firestorm disaster (w.r.t. FreeBSD) Message-ID: <19990228231645.A73172@ontario.mooseriver.com> In-Reply-To: <199903010058.QAA24952@pike.cdrom.com>; from Robert A. Bruce on Sun, Feb 28, 1999 at 04:58:42PM -0800 References: <v04104408b2fc8ab8acfc@[205.219.69.138]> <199903010058.QAA24952@pike.cdrom.com>
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On Sun, Feb 28, 1999 at 04:58:42PM -0800, Robert A. Bruce wrote: > Dave Yost <Dave@Yost.com> said... > >First order of business, I think is that http://www.freebsd.org/ must have a > >prominent main heading: > > FreeBSD vs. linux and others > >which leads to some simple, forthright information suitable for nontechnical > >journalists and TV news people. It should also have a big, forbidding table > >with lots of X marks for stuff FreeBSD has that linux doesn't and as much > >technical backup material as possible. > > > What does FreeBSD have that Linux doesn't? I don't think that such > a table would be very "forbidding". > > Seriously, I am working on a chart to hand out at the FreeBSD booth > at LinuxWorld next week, and I am having a hard time coming up with > a list of things that FreeBSD does better than Linux. An example of FreeBSD beating Linux (and microsoft for that matter) is right in your backyard. On Oct 24, 1998 wcarchive.cdrom.com pushed 724 Gigabyte in a single 24 hour period. See http://www.bafug.org/NewRecord.html FreeBSD has a superior VM and network subsystem. I'll try and find the post that Matt Dillon sent to hackers several weeks ago. In this post he analyzed the Linux VM system and explained why FreeBSD is better. FreeBSD has a unified development model. The entire source code tree, from the kernel to the utility, is under the control of the FreeBSD developers. Linux is a kernel with distributions wrapped around it. The result of this is that Linux, the OS, is balkanized with each group jumping up and down saying, "we are the best!". Today Red Hat is the leader. Last year it was what? Debian ? Slackware? Caldera? Next year it's what? S.u.S.E. ? http://www.linux.org/dist/english.html list no less that 17 distributions. The result of this is that there are slight incompatible in the code base making it "interesting" moving code back and forth between the distributions. Another feature of the Linux development model is that with each new kernel one gets to play "OK, now what is broke" This is becoming less common but still a new kernel should not be braking anything. The softupdates file system is a huge leap forward in file system technology. Softupdates, developed on FreeBSD by Marshall Kirk McKusick, one of the giants of the Unix world, guarantees that a file system will never get trashed again. Another befit of this technology is that the speed of file system access is vastly increased. These are just a few points. If I think of any others I'll send email. -- Josef Grosch | Another day closer to a | FreeBSD 3.1 jgrosch@MooseRiver.com | Micro$oft free world | UNIX for the masses To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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