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UserBSD vs. UserLinux - Is It Feasible?

Posted by Cliff on from the jumping-hurdles-in-pursuit-of-a-good-idea dept.

A not-so-anonymous Anonymous Coward asks: "Someone has suggested to make a UserBSD instead of a UserLinux. From what Bruce Perens' anonymous 1-million-$ backers seem to want (no GPL-/Commercial dual-licensed development toolkit like Qt in any library, but only gratis LPGL stuff), this seems to make a lot of sense. After all, only the kernel would be different, the rest of the stuff (including the KDE or GNOME desktops) runs pretty much the same on BSD as it does on Linux. Is it possible to get the legal problems solved with licenses and still create a usable enterprise Unix desktop system on *BSD?" The idea, in and of itself, sounds fine, but does the choice of kernel really matter? What advantages would BSD have over Linux in such a project, and vice-versa?

4 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Pretty Feasible by pete-classic · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Bruce has suggested UserLinux be based on Debian.

    I propose to work with the Debian distribution, integrating our changes directly into Debian, rather than creating a separate distribution.


    Debian is a big project, and includes a GNU/NetBSD distro.

    -Peter
  2. Re:FreeBSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    What? I'm not a BSD user (Linux - not really a lot to do with it) but do you know what you're talking about? Abysmal sales? Err, FreeBSD doesn't sell software retard. Any BSD does make a cracking good server, and if you want to do anything seriously network related (large traffic, firewalling, bandwidth shaping) use a BSD.

  3. Re:UserBSD is a better idea than UserLinux by Reality_X · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You know what shits me?

    When BSD peddlers like you say things like "there are a huge number of technical advantages" without having a single factual piece of evidence to back it up with. Same goes for your "less stable" crapola.

    Please enlighten us, oh one full of wisdom.

  4. Re:Jumping ship by xoboots · · Score: 3, Interesting

    >> BeOS proved that generally speaking, Windows users aren't interested in switching to another OS, even if it's far superior to what they have

    That takes me back :) With all due respect, BeOS was *never* superior to windows. The post you replied to suggested an OS experience geared towards users, not gear-heads. BeOS had a nice (but incomplete) object-oriented design. Other than that it missed the target pretty much all-around. Asides from its complete lack of user software, it was buggy (crashed when the wind blew), had virtually no drivers for even popular hardware, limited network and security, and even Cygwin boasts better Posix compliance. In an attempt to be different for difference sake, the UI was almost completely unusable and made simple tasks far harder than they needed to be while introducing strange new concepts that did not add anything to the experience. On top of it all, it was nearly as expensive as Windows and was equally closed-sourced.

    From day one, BeOS was basically an OS for hobbyist programmers and I seriously doubt that any other type of user ever considered it for personal use. I completely agree that it was a fun toy to have (I bought every PC version shipped) and hack on, but really, it was not better than the mainstream alternatives--particularly for the average user.

    Don't allow BeOS's mistakes to insinuate the idea that Windows users can not be migrated to a FREE operating system.

    Best regards.