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Unix: Which One to Choose?
I just found this story on Sm@rt Reseller which talks about which Unix (or Linux) they're suggesting to use for various uses (web, applications, etc..) - Its a very long article, and it talks also about the Windows 2000. Worth a read IMHO.
Once people, especially in the Open Source community, realize "one OS everywhere" is bad regardless of which OS it is we will make some real progress toward truly great computing systems. Our emphasis should be on interoperability and using the right tool for the right job -- articles like this are extremely valuable tools in this way.
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We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
I ran Xenix on a 4.77MHz 8086. Yes, it was sllloooowwwwww. I shudder to think I actually used to program on that platform. The scars are still with me to this day!
Steven, Editor at Large, Sm@rt Reseller
My company gets the print version of this magazine. When that article came out, I took into my boss' office, and read the part about all unices moving toward linux compatibility.
/proc for tcp info? How many make sure that their utilities work under linux? How about tar, ls, or bash? Gzip? Make? Patch?
:P
We had a good laugh at such a completely stupid and meaningless statement, and then went back to work.
What the HELL is 'linux compatibility' supposed to mean? Linux hasn't unified anything, and I'm damned sure that the real (read as commercial) unix vendors aren't going out of their way to make their OS's linux compatible in any more than a marketing sense.
For instance, how many commercial unices include term type 'linux' in their termcap database? How many use
All of these programs exist on most unices, and they certainly don't behave in the way the GNU versions do. This is incompatibility, and for someone who write system software across a buttload of unices every day (DYNIX/ptx, solaris, AIX, and linux), these things all suck.
A handful have started porting some utilities or subsystems to linux, but the truth is that unix is based, loosely, on standards, and that linux adheres, loosely, to those standards.
It's a stupid article that makes a lot of false assertions written for people who won't ever know the difference.
Enjoy.
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blue, bleeding karma from the eyeballs and loving it.
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
I just fired up a utility from the Win NT resource kit the other day that recommended that I remove the POSIX compliant portion of Windows NT Workstation, as it was a security risk.
That's not the trick. The trick is retarding your computer so that it will run. Race conditions render Xenix unstable past 486/75. I can't laugh too hard, though...it runs on a 286!
--The basis of all love is respect
They sort of insinuate that the 2.2 Linux kernel can't do SMP - the 2.4 kernel is SMP enabled or some garbage like that... I know that Linux SMP isn't the highest performing SMP implementation out there, and that 2.2 doesn't scale to 128 procs, but they said it 'takes a backseat to NT'... last time I check NT SMP above 4 procs wasn't getting you very much... If they said AIX or Solaris, I'd have to agree, or if they at least acknowledged that people *do* run lots of SMP linux boxen. Not very informed.........
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
From what I was able to scrounge up from various sources, I've determined the following.
A) No-one uses Solaris for multimedia.
B) Solaris 8 is pretty fast, but for single proc. performance it is still slower than FreeBSD.
C) Even the x86 version is really fast for dual procs.
D) The sound system isn't anything special. Its straight OSS.
E) They do have some media apps, especially speech recognition and multimedia authoring.
F) Doesn't really support graphics cards that well. (In SunX)
So I guess Solaris is out. Anyone know if IRIX is coming to x86?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Getting the moderators blessing on /. is less much about being correct/insightful and more about fitting the adjenda of the moderators.
/., a large number of the moderators are not Pro-OpenSource, but are Pro-Linux. And, if you are not a Pro-Linux, Micro$oft bashing, GPL at all costs poster, you don't get positive moderation.
Think of it this way: At school, you got your best grades when your answer fit what the teacher wanted. And here at
I don't see it as humorous, just hypocritcal. And a very human response.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Linux doesn't inherit the 25 years of UNIX history. Other UNIXes are either SVR chidlren or BSD children. Linux "does its own thing" in a couple of key areas.
The linux IP stack was home grown. Note the plethora of of DOS attacks on linux's stack. These basically did not affect any other UNIX more often than not. Traditionally there have also been scalability/reliability concerns amongst ircd operators for instance, where last I heard freeBSD was the platform of choice.
The VFS/vnode layer in linux is quite different from the 4.4BSD implementation (or the SVR4 one for that matter). For more information, consider reading the websites/papers on GFS (the Global Filesystem at University of Minnesota). To paraphrase, the linux VFS layer is very local-file-system oriented, thus making it tricky to implement distributed/remote file-systems.
UNIX has been a moving target for years and years. Most modern unix deriviates are just that -- branches of the original. Linux is different. It does not contain any code retaining any of the original UNIX licenses. It was developed to work similarly to UNIX, and in many ways it does and sometimes can even work better. But it is not derived from the original codebase, nor from any of the subsequent branches. This has its good and bad points. Two "bad points" are mentioned above. The good points of starting with a clean slate (as far as implementation goes - functionality must be mimicked) are obvious to anyone doing software development.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
I'm curious how they decided which five were top. Maybe my personal experience isn't indicitave of the general population, but I've personally met many more people running Debian than TurboLinux. Are they selecting based on the size of the corporation that owns that distro? Number of copies in use (and if so, how do they measure)? File size? It seems to me that most of their choices for "top distro" are the ones that have been in the mainstream news lately (Caldera, Corel) rather than the ones that are most popular or best suited for the jobs they selected.
Visualize whirled peas.
Firstly, the article implied that Linux pre 2.4 cannot do SMP. That is false. Linux has been SMP since 2.0. FreeBSD also does SMP, although it is rather weak. This was never mentioned.
Secondly, I found conflicting bias regarding Linux vs. FreeBSD. While they did recommend FreeBSD for web services, they made BSD sound like it was on its death bed. There was no mention of the BSDIFreeBSD merger, nor was there mention of the whole slew of companies embedding FreeBSD in Thin Servers/Server appliances. They cited a lack of development tools, but lets be honest here. I honestly dont think that Delphi for FreeBSD will help, as FreeBSD is primarily a server platform, not a desktop platform. GCC Anyone?
I don't know. I had a bad taste in my mouth when I read that article. It sounded like it was written by someone who based the article on the advice on others, and not experience.
the positive reporting of Linux is a good thing, but at what cost?
Jailbrekr.
Feed The Need[goatse.cx]
Ones that fly in the face of what we've been told.
A while ago, Unix==Big Iron hardware. Today, Unix can equal a 486/33. The only 'Big Iron' I'm gonna need is the hardware it'll take to make W2K fly.
I also smiled when he said 'Unix will have more software, enjoy it while it lasts.' All in response to the incompatibilities between MS'es own new OS and their own software.
On the flip side, Linux wasn't without growing pains. The lurch from libc5 to glibc wasn't too pretty a while back, but nothing was really stopping you from installing compatibility libraries. Even going 2.0 -> 2.2 was amazingly compatible. In Debian slink, I think there was about a half a dozen packages, out of thousands, that needed upgrading with the kernel.
It's amazing just how badly MS is handling the growth of Unix. You think they'd borrow a page from the Book of Good OS'es.. But instead they go on doing their thing. Scalability? Portability? Unheard of. POSIX seems to be the future of OS'es.. Who'da thunk it?
I've used a lot of UNIX flavors over the past 25 years, and I'd have to say that I recommend Microsoft's XENIX for any task. The NFS support really blazes, and it supports "ksh" or Korn shell. Give it a shot.
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a funny comment: 1 karma
an insightful comment: 1 karma
a good old-fashioned flame: priceless
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
You know the joke about how "I am firm, you are stubborn, and he's a flaming *******"?
Linux/Unix is the same thing. To most people, Linux and Unix are synonymous because they have the same architectural structure, same POSIX libraries, same POSIX tools, etc. Does it run X? Does it run vi? Do you have a command shell somewhere that takes lots of cryptic commands? Then it's Unix.
Even the vast majority of developers will not see a significant difference in the way they develop code for a Linux vs. "Unix" system. A few files are in a different place, a few commands have "odd" flags, but overall it's about as much difference as between Dallas and New York, vs.
New York and New Dehli. With the common use of GNU tools, there's much less perceived difference between Linux and *BSD than Solaris and HP/UX (or AIX!)
But in the same way that many French Canadians can't forgive the British Canadian majority for a defeat hundreds of years ago (going as far as putting "I Remember!" on their the car license plates) we have a few tormented souls who want to make sure that we never, ever, forget the fact that the Linux source tree can't list three pages of "begats" that lead back to King Davi... sorry, back to the original AT&T source.
Is there a real difference? Yes, but the number of people who actually have to worry about them will probably fit into a small room. For the rest of us, the only real difference is a group that's coming across as increasingly bitter that they have finally achieved the Holy Grail of "Unix" Integration only as they band together to fight the Linux intruder... and they *really* hate to be told that this constant "Linux isn't Unix, nah nah nah" harping is exactly the childish mindset that lead to Unix fragmentation in the first place. This is how they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory a decade ago, and many of us really don't want to see a repeat of it.
I know one of the defining characteristics of geeks is great precision in speech, but it's time for everyone to remember the big picture. We're in the game show of life and one side has the MS family (daddy W2K, Mom Win98, insane child WinCE) and the other side has the Unix family (daddy AT&T, brother *BSD and adopted brother Linux), and it only helps MS when the Unix family's first response to a question is to whip out a gun and commit fraticide.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I'm amazed this has got to be the first "battle of the OS's" type article I've read in a long time that not only presents the strengths and weakness's of the various OS's in a balanced and honest fashion but also presents a conclusion at the end of the article that makes logical sense based on the reviews given during the body of the article. I've gotten used to stories (usually involving NT or w2k) that slam a certain OS for performance, stability, and price at every turn but in the end give it their "Editors Choice" because it has prettier widgets than it's competitors. What I really liked best about this story is that not only did the conclusion mesh with the rest of the story but that the author didn't name one OS King of All Unix (on Intel) but gave a nice little chart with very logical recomendations. A nice use the right tool for the right job approach. To add yet another random and disconnected thought to this little ramble of a post, I noticed that the author seemed to put a very high weight on stability, on par with any *nix user I've met, which is nice because I personally value stability above all else for both my workstations and my servers. Ok I'm done with my little pre-coffee post ;->
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After testing extensively the different brands of flamewars available on the market, our SmashDot(tm) test center has decided to extensively analyze the performance of the following flame wars on geeks, nerds and system administrators. The results are as follow:
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The question: What OS do you run.... FreeBSD of course.
:-)
FreeBSD is a OpenSource OS with a licence that promotes the software to be used ANYWHERE, is stable and robust, and has a strong UNIX(tm) tradition.
Oh, and it can run Linux binaries, SCO binaries, Xenix binaries, and I've gotten mine to run Solaris X86 and Rhapsody DR1 binaries, with some tweaking.
(And on a more humorous note: Linux script kiddies come knocking but don't get in. It takes a BSD script kiddie to get in
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!