Slashdot Mirror
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 ."
Let's have a close look at the costs involved when running a Linux system.
An important factor in Linux' cost is its maintenance. Linux requires a *lot* of maintenance, work doable only by the relatively few high-paid Linux administrators that put themselves - of course willingly - at a great place in the market. Linux seems to be needing maintenance continuously, to keep it from breaking down.
Add to this the cost of loss of data. Linux' native file system, EXT2FS, is known to lose data like a firehose spouts water when the file system isn't unmounted properly. Other unix file systems are much more tolerant towards unexpected crashes. An example is the FreeBSD file system, which with soft updates enabled, performance-wise blows EXT2FS out of the water, and doesn't have the negative drawback of extreme data loss in case of a system breakdown.
According to Linux advocates, an alternative to EXT2FS would be ReiserFS. Unfortunately, ReiserFS is still in beta stage. This means it is not intended for production use (although according to many Linux advocates this shouldn't be a problem, which makes me wonder how (little) valuable they find your data).
The other proposed 'solution', EXT3FS, is nothing more than an ugly hack to put journaling into the file system. All the drawbacks of the ancient EXT2FS file system remain in EXT3FS, for the sake of 'forward- and backward compatibility'. This is interesting, considering that the DOS heritage in the Windows 9x/ME series was considered a very bad thing by the Linux community, even though it provided what could be called one of the best examples of compatibility, ever. When it's about Linux, compatibility constraints don't seem to be that much of a problem for Linux advocates.
Back to Linux' cost. Factor in also the fact that crashes happen much more often on Linux than on other unices. On other unices, crashes usually are caused by external sources like power outages. Crashes in Linux are a regular thing, and nobody seems to know what causes them, internally. Linux advocates try to hide this fact by denying crashes ever happen. Instead, they have frequent "hardware problems".
The steep learning curve compared to about any other operating system out there is a major factor in Linux' cost. The system is a mix of features from all kinds of unices, but not one of them is implemented right. A Linux user has to live with badly coded tools which have low performance, mangle data seemingly at random and are not in line with their specification. On top of that a lot of them spit out the most childish and unprofessional messages, indicating that they were created by 14-year olds with too much time, no talent and a bad attitude.
I could go on and on and on, but the conclusion is clear. Linux is not an option for any one who seeks a professional OS with high performance, scalability, stability, adherence to standards, etc.
Oh, come on now, somebody had to do it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Case in point: Knoppix is supposed to have scripts you can call from the command line that create boot/root floppies, install Knoppix to the hard drive, and do other nice things. Only problem is, the documentation, both the docs on the CD itself, and the docs found throughout the Internet, is all wrong. There is no mkbootfloppy command, as the cheatcodes on the very same disc say there is. I found at least 3 different names of utilities that are supposed to install Knoppix onto the hard drive. None of these exist on the CD. Everything is upside down, equine-backwards, and inside out in the documentation. Linux is the suxx0rz.
News at 11:00
So, you think you can compare arches linux supports to CPUs netbsd supports? What kind of logic is that? Those 22 architectures linux supports include different arches using the same CPUs too you know. There's nothing wrong with that for either system, arch is more than just CPU, and involves drivers for chipsets, BIOS/firmware/framebuffer/video, as well as common peripherals.
Mysql works fine, you are just plain spreading FUD now. Maya works fine under linux compatability, more FUD. And of course neither BSD nor linux supports any applications, the applications support whatever OS's their creators choose. Pretending that BSD is inferior because companies don't both releasing BSD native versions of their apps is rediculous. Or do you also believe that windows is superior to linux?
I don't think even the most hard-core Linux user would dispute that (well, maybe the zealots would).
I, for one, like some parts of the linux kernel. The kind of locking used in solaris is harder to "get right" than what linux uses, for example. So, duh, no, I don't think Solaris is "the best kernel available". Maybe solaris zealots think that, but certainly not everybody.
Who can blame Linus for not knowing anything about BSD?
In any system where you have no init.d and so cannot get to first base for trying out subsystems on the fly, it's just pointless proceeding.
BSD people are simply not of an engineering frame of mind, or they'd have adopted a system for switching subsystems on and off independently. It doesn't have to be init.d, but it has to fulfil the same requirements. They haven't. QED
BSD may be superb as a comms O/S, but without a sunsystem switch, it's just crap.
Since Sun keep NFS alive, it should be good on Solaris!
Try SMB support on solaris and you're quickly in a whole world of pain.
Solaris10 might be a great step forward for Sun, but having lived with FreeBSD5.3, SuSE9.2 Linux and Solaris10, I can say that the user experience of Sol feels like going back in time 6 years compared to FreeBSD or Linux. Hell, even Debian3.0 felt positively new-fangled!