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Comparing Linux and BSD, Diplomatically
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 ."
TFA is not a Slashdot-style discussion, obviously. No matter how hard Joe Barr tried to get Linus to engage in a comparison, he was unwilling to rise to the bait. Good going, Linus.
/.ers think, Windows does work well enough to allow people to do productive work. The various BSD flavors work well enough for their community to do productive work. I would venture that Solaris users probably get quite a bit done with their relatively immature software as well. Oh yeah, OSX stuff works well too.
There are obvious merits to any operating system. Despite what many
The problem with comparisons is that once all of the products begin to operate at a level that makes them useful to their target audience, then the only thing left to argue about is the margins. Zealots exist on the margins and so are they are the most likely to carp and moan about the small differences between various products.
Linus is not a zealot. He is an advocate.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
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?
Would you have a "debate" with a racial bigot over which race is better?
Bigots of any type aren't worth the time of day.
IMHO
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Try to use the appropriate tool at the right time at the right moment.
What is appropriate depends on the situation and your experience.
In summary, Linux Torvalds understands that computers are about the right tool for the right job. For some, that tool is Linux. For others, that tool is *BSD. But he rightfully takes the stance that competition is no skin off his nose.
;-P
This is a *good* thing people! I realize it's much easier to jump into Highlander mode ("There can be only one!"), but reality is rarely so simple. Until someone invents the "perfect solution", every decision will lead to a particular set of tradeoffs. If you don't have anyone else exploring alternatives, how can you know for certain that your own alternative is the best one? Cooperation always leads to better results.
That said, I have a feeling about the replies I'm about to get:
Girl: Don't even think about it!
Human Torch: Never do. (Jumps off building)
Human Torch: Flame ON!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Torvalds : It just means that I don't know anything about BSD technical internals, so I'm the wrong person to ask. Ask somebody who uses both.
Which are better, apples or oranges?
One of the things I'd love to see in Linux that exists in BSD is umount -f for any filesystem, not just NFS. On FreeBSD (and probably other BSD's?) you can force unmount any filesystem. This is especially useful when you need to foce unmount snapshot mounts.
Your point of view is as utterly intolerant as the point of view of those you are criticizing.
"Mac users are phanatix. They are insecure and utterly intollerant.. Mod me up for being reasonable!"
Are you kidding us?
diegoT
"...It just means that I don't know anything about BSD technical internals, so I'm the wrong person to ask. Ask somebody who uses both."
That said, he raised some interesting points about the differences in philosophy between the two camps.
He's obviously a bad person to ask since he thinks things like "you'll find a lot of areas where Linux is better (often a lot better -- as in "it works"), and then you'll find a few narrow areas where one particular BSD version will be better." and "Linux has a much wider audience, in many ways. That ranges from supporting much wider hardware (both in the driver sense and in the architecture sense) to actual uses.".
Sorry, NetBSD runs on more hardware that linux does, and apart from running on very large SMP systems, I can't think of *anything* that linux can do and BSD can't, much less "many" things.
Putting aside truly harmful types of bigotry, such as racism etc., I find "OS bigotry" pretty entertaining. I am a centrist, who sees merit in almost every viewpoint, so it's pretty funny to me to watch people get at each others' throats over ludicrous low-level minutiae from the inner bowels of arcane computing concepts. I mean, who gives a rat's ass? And yet people are using comparisons to the Nazis, and worse.
Truthfully, it's what keeps me coming back to Slashdot.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Summary: some guy tried to get a newsworthy quote from Linus, he says the interviewer's questions don't make sense and ends with "Ask somebody who uses both."
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
You must be referring to Solaris on Intel. I still don't think "immature" is the right adjective. The problem with Solaris on Intel is mostly hardware support, and that's not going to change with age. Hardware popularity shifts faster than Sun's ability to support it.
"Stodgy" and "crusty", maybe, but not "immature".
For vanilla hardware in a server, it does just fine.
sigs, as if you care.
Now, now, operating systems are technical things, with technical merits and disadvantages.
A good computer scientist can look at any system and ask himself, "ok how does this suck?".
Because the answer to that question can be followed up with "how do we make it better?".
If you can't ask "how does this suck?" for fear of being an "troll" then you've effectively eliminated thought.
...when Linus says he thinks "Which is better" questions are stupid, and Joe's first few questions are all of the "Which is better" variety.
I mean, you've got to be able to come up with a better BSD daemon girl than that without even trying. What, is that your girlfriend or something? Pathetic.
Honestly, doing a google search didn't give me _just_ the image I wanted, but there are some pretty impressive examples in this collection, even if what is perhaps the best one is animated. ( Warning: not entirely work-safe, *and* contains flamefest-inducing images of penguins impaled on pitchforks ). You've been warned, now let's see that server melt...
I usually find the BSDs might take a little longer to support the latest, greatest hardware. But that's primarily it. Or more support for more esoteric kernel settings and the like.
From an end-user perspective, by the time you install either, you have a nice UNIX-enough-for-me environment. They're both nice and robust feeling, and do well.
I use FreeBSD now simply because I'm lazy and I find the ports system to be the way I find easier/simplest to use. Do I care if you prefer to run Linux? Not really.
My FreeBSD desktop is behind a firewall, and I'm completely uninterested in regularly updating my OS. It just works, and doesn't ever give me any lip. I suspect many Linux users have the same stance.
If it's not out on the internet without a firewall, security patches are more of an issue. For a shockingly stable OS that I upgrade every year or so
I think Linus is correct though --- the BSDs focus on a particular design prinicpal, Linux encourages everyone to add in the things they need to make things work, and "just good enough" focues on actually providing functionality. Linux is highly successful because of that.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Actually, Linux does support CPU hotplugging. Or at least on some architectures - namely, the "big" ones, like S390, IA64, ppc64 etc.
:)
That aside, you're right about support for really big iron being less advanced compared to that in Solaris, for example, but in a way, you're comparing apples with oranges here, because that only goes for the "vanilla", main-line kernel. I think it would be more fair to compare Solaris with what Linux versions are being offered by other vendors such as SGI or IBM; SGI at least has a number of patches that have not gone into mainline (yet?), because most developers aren't that concerned with tweaks that make the kernel run smoother on 512-cpu systems.
Of course, there still is a lot that Linux can learn from Solaris - but learn we will, because we don't strive to be better than anyone or anything, we strive to be *good*.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.