From owner-freebsd-advocacy Mon Mar 1 11:10:29 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from xylan.com (postal.xylan.com [208.8.0.248]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 405F715399 for ; Mon, 1 Mar 1999 11:10:27 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from wes@softweyr.com) Received: from mailhub.xylan.com by xylan.com (8.8.7/SMI-SVR4 (xylan-mgw 2.2 [OUT])) id LAA11705; Mon, 1 Mar 1999 11:09:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from utah.XYLAN.COM by mailhub.xylan.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4 (mailhub 2.1 [HUB])) id LAA05661; Mon, 1 Mar 1999 11:08:46 -0800 Received: from softweyr.com by utah.XYLAN.COM (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4 (xylan utah [SPOOL])) id MAA16379; Mon, 1 Mar 1999 12:08:38 -0700 Message-ID: <36DAE5C3.C1B6182B@softweyr.com> Date: Mon, 01 Mar 1999 12:08:51 -0700 From: Wes Peters Organization: Softweyr LLC X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (X11; U; FreeBSD 2.2.7-RELEASE i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Don Wilde Cc: "Robert A. Bruce" , freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The Linux PR firestorm disaster (w.r.t. FreeBSD) References: <199903010058.QAA24952@pike.cdrom.com> <36DAD10C.58F4A985@thuntek.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Don Wilde wrote: > > Robert A. Bruce wrote: > > > > If I was trying to come up with the opposite list (areas where Linux > > beats FreeBSD) the job would be much easier: > > > > 1. Linux runs on way more platforms (sparc, powerpc, mips,... heck it > > even runs on a PalmPilot). > > FreeBSD is optimized for the x86 architecture of commodity PC's. Our > best developers do not splinter their time in supporting many > architectures, some of which are unsuited to run multitasking OSen. If > you want alternatives for Macs, visit our friends at NetBSD. In many ways, the different BSD projects are more alike than the different Linux "distributions." This point can be emphasized without downplaying the role of FreeBSD, or any other BSD. > > 2. Linux has better support for realtime operations. > > > Meaningless. When you impose deterministic operation on a UNIX-like OS, > it no longer is a UNIX-like OS. PicoBSd can be deterministic, too. And Linux really doesn't have any support for realtime operations. RT-Linux, which does, consists of a realtime kernel with Linux running as a task; normal Linux programs have NO access to the realtime aspects and realtime programs have limited access to the Linux environment. RTMX, based on OpenBSD, is a similar implementation of realtime support in a UNIX-like environment. > > 3. Linux supports more perephrials (USB, etc.) > > > There aren't many USB peripherals out. All I've seen are hubs built into > monitors. We still have time on this. > > > 4. Linux has real multiprocessor threads > > See above. Threads are dangerous on anything other than a dedicated or > toy machine. No multiuser OS should allow kernel threads. In some applications, the user-level threads support on FreeBSD may be faster, as you don't have change kernel context to change thread context. There are pros and cons to both, and both are viable approaches to multi-threaded applications. Neither make a bit of difference for the vast majority of software available for FreeBSD and Linux, which are not implicitly threaded. > > 5. Linux has a lot more native commercial applications. > > > If FreeBSD runs them, and runs them faster, who cares? We do need to > document these, though. Never mind faster, just runs them acceptably fast. And yes, we do need to document these. -- Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket? Wes Peters +1.801.915.2061 Softweyr LLC wes@softweyr.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message