[techtalk] *nix comparisons

[Telsa Gwynne]

On Thu, Jul 20, 2000 at 06:08:41PM -0400 or thereabouts, Susannah D. Rosenberg wrote:
> Telsa Gwynne wrote:
> >
> > One of the *BSD people was explaining the updating process to me
> > at LinuxTag. What has long put me off is the same reason I keep
> > delaying Debian: you either wait for a new CD or you do big upgrades
> > over the net via CVS checkout. I have a titchy modem. Apparently
> > this is ameliorated for at least the BSD flavour he was talking
> > about (which I forget) by periodic (daily?) deltas being made of
> > the CVS differences so you can grab those, which is apparently faster.
> 
> but *BSD tends in general to update things like the kernel far less than
> Linux; the reasons why come down to design 

Ah, fair point :)

> philosophy and what the BSD kernels are attempting to do (the initial
> 4.2 BSD-Lite was basically released to provide the world with a free,
> open-source, stable BSD codebase). maybe two releases a year or so (this
> is part of why the BSDs tend to be more secure than Linux); other than
> that, you really only need to update/download software that you use a
> /lot/ or that you care to keep current, and security fixes -- which is
> really no different than what you'd be doing on a Linux. there aren't
> daily/weekly/monthly kernel releases that you need to keep up with, and

Heh. I only ever upgrade kernels if there is a security fix or some
feature or driver I have been desperately waiting for; I have also
got past the "grab every update" stage and am now in the "does
it fix something I care about?" stage. Life is much more peaceful
this way :)

> the ports collection works fine for most of the rest. (you can also get
> CDs with 'snapshots' of the ports and packages collections on them, if
> you really need a certain piece of software).

Handy.

> as someone who's used both *BSD and Linux, i'd say that linux is
> actually harder to keep up with if you want a bleeding-edge-current
> release. (ie, installing every single new kernel release as it comes
> out). cvs-upping can be a pain, but it's a very infrequent pain and not
> as bad as downloading new kernels over a titchy modem. :)

Interesting. Well, I have a spare disk. So maybe one day.. :)
 
> administate the box. getting over expecting the first ethernet device to
> be /dev/eth0 and then finding out it could be something like /dev/cp0 or
> /dev/en0 or /dev/ne1k depending on your NIC can be very disconcerting.
> ditto fixed and removeable drives.

Eep. I would not have figured that one out, I suspect :)
 
> i'm suprised no one seems to have brought up Solaris x86. the last time
> i gave it a try i decided it was really primitive, but apparently the
> recent versions have improved greatly. anyone have any (recent)
> experience with it?

Last time I used a Sun was when I met sunview for the first time. It is
remotely possible I may be somewhat out of date... :) (Yes, this is 
about nine years ago :))

Telsa