Date: Wed, 26 Nov 1997 01:23:36 -0500 (EST) From: spork <spork@super-g.com> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> Cc: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>, francisco@federation.addy.com, FreeBSd Chat list <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Help me reply to Infoworld correspondent: what is diff between BSDI and FreeBSD? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.971126010923.18951A-100000@super-g.inch.com> In-Reply-To: <19971126144705.64183@lemis.com>
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There was also a rather insulting article in LanTimes about a month ago. The people did just not have a clue. It was an "introduction" about how one could stick a dirty little Unix box in the corner to grab mail and do "intranet" tasks in your NT shop. Most of it focused on Linux, and they repeatedly made the mistake of calling BSDi "BSD". The average person would be left with the impression that the only "free" unix was linux, and one had to pay BSDi for FBSD source code. Here's the URL: http://www.lantimes.com/97/97oct/710b061a.html I'll be sending a pleasant yet informative letter. Actually, I'm reading it again, and this quote from a UUNet employee describing async disc mounts made me chuckle: "UUNET also has 190 BSDI-based ftp (File Transfer Protocol) sites and 19 news-feeding sites running BSDI. A kernel modification has boosted BSDI's performance as a newsfeed server; the system supports a flag that turns off an automatic update feature that otherwise would kick in whenever data is written to disk. "This kernel modification saves disk I/O and increases the performance of our news feeds," says Lidl. Charles Sprickman spork@super-g.com ---- "I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man Just a mortal with potential of a superman I'm living on" -DB On Wed, 26 Nov 1997, Greg Lehey wrote: > On Wed, Nov 26, 1997 at 01:43:58PM +1030, Mike Smith wrote: > >> In this week's Infoworld there is a review on Red Hat Linux. I wrote > >> to the author (Eric Hammond) telling him about FreeBSD. He mentioned > >> He recently did a review in which he included BSDI and also said > >> there is another review in which BSDI will be included. > >> > >> I am familiar with FreeBSD Vs Linux discussions (and even a bit about > >> Open BSD, Net BSD), but never really have seen much about BSDI. > >> > >> One of the things he wrote was: > >> "I'm assuming that Internet Server is the commercial version of > >> FreeBSD. > >> Correct me if I'm wrong." > >> By internet Server he is referring to BSDI. > >> > >> How different are these products (BSDI and FreeBSD)? > > > > In many regards, enormously. > > > >> I can prepare some little promo to send to him telling him about > >> FreeBSD, but I want to answer his comment about BSDI vs FreeBSD. > > > > (much good stuff about the difference between free and commercial > > omitted) > > Agreed, but that's not the point Francisco (or Eric) was making. > What's the technical difference? > > This is probably flame bait, but I'd say "not much". Recall that as a > normal user (not buyer), you're interested neither in the way the > software is devloped and distributed, nor in implementation details. > And BSD/OS is close enough in feel to FreeBSD that I've mistaken one > for the other on my own network from time to time. > > Still, it's oversimplifying things to say that BSD/OS is a commercial > version of FreeBSD. Those days are, indeed, past. IMO the days are > also past when BSD/OS was obviously better than FreeBSD. > > Greg >
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