Date: Thu, 09 Oct 1997 21:37:42 -0500 From: dkelly@hiwaay.net To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Linux vs freeBSD Message-ID: <199710100237.VAA15873@nospam.hiwaay.net> In-Reply-To: Message from Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> of "Fri, 10 Oct 1997 10:29:23 %2B0930." <19971010102923.54565@lemis.com>
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> > Drivers: Drivers are available for most standard hardware, right? > > OK. How about: > > As a result of the smaller user base, FreeBSD is less likely to have > drivers for brand-new boards than Linux. Do we have any examples laying around of FreeBSD wanting for drivers that exist in Linux? Or are we simply repeating what's always been said? An example would be ATAPI CDROM's and FreeBSD. In the past FreeBSD's ATAPI support was slack. The reason I gathered was that nobody who was capable of the task wanted to do it. Today, I don't know what the status is of the wd driver. But I'd guess that its not being carressed into DMA, UltraDMA, mode 4.... the way a Linux driver would be. As with ATAPI, its just not as interesting to FreeBSD developers as SCSI. Speaking of interesting, tape handling has become a hot topic at work. Am having fun reading Seagate's DAT SCSI manual. Meanwhile have ported FreeBSD's tcopy to SGI. Time to start some enhancements. I'd like to see FreeBSD's mt reply more like SGI's. And I may do it soon. In the driver discussion, some mention of the sharing of drivers between FreeBSD and Linux is needed. > > Software installation: Some people have found that installing software > > on Linux is far more of a hassle than it is on FreeBSD, because of the > > variety of versions of software that may be included on any particular > > distribution of Linux. This may be one of FreeBSD's greatest and growing > > strengths--that the version of the software on which port A is dependent > > is there....basically installing software from ports or packages is > > really pretty easy with FreeBSD. > > That's a good one. How about: > > As a result of the centralized develop- The ease of installation of Linux de- > ment style, FreeBSD is straightforward pends on the ``distribution''. If you > and easy to install. switch from one distribution of Linux to > another, you'll have to learn a new set > of installation tools. [snip] > > Also the kind a variety of support--the nature of the community-- > > involved in Linux vs. FreeBSD is different.... > > I suppose that's true, but it's difficult to quantify from my > perspective. Do you have any suggestions? Thought this and that above the [snip] were related. I subscribe to some lists which are dominated by Linux users. Linux distributions are quite different from each other. Have noticed vendors such as Netscape specify exactly which Linux distribution and kernel their product is compatible with. Authors of software distributed in source have to deal with users who can't compile on XXXX's distribution because... you name it. Location and version of ncurses comes to mind. Yeah, I know, there is supposed to be a Linux File System standard specifying where these files are to be put. I don't think its too far fetched to observere that its almost as difficult to step between Linux's as between any other Unix. I can't pinpoint it, but I was doing a lot of SGI Irix when I was attempting to do useful things with Linux in 1994. Then in 1995 I switched to FreeBSD and was much more comfortable. The difference in init bugged me for a little while but I flit between Irix and FreeBSD without blinking. Now I've got to deal with Solaris 2.5.1 and I'm back in a quagmire where nothing is where I expect it. -- David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@hiwaay.net ===================================================================== The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system.
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