Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 12:19:23 -0500 (EST) From: Gunther Schadow <gunther@aurora.rg.iupui.edu> To: dap@damon.com, patrick@cre8tivegroup.com Cc: freebsd-java@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Sun Ports JDK to Linux Message-ID: <199811031719.MAA06700@aurora.rg.iupui.edu>
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> > Here's a note from JavaWorld: > > > > In addition, Sun on Monday announced it will port the forthcoming Java > > Development Kit (JDK) 1.2 to Linux, adding the free, open-source-code operating > > system to such platforms as Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX and Sun's Solaris 7 for > > optimized Java development and deployment. to which Damon Permezel said: > For this reason, and others, the next box I install is going to run > linux. Please remember that it is the policy of FreeBSD people to recommend to vendors to port their software to Linux first. FreeBSD can immediately use the stuff due to the flawless Linux binary compatibility. It's more important to have some support for free Unices than no support at all. So Linux is the first choice of many and FreeBSD does recommend it. Once the source code is available, or once the vendors became used to free Unices, we can have native ports for FreeBSD. But we should definitely not draw your conclusion from this: that everyone should consider using Linux instead. Thinking that way gives in to the same pattern of thinking that people must use Microsoft and Windows NT, because it's what everyone does. The world of Unix should be proud of the diversity and the compatibility that still exists! Everyone moaning about Unix incompatibilities should think whether there is any other OS platform that is any better compatible accross such a variety of vendors and machines. Unix is unique in compatibility. The variety is good. We should be very, very careful about our wishes for seamless binary compatibility. Remember viruses? This plague exists in the Windows world just *because* everything is so smoothly binary compatible. The Internet worm could spread on only two brands of machines and OSes and that's the same reason why viruses never became a real issue in the Unix world. So don't give up on FreeBSD. The power of FreeBSD is its tradition and the conservative development strategy (e.g., I am glad that I was never beaten over the head with ELF stuff: I can happily run six different machines with six different versions of FreeBSD.) I can trust my network code and I trust the security of FreeBSD. Conversely I have had lots of headache with porting source code to different Linux variants and I have seen very strange telnet behavior on Linux (one session being accidentially redirected to another terminal.) Sure that was several years back, but FreeBSD people didn't sleep during that time either. I am very comfortable with FreeBSD. Unfortunately I had to drop out the active FreeBSD support shortly before 386/BSD (patchkit) became FreeBSD. Because I know what it takes, I thank the development team of FreeBSD and all helpers for doing such a great job, and this is the reason why I stick to FreeBSD (solidarity -- one of the recently forgotten words). Reliability and continuity are the qualities of FreeBSD and the reason why I trust this OS more than any other. sorry, I should have directed this to >/tmp/advocacy never mind, -Gunther Gunther Schadow ----------------------------------- http://aurora.rg.iupui.edu Regenstrief Institute for Health Care 1001 W 10th Street RG5, Indianapolis IN 46202, Phone: (317) 630 7960 schadow@aurora.rg.iupui.edu ---------------------- #include <usual/disclaimer> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-java" in the body of the message
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