From owner-freebsd-advocacy Wed Apr 26 22: 6:40 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in (theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in [144.16.71.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id A9B4837BDD1 for ; Wed, 26 Apr 2000 22:06:17 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from rsidd@theory3.physics.iisc.ernet.in) Received: (qmail 3416 invoked from network); 27 Apr 2000 05:05:46 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO theory3.physics.iisc.ernet.in) (qmailr@144.16.71.158) by theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in with SMTP; 27 Apr 2000 05:05:46 -0000 Received: (qmail 3522 invoked by uid 211); 27 Apr 2000 05:05:34 -0000 Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 10:35:34 +0530 From: Rahul Siddharthan To: Greg Lehey Cc: FreeBSD advocacy list , netbsd-advocacy@NetBSD.ORG, OpenBSD-advocacy@OpenBSD.org Subject: Re: Document: What's the difference between Linux and BSD? Message-ID: <20000427103533.B3473@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Mail-Followup-To: Greg Lehey , FreeBSD advocacy list , netbsd-advocacy@NetBSD.ORG, OpenBSD-advocacy@OpenBSD.org References: <20000427131738.G55780@freebie.lemis.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0.1i In-Reply-To: <20000427131738.G55780@freebie.lemis.com>; from grog@lemis.com on Thu, Apr 27, 2000 at 01:17:38PM +0930 X-Operating-System: Linux 2.0.36 i686 X-Question: Do you enjoy reading pointless headers? Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Greg Lehey said on Apr 27, 2000 at 13:17:38: > I'm writing a "white paper" to describe BSD to people who know Linux. > You can find it at http://www.lemis.com/bsdpaper.html. > > I'd like feedback on the following aspects: > > 1. Have I forgotten something? > 2. Is it accurate? > 3. Is it fair? Section "Why isn't BSD better known?" product contained AT&T copyrighted code. The case was settled out of court in 1994, but the spectre of the legislation continues to ^^^^^^^^^^^ haunt people. As recently as March 2000 an article published on Should be "litigation", I imagine. Some additions on "why use BSD instead of linux": * Linux users who're buggered by the difficulty of cleanly upgrading their system (a major kernel upgrade or C library upgrade may require upgrades to 10 or 20 other components, and may in addition break some packages) may like the ease of BSD's "cvs/cvsup / make world" way of upgrading, and the greater continuity in major upgrades (eg FreeBSD 3.x -> 4.x was I believe a fairly smooth change, though I haven't done it yet, but glibc 2.0 -> 2.1 on linux breaks a lot of stuff, and libc5 -> glibc 2.0 broke even more). * FreeBSD's ports collection is also a major plus point, though I've heard that Debian's pkg system is comparably good and there are now some tools for auto-tracking RPM dependencies too. * FreeBSD's binary compatibility with linux. I can run linux-Netscape 6 and the Mozilla linux builds on FreeBSD, and they work fine, but I can't run them on our linux machines because I haven't worked up the courage to upgrade to glibc 2.1 yet. * OpenBSD's reputation for security, for security-critical situations or for the paranoid. On the whole, a very nice article which boosts the BSD's without FUDding linux or sounding patronising towards it the way so many BSD users like to. Rahul. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message