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Comparing Linux and BSD, Diplomatically

Posted by timothy on from the famous-diplomat-linus-torvalds dept.

Joe Barr writes "Talk about a red-button issue. How do you compare Linux and the BSDs and keep the debate from turning into a friendly-fire flame-fest nightmare between bigots on both sides of the line? Linus Torvalds once handled a similar situation by wearing a BSD beanie at USENIX while delivering a Linux talk. Now he tries it again in this interview on NewsForge ."

4 of 448 comments (clear)

  1. Short Summary by Hungus · · Score: 5, Informative

    To summarrize Linus :
    1)They are different don't try to compare them.
    2)I like Linux better because it agrees with me.
    3) Don't ask me what I wan't in Linux (kernal) from BSD (kernal) because I don't use BSD.

    Basically it was a whole bunch of nothing

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  2. troll much? by ignorant_newbie · · Score: 4, Informative
    wow. where shall i start?
    Linux' native file system, EXT2FS,
    um... i believe you're about 5 years behind the ball here. all major distros have shipped with ext3 or reiserfs as their default for at least that long.
    According to Linux advocates, an alternative to EXT2FS would be ReiserFS. Unfortunately, ReiserFS is still in beta stage.
    um... no. reiser 4 is in beta. reiser 3 has been production ready for years. so, basically, you're just cutting and pasting random unsupported ( when not just blatantly false ) trolls hoping for a response.
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  3. Re:bothersome by (startx) · · Score: 4, Informative

    If he looks at BSD internals, anything he comes up with relation to those internals might be considered derivative works and would need to be BSD licensed.

    I was going to mod you down since I've got the points, but there isn't an "Incorrect, -1" moderation.

    The BSD license is about as liberal as it gets, basically saying "Do what you want with the code but leave my copyright notice." This includes sticking the BSD code into GPL'd code, XYZ'd code, or even closed, proprietary code.

    GPL is the license that says what is open must stay open, and even with that, only if you copy the actual code. "Ideas" are not protected by copyright, just expression. Protecting designs and more recently ideas is what patent law is for.

  4. Solaris is best at big iron by Bishop · · Score: 4, Informative

    Solaris has fault tollerance features that aren't found in Linux. Solaris has support for isolating failing hardware and hotswaping everything includeing cpu boards. Big IBM, and SGI/Cray iron support this as well. To be fair most Linux developers don't have access to a Sun E10k. So it is understandable if they don't fully support it. Solaris zones are nice and currently better then Linux/Xen, and much better then usermode linux or VMware. On the userland side Solaris has excellent nis/nfs support that I have yet to find in any Linux distro.

    However Solaris is big, stubborn, and ugly. I would rather admin three machines each with a different Linux distro then a single Solaris box.

    Linux has other strenghts, but on big servers Solaris is best.