From owner-freebsd-chat  Thu May 23 08:53:11 1996
Return-Path: owner-chat
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id IAA22222
          for chat-outgoing; Thu, 23 May 1996 08:53:11 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from diablo.ppp.de (diablo.ppp.de [193.141.101.34])
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id IAA22199;
          Thu, 23 May 1996 08:53:03 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from allegro.lemis.de by diablo.ppp.de with smtp
	(Smail3.1.28.1 #1) id m0uMch2-000QYYC; Thu, 23 May 96 17:52 MET DST
From: grog@lemis.de (Greg Lehey)
Organisation: LEMIS, Schellnhausen 2, 36325 Feldatal, Germany
Phone: +49-6637-919123
Fax:   +49-6637-919122
Received: (grog@localhost) by allegro.lemis.de (8.6.9/8.6.9) 
	id RAA15290; Thu, 23 May 1996 17:50:13 +0200
Message-Id: <199605231550.RAA15290@allegro.lemis.de>
Subject: Re: BSD vs Linux
To: gpalmer@FreeBSD.ORG (Gary Palmer)
Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 17:50:13 +0200 (MET DST)
Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG (FreeBSD Questions), chat@FreeBSD.ORG (FreeBSD Chat)
In-Reply-To: <13010.832824744@palmer.demon.co.uk> from "Gary Palmer" at May 23, 96 05:12:24 am
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Sender: owner-chat@FreeBSD.ORG
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

Gary Palmer writes:
>
> Alain FAUCONNET wrote in message ID
> <199605221138.AA17317@iaka.biomath.jussieu.fr>:
>> * Availability of pre-compiled binaries and ports for non-commercial software:
>> 			Linux +10, FreeBSD 0
>
> One comment about this.
>
> Linux is schitzophrenic (or however you spell it). It has a mixture of
> Sys V and BSD in it, and that sometimes leads to porting
> problems. Perhaps there are so many pre-compiled `.tgz' files for
> linux as it's more difficult to port s/w to linux than to a BSD
> derrivative? Quite a few of the ports that I've seen done (and are in
> the ports collection) don't even need patching, they compile out of
> the box, and without needing special ``FreeBSD'' ifdefs in the
> Makefiles or source code...

To be fair to Linux, I don't think that it's that difficult to port
to.  A lot of pure System V systems (*with* heritage :-) are worse.
May I say names? UnixWare? SCO "UNIX"?

I think the real reason why it's easier to port to *BSD (yes, I agree
with this part) is that most of the free software out on the net was
written on BSD boxes.  This, I suppose, reflects that fact that BSD
has been around a lot longer than Linux, and also that people have
traditionally had more fun with BSD than they have with System V.

> It helps to have a heritage...

It helps to have a good heritage.
Greg