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Date:      13 Feb 1999 17:20:50 +0100
From:      naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de (Christian Weisgerber)
To:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: system V and BSD
Message-ID:  <7a48p2$ur9$1@mips.rhein-neckar.de>
References:  <36BC6166.48776FAD@stlinux.ouhk.edu.hk> <XFMail.990206170629.asmodai@wxs.nl>

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Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai <asmodai@wxs.nl> wrote:

> > how to classify 'System V or 'BSD'
> 
> Most of the differences lie in administration as well as the technical
> background.

Both terms refer to certain branches of Unix development. As a generic
"flavor" of Unix, the distinction is woefully obsolete since commercial
Unix vendors from early on integrated BSD extensions into their
System-V-based Unices, BSD integrated System V features, the widely
supported POSIX standardization effort offered common interfaces for
areas where SysV and BSD had diverged, and nowadays Unix vendors diverge
individually and not anymore along the old SysV and BSD fault lines, due
to both SysV and BSD having disappeared as the pair of centrally Unix
development branches where other vendors used to adapt their systems
from.

> The best way to see differences though is to compare the two by actually
> using them. Linux is more SysV orientated while FreeBSD is ehm, well, BSD ;)

This is greatly misleading. Linux is not SysV-like in any sense of the
word, and even calling it "more SysV oriented" doesn't hold water. The
Linux kernel has always been developed foremost with POSIX in mind and
BSD (or homegrown) extensions if sensible. The Linux userland is mostly
GNU, which is primarily POSIX and BSD when in doubt. And BSD of course
has also gone its way to accommodate POSIX. Hint: it's not Linux where I
need to set an environment variable BLOCKSIZE=K to get rid of those
silly SysV-style 512-byte block units in df, du, etc.

-- 
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                  naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de
  See another pointless homepage at <URL:http://home.pages.de/~naddy/>.


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