[techtalk] *nix comparisons?

[Andre Pang]

On Tue, Aug 15, 2000 at 11:22:47AM +0300, sara ruohotie wrote:

> that linux-people don't want to do it 'the harder way' but i mean that as
> linux is becoming more and more userfriendly, it's becoming also more
> mainstream and if the progression continues far enough someday linux'll be
> like windows, everybody knows how to use it and so on. and in my opinion
> anyway, linux is a nice os to use, but it's not really a server os.

linux is just the kernel.  if you want a good server OS, then linux's kernel
suits the job pretty well -- i'd say the current problems with the kernel
are current scalability and the vm system.  freebsd has had decades to tune
the VM subsystem so it's currently much better than linux in that area, and
there has been time to architecturally refine it (NetBSD) and audit the code
(OpenBSD).  linux will probably be more scalable than *BSD for SMP boxen
when 2.4.x arrives, in which case it's mostly the VM subsystem which is
holding it back.  this can be fixed, but it takes time to tune the
heuristics, so it probably won't happen anytime soon.

but my point in all of this is that Linux _is_ strictly speaking only the
kernel -- anything which is not the kernel can be replaced.  if you really
want a more secure environment, there's absolutely nothing stopping you from
using the *BSD userland utils; in fact, Mastodon (a linux distribution) does
just this, and it also uses BSD's libc4 rather than glibc2.  so if Linux
eventually does become "like Windows", that's okay -- you can always get rid
of all that clunky Windows-like stuff and replace it with all your own
stuff.  that's the beauty of it being open-source.

> to use *bsd is 'more hc', than knowing how to use linux. thus in some
> places linux-knowlegde isn't as appreciated anymore. well uh, maybe it's
> just me.

true; knowing *BSD does make you 'more hardcore', as such, but if you really
want to be hardcore, go and roll your own distro ;).


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