Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1999 23:06:26 -0700 From: Emmanuel Gravel <chemtechweb@psn.net> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD vs. Linux (was: a couple ?'s) Message-ID: <36D0F3E2.EBEB800B@psn.net>
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On 21 Feb 1999 Greg Lehey wrote: >It shows that FreeBSD >outperforms Linux by about 50% in the areas which they have examined, >but for some reason comes to the conclusion that, though FreeBSD has >all the advantages, one should choose Linux. In particular, they >write: > > FreeBSD UNIX-Advantages, Disadvantages > > FreeBSD UNIX has a similar story to Linux, but without the > commercial aggregators of the code or the honor system that > prevents commercial vendors from advancing the OS in unique > ways. Thus, to base a product on FreeBSD eliminates the cost of > the OS entirely. On the downside, though, there quickly becomes no > such thing as standard FreeBSD. Every vendor ends up with a > proprietary operating system based on FreeBSD, but not the > identical OS. [...] >I disagree with the statement " Every vendor ends up with a >proprietary operating system based on FreeBSD" The fact is that >there *is* only one FreeBSD, whereas there are multiple versions of >Linux. I'm not sure what the author was thinking of when he said >this. If you take the previous paragraph, explaining the advantages of the "openness" of Linux, it starts falling into place. Their argument is based on the fact that in Linux, developpers are "honour-bound" to make available their advancements. They apply the "Red Hat, Cladera, SuSe, Slackware, Debian, etc" model to FreeBSD, forgetting that FreeBSD is much more centralized than Linux for its distribution base. They seem to consider this an advantage to the Linux community that any vendor could take the code and start hacking at their own distribution, and as you said yourself, forgot there is only ONE FreeBSD, one distribution model, one vendor. Most of their arguments thereafter follow this logic, when comparing the two OSes. When giving thier choice of OS for different applications, they place Linux at the top of many solutions. Out of six models, Linux falls 1st on three and 2nd on one. FreeBSD falls first on two and second on one. A fairly similar distribution but giving the advantage to Linux. Apart from the previously discussed argument, I believe that their main reasoning is based on one major factor: marketting. Linux has become the new buzz word, and is more widely known and accepted today as the NOS of choice, no matter how well FreeBSD out-performs it. Linux has a larger userbase and more commercial vendor support (think Oracle as an example). It's more a matter of familiarity, acceptance and comfort (some of the reasons people stick with M$, don't forget) than actual performance, stability, and robustness. For FreeBSD to compete with this, it would have to find a way to compete in the "real world" where the advantages of FreeBSD have little to no bearing on the people holding the purse strings. They're starting to be lenient on Linux since it's becoming so popular. If FreeBSD could reach the same popularity levels, it would probably out-perform Linux almost everywhere. But then again, is that the objective? :) In the real world, it's usually only a matter of exposure and popularity, not of quality. Need only look so far as M$ to find the best example. My 2 cents and interpretation of the article... Manu To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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