[ale] BSD(s) vs Linux

Jeff Hubbs hbbs at attbi.com
Sat May 31 21:25:24 EDT 2003


My take, for what it's worth...

The BSDs differ from Linux the most starkly in their developmental and
maintenance models.  The BSDs seem to be mostly team efforts with
outside contributions to produce a single distribution, whereas Linux
comes together in a more complex way and comes to you in the form of a
number of different distributions with the caveat that the process of
creating a distribution is itself open (i.e. I can decide I'm going to
package and put out "Jeff Hubbs Linux" {God help us all}). 

Linux development tends to go like Ouija board players' fingers guiding
the heart-shaped thingie around the board, expect there are a lot of
hands.  It tends to follow where the people who contribute to it want it
to go.  There is a lot of desire for gaming and audio and video and
filesystems, etc, etc. and this support comes into existence as a
result.

On the other hand, the BSDs are focused on minutiae like disk I/O, SMP
improvements, networking, memory usage.  They want to make the best
*computer* they can out of the available hardware.  They are not focused
on USB scanners, audio streaming, etc.  

Having said this, if your goal in life is to create boxes that do
principally one thing very, very well, like file or database serving or
a network firewall, then there is a lot to be said for using one or the
other of the BSDs.  Now, there is no reason that one can't pursue the
same kind of path forward under Linux; you can, and I know I will be. 
In fact, there is a lot to be said for having the ability to yank down
some development Linux kernel version with a modification that might
help your particular application out and beat on it, but, on the other
hand, if you want your application to get its kicks from more generally
applied and slower-changing design principles, then BSD calls your
name.  

Am I right or am I pulling stuff out of my butt, people?

- Jeff

On Sat, 2003-05-31 at 20:45, Murali Raju | 4SecureNet wrote:
> Ok, I have read several "google-articles" on the BSD vs Linux wars. That
> said, I am curious what the users in the ale list think about this
> subject. Why would you choose Linux over BSD(s) for both server and as a
> desktop? I personally like OpenBSD and FreeBSD (security and stability
> respectively + I am a person with an interest in security^infinity ;-)).
> 
> --Regards
> 
> Raju
> 
>  P.S. At this moment I am installing Gentoo to see if I like it:-)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale


_______________________________________________
Ale mailing list
Ale at ale.org
http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale





More information about the Ale mailing list