From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Mar 14 09:32:24 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id JAA20530 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 14 Mar 1996 09:32:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id JAA20523 for ; Thu, 14 Mar 1996 09:32:20 -0800 (PST) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id KAA11243; Thu, 14 Mar 1996 10:28:37 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199603141728.KAA11243@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: FreeBSD vs Linux To: shovey@buffnet.net (steve hovey) Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 10:28:37 -0700 (MST) Cc: rpessin@digital-storm.com, questions@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: from "steve hovey" at Mar 14, 96 08:03:04 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > 1) First off, why would you suggest FreeBSD over Linux, or vice-versa? > > Does one have strengths over the other in any particular thing? Flame-bait. Won't answer this one. > > 2) How complete is FreeBSD's ability to emulate Linux (which would let > > me have the best of both worlds possibly)? Enough to run DOOM and, in the -current code, QUAKE. Also NetScape for Linux (with JAVA). > > 3) In the news groups someone talked about preferring FreeBSD over > > Linux because the former is an actual OS while the latter is just > > a kernel... could you explain this difference to me? (not sure of > > the difference between the two and the implications of such) > > I believe (but im no authority) that the people doing the kernal in > freebsd also do all the associated programs like ls, pwd, rmdir, etc etc > etc - whereas with linux just the kernal itself is linux, and all of the > other commands are written by a cast of thousands, or by the maker of a > 'package' like slakware or redhat. Its not a good argument to go either way. Actually, there's a good "referential integrity" argument to be made in terms of binary utilities matching kernels. Other than that, most vendors now subscribe to the FSS ("File System Standard") for utility location, /etc directory layout, etc.. They do not, however, have a common packaging system, so each Linux distribution varies widely in "feel" in some aspects. > > 4) Linux has ELF files (or something along those lines), yet from what > > I've read it seems FreeBSD does not. What is the significance of this? The -current code has ELF support, including ABI support for Linux ELF sufficient to run QUAKE. There are certain issues with LGPL (not GPL) and dynamic linking that are resolved by ELF shared libraries. Segment identification in ELF also permits some elegant technical soloutions to some problems in the kernel (no one has really applied it there, and they don't differ significantly from the same soloutions provided by COFF). Use of ELF segments in the initial ANSI C standard could have saved us prototypes (by including attribution of arguments and return values in with the symbol information and use of smart linker technology) if it had been done correctly. Smart linkers would have also had the side effects of getting rid of the "near" and "far" distinctions on Intel compilers, and automatic support for ELF objects as ANDF objects (the holy grail of binary distribution technology for UNIX and UNIX-clone systems). Oh well. Water under the Microsoft C compiler writer's seats on the X3J11 committee. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.