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From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
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Subject: Re: Linux vs FreeBSD.
In-Reply-To: <199708080045.TAA04443@nexgen.hiwaay.net> from "dkelly@HiWAAY.net" at "Aug 7, 97 07:45:42 pm"
To: dkelly@HiWAAY.net
Date: Fri, 8 Aug 1997 11:00:58 +0930 (CST)
Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
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dkelly@HiWAAY.net writes:
> On at least one occasion I couldn't get a stock distribution of something
> to compile under Irix. And I didn't understand where it was failing as my
> attempts to fix it failed. Finally tried a long shot, copied the source
> files patched for FreeBSD direct to Irix, and it worked perfectly.
>
> Have observed more than once with Irix when porting apps which support BSD
> and SysV targets, the BSD target usually works with less problems.

This is a bit off-target for Linux, but I think it's an important
observation: most free software was written in a BSD background, and
it ports more easily to BSD.  Often the System V ports have been done
after the event, and though they've been made to work for the
immediate environment, they're more fragile.

Things are changing.  A lot of free software is now being written
initially for Linux.  I haven't seen this have a negative effect on
portability to *BSD, but it is of course having a positive effect on
ease of portability to Linux, which I used to place somewhere between
System V and BSD.

Greg