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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 ."

7 of 448 comments (clear)

  1. In short: by MPHellwig · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Try to use the appropriate tool at the right time at the right moment.
    What is appropriate depends on the situation and your experience.

  2. The only line that matters: by dayid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. The gist of Linus's reply by TildeMan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Which are better, apples or oranges?

  4. Linus doesn't know much of anything about BSD. by Some+Random+Username · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. Re:Not About To Be Baited by infonography · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nice bit of underhanded baiting there yourself. Not that I don't agree on many levels. Solaris isn't so immature, however the user level stuff is horrific and unfriendly. I know I am a Solaris admin. Get into big oracle or financials systems then tell me it's child's play. Still over all your correct.

    --
    Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
  6. Re:Not About To Be Baited by Zemplar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ditto the other poster, you couldn't resist the bait on Solaris. Solaris will kick some Linux and BSD butt for certain applications, however, it is relatively unfriendly as a desktop OS. Hopefully when OpenSolaris.org "opens for business" this week, we'll have a better package manager and userland applications. IMHO, the Solaris kernel is simply one of the, the not THE, best kernel currently available.

  7. Re:Since when is debating with "bigots" a good ide by nurhussein · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.