Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 02:04:56 +0100 From: Cliff Sarginson <cliff@raggedclown.net> To: Kenneth Wayne Culver <culverk@wam.umd.edu> Cc: brian william wolter <bwolter@thesadmachine.org>, Jack Morgan <j-morgan@gol.com>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Linux vs. FreeBsd (reposted) Message-ID: <20001128020456.A1701@buffy.local> In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.21.0011271218130.17758-100000@rac5.wam.umd.edu>; from culverk@wam.umd.edu on Mon, Nov 27, 2000 at 12:19:04PM -0500 References: <Pine.BSF.4.30.0011270213100.7751-100000@linux.thesadmachine.org> <Pine.GSO.4.21.0011271218130.17758-100000@rac5.wam.umd.edu>
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On Mon, Nov 27, 2000 at 12:19:04PM -0500, Kenneth Wayne Culver wrote: > > well, 4.4 BSD is (i believe) a direct descendant of System V and the > > closest you'll find to actual UNIX today. Linux is based largely in > > Posix. You'll remember that BSD was originally developed using the > > AT&T code and while it contains no AT&T code today, linux never did. > > You have it backwards. System V integrates things from 4.4BSD and from the > other branch of UNIX (System IV?). > > Everyone is getting close.. but still no cigar .. lol Long ago there was the 6th Edition of UNIX, the first available outside of Bell Labs. It was cute, minute and very fast. It had a handful of system calls, the original Bourne Shell (which had a "goto" in it I recall, implemented as an external program). Then there was the 7th Edition. Everything was made "bigger", data structure sizes, system calls, tools (like make!) etc.. It ran like a dead pig on the PDP11's of the time. At UCB they took this version and BSD started to grow... The 7th Edition didn't last long. BSD Unix was starting to make a noise, particularly on VAXes..later came AT&T System 3, there was never a System 4, and then System 5. System V integrated many of the things from BSD. BSD became the basis for certain versions of UNIX, most notably Sunos..aka these days Solaris, and Ultrix (DEC Unix of it's day, the most awful Unix system ever let loose). Most others got based loosely or otherwise on licensed code from AT&T, and there was always obeissance to the Regents of the University of California" in the copyright notices. This is the basis for HP-UX, Dynix/PTX, SCO etc etc... So ... without the BSD kernel stuff and other things UNIX would not be the system it is today. As to which one to learn. Well you are going to have to pay for HP-UX as well as something to run on it on, so I would discount that. Besides which RISC chips are on their downward spiral back to the niche they were created for orginally (high-end grpahics) and will continue to be used by Silicon Graphics I suppose for making block busting movies. Since RISC has been imho the biggest single barrier to the development of a common operating platform, this may not be a loss. I suspect proprietary version of UNIX as such will eventually die out. Possibly not Solaris for a long while, but Sun have always been en enfant terrible, refusing to accept standards except their own for example. BSD I gather contains no code from the orginal BSD Unix, but my recent limited exposure to it has definitely given me the (old) BSD impressions. I have no exposure to the other systems with BSD in their name, so I will not comment. Linux contains no UNIX code, but if it looks like anything it looks like System V. It is also, in my view, easier to learn for a beginner (no flames please). It comes in a Heinz like variety of distributions which differ in system setup and system management, often quite dramatically. If you are looking for this as a possible career enhancing factor, again choose Linux. On the other hand if you are simply keen to get exposure to systems predicated on things other than Microsoft's .. well it does not matter so much. See whether the posts on the various newsgroups lean you one way or another... Good Luck Oh I forgot to mention AIX, IBM's Unix. There I've mentioned it. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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