Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 22:22:40 +0200 (MET DST) From: Sascha Schumann <sas@schell.de> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD or LINUX??? - Which one should I choose? Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.00.9807242222280.1169-100000@guerilla.foo.bar>
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On Fri, 24 Jul 1998, Konrad Heuer wrote:
>
> On Thu, 23 Jul 1998 jan.brolund@sida.se wrote:
>
> > Hej, (to anybody who is kind enough to help me to choose between
> > FreeBSD and Linux!)
> > (...)
> > choice - please? Is there any significant difference between FreeBSD
> > and Linux or can I just flip a coin? Is it correct that FreeBSD is
> > more stable - because new FreeBSD releases/upgrades are tested more
> > intensively - than Linux, or is that just hearsay?
>
That must be "hearsay", all Linux changes are tested by hundreds (maybe
thousands) people on the whole earth before they make it into the stable
kernel (actually 2.0.35). So, if you use the stable kernel, you will
always have a completely stable os.
> * Of course there are minor differences wich can be important depending on
> what you want to do, e.g.:
> - more commercial software for Linux
> - greater popularity of Linux
> - file size is still limited to 2 GB with Linux ext2fs
Since version 0.5a of ext2fs it supports 2GB+
> - Linux scheduling algorithm is poor on high system load
> (THUS - to run an internet server I'd prefer FreeBSD!)
Which of the scheduling algorithms do you mean? There are actually three I
remember now (rr, fifo, other). And there is Linux-rt (realtime support).
Does FreeBSD have this?
And dont't forget: Linux supports SMP hardware since somewhere in 1.3.x
days. FreeBSD does not. I read sth that FreeBSD 3.0 might support it...
> * The Linux development model is more liberal, the more restrictive
> FreeBSD model guarantees uniform source code and better stability.
Don't think so. Linux development is discussed by many people on the
linux-kernel list, but the actual decisions are done by a few ones. All
patches to the official kernel go through Linus' hands - he accepts or
rejects.
Please read ESRs famous paper "Homesteading the Noosphere" - the Linux
kernel development is done in a very similiar to the way described in the
paper for free software development.
Like many other people I don't have any problems with the development
kernels.
> * Strictly spoken, Linux is just the kernel. The rest of the operating
> system is added by the distributors like S.u.S.E., RedHat, Debian,
> Slackware. FreeBSD is kernel plus UNIX utilities. man pages, config
> files and so on.
I installed FreeBSD some days ago on one of my machines and I found it
first a little bit confusing... I searched for the /usr/src/sys tree a
little bit too long ;)
BTW, is there some "nicer" interface for configuring the kernel? While
compiling the kernel first, I got some undefined references to
__isa_devtab_cam which were solved with hacking around a little bit
(#define _ISA_DEVTAB_CAM_NOT_EXTERN)
> * FreeBSD evolved from the BSD branch of UNIX and thus is a UNIX
> derivative. Linux started from Tanenbaum's Minix and is a
> reimplementation of the UNIX interface.
Linux DID NOT start from Minix. Linux was complety written from scratch.
You should read the comp.os.minix newsgroup archiv where Tanenbaum and
Linus started their first argument...
Bye,
Sascha
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