Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 15:00:08 -0400 (EDT) From: Thomas Good <tomg@mailhost.nrnet.org> To: David Johnson <djohnson@acuson.com> Cc: outlawtx@bga.com, freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Some food for thought...(aka rant of the day) Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1000530142652.14686A-100000@mailhost.nrnet.org> In-Reply-To: <3933F945.B4D1C23F@acuson.com>
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On Tue, 30 May 2000, David Johnson wrote:
> When you've learned Redhat, you've learned Redhat, but know nothing
> about administering SuSE or Debian. But when you've learned FreeBSD,
Ahh. Interesting viewpoint David. Hasn't been my experience though.
In my experience:
Basically the *only* difference between Linux distributions is system
initialisation. RedHat is very System V. So if you know UnixWare or
Solaris, RH is not *that* far off. Slackware is very BSD, in fact the
development teams know one another and share ideas. After all, Walnut
Creek is both their homes. SuSe and Debian are somewhere in the middle.
RedHat (and Caldera) use the rpm (RedHat Package Manager) system for
installing *binaries*. The others stick to standard unix (that is
tape archives or tarballs --- .tar or .tgz ;-)
Even then, you don't have to use rpm on RedHat and Slackware has
an rpm2tgz binary...
Linux similarities are everywhere. And why shouldn't they be?
The kernel and the apps are all the same. The linux kernel is not
distribution specific. The apps are written for the most part by
GNU. Kind of like FBSD.
As someone who runs Slackware, RedHat and FBSD, I can tell you that
unix is unix. How you start it and where you put things is really
the only difference. (Of course the FBSD filesystem is a winner and
Linux has some work to do in this area.)
I run sendmail, taylor uucp, ppp, postgres databases, perl and python,
apache, on and on. Guess what? They are the same on Linux, BSD, Solaris
and UnixWare. They better be - it's the same src code.
> It's funny that the same advocates who acuse the BSD folks of
> oligarchical development are the same ones who acuse other distributions
> of being too complex, or too windowish, or too lax on security, etc.
And the FreeBSD guys who worry more about why their OS is better than
some other unix are usually newbies. This wears off with time - and
experience. Why? People who love unix to the point they run a variety
of flavours usually are less concerned with rhetoric and more preoccupied
with writing code...besides they know the obvious truth: no one
implementation has it *all*, each has selling points.
If I had enough money to own a Triumph Bonneville, a BMW R100 and
a Norton Commando 850 I doubt I'd spend alot of time worrying about
which bike was 'superior'.
RE: the issue of docs...I find this to be a chimerical argument.
The docs exist, I know, I've read most of them. Man pages on FBSD
bear a marked similarity to other systems. As do Howtos and handbooks.
I think FBSDers who go on about this reflect a rookie's enthusiasm
more than a reality.
My .02 cents.
Cheers,
Tom
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