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Yet Another BSD vs Linux article
Lazaru5 writes "Technology writer Simson L. Garfinkel wrote this article for the Boston Globe Online Business section. " It's something of an incendiary article, but I think it's great to see the amount of press that *BSD has been getting lately.
The first is the assumption that "the media equals reality". Linux exploits announced in the media and they don't affect NetBSD? Conclusion: NetBSD has no security weaknesses! Hah to you, Penguin! "Linux is the favorite tool of crackers [sic]" I suppose because criminals prefer the automobile we should all stick to mini-vans. Lots of companies announce Linux support and products? Obviously corporations are now driving Linux development! Boy, won't the developers themselves be surprised to hear that.
The second is the assumption that "correctness is superior to functionality". When it's correctness at the expense of functionality (as is arguably the case with certain of the *BSD lines, in certain cases), I take exception to being told "cope".
I do consider this article to be FUD. If you can't argue something's merits without falling back on attacking the perceived competition, you discredit yourself and the subject of your article.
Nothing worth doing is worth doing today.
> This has made the system popular at places like MIT and NASA,
> both of which have large menageries of computer systems from a multitude of
> vendors.
Umm, after spending 5 years at MIT, I can only recall seeing 1 *BSD box, although there certainly might be more....
The campus computers these days are almost entirely Sun's and SGI's (running their respective commercial unices). Over the last five years, the campus computers that have been phased out have been IBM RS6000's (AIX), Sparc Classics (Solaris), DEC 5000's (ultrix), and VAX Station 3100's (ultrix). None of them *BSD.
I worked in both CS and EE labs, the CS lab was a SUN shop, the EE lab used Linux for the main server, and a combo of Solaris/Linux/95 for everything else.
Residential computers are a mix of 95/98/NT/and Linux, with a couple macs thrown in for good measure. Most of the technically orientated people I knew, if they weren't running Linux, had a second box running Linux under there desk. (The place I lived at had ~1.3 computers/person, which was fairly common).
If anyone had a different experience, pipe in.
Stop the holy wars now - you can't argue which philosophy is better than another - only which implimentation is better.
--
"But I'm not rejoicing for the ascendancy of Linux or its penguin mascot."
In other words, if it's not BSD, he doesn't want it to succeed. We don't want users to have a choice. No, we just want them to have BSD.
" If I had to pick out the single difference between the BSD community as a whole and the proponents of Linux, I would say it is something called ''correctness.''"
Ok...if that is true, then that is a very important point. But is it true? How can we know? Not from this article. It doesn't cite any ways in which BSD is more "correct" than Linux. I guess we're just supposed to trust Mr. Garfinkel.
" This may be one reason proponents of Linux are frequently slow to admit the debt they owe to the Computer Science Research Group at Berkeley, which created BSD, and to the Free Software Foundation at MIT"
Oh, now I get it. I know Mr. Garfinkel's true identity. *wink* But why is he calling it Linux rather than GNU/Linux?
"Although Linux is a fine operating system, I would encourage businesses as well as advanced enthusiasts to take a serious look at the other choices."
Now, I can agree with this point. However, that "Linux is a fine operating system" is not the impression that I get from the rest of the article.
This could have been a really good article. It included some real meat, unlike most BSD articles in mainstream mags. However, it is ruined by the author's arrogance. An arrogance which unfortunately seems to be abundant among BSD users.
In some ways, I think the biggest (certainly in the mainstream world's eyes) difference between Linux and BSD are the types of users you encounter. Immature flamers or arrogant snobs. (Betcha can't guess which is which). Most of the people I know who run either OS are really cool people, who I'm glad to know. But those types of people aren't as loud as the stereotypes. Possibly the biggest advantage of Linux over BSD is that it's most stereotypical users (immature, foul-mouthed flamers) don't get published in the mainstream press.
...article. One that the article is complete FUD and the other is that the guy is doing some kind of service to the community.
/is/ tightly controlled by Linus Tovalds and it is a very *pragmatic* design. There are always tradeoffs to be made in the design of any architecure, and Linux is simply one approach. One that, IMHO, works very well.
I fall in the middle... I think an article espousing the virtues of the *BSD systems over Linux is good...there aren't many that I've seen in the mainstream press.
however, the article does contain a LOT of FUD.
The bit about "correctness" really struck me. While Linux is by no means designed to be the ultimately correct perfect academic example of operating system design (for instance, Linux is a monolithic design [the kernel is one big program], vs. the "correct" academic microkernel architecture [small, independent components with tightly-controlled communications linking them]), the design and architecture
The bit about Linux being very much a subject of attack for 'crackers': sure, Linux gets more attacks. But its probably because there are more Linux boxes than *BSD boxes. Windows is attacked far more than Linux (witness recent developments such as Melissa and ExploreZip). Why? Because there are more Windows boxes than Linux boxes. If BSD were more popular than Linux, I'm sure it would be the subject of more attacks.
But some of the things about OpenBSDs strong security vs. FreeBSDs excellent support for threads are very good points. But the guy definitely is spreading FUD: if you can't build up support for your operating system by pointing out its virtues, I guess you're left to attacking your competition. Of course, this tactic is simply tasteless, disgusting and simply downright childish.
My journal has hot
I've never used *BSD extensively, but I respect it (I'm much more accustomed to both Linux and Solaris). And I'm glad to see an article espousing the benefits of *BSD over Linux (gasp! shock! horror!)
This is because the whole goal of Linux is choice, which having a viable *BSD option provides. One more good Unix OS is always a good thing.
So, fellow Linux users/admins, please don't flame the dude. Respect him as a colleague.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
I just don't see much behind the advantages the author claims. Still, I'd usually rather have a FreeBSD 2.2.8 box than a RH6.0 . I simple cannot abide SysV /etc/rc.d .
As for `correct` vs `working`, I don't want to get into the old sync debate. It boils down to a choice you make. Linux certainly has more hardware supported, even if `less correctly'.
As for "less commercial", I beg to differ. The BSD licence is wide open for source being taken private. The GPL virus prevents this in Linux.
-- Robert
I have been an avid Linux user since 1990. I think my first ISP used FreeBSD, so I had a shell account on that server. That is the limit of my experience with any sort of BSD. However, as much as I am devoted to Linux, I am still open-minded about BSD. I just really have not had any reason to dual/triple/quad boot my machine.
But I digress. BSD has been around a long time. So of course it is going to be stabler and more robust than Linux in certain applications. I have no problem with that. It is nice that the BSD's are getting more press. More power to us all, I say. But I think the quality of that press is as important as the recognition that BSD (or Linux) gets.
My problem is with articles like these. Aside from a couple token points of recognition to Linux, he lavishes disputable credits to BSD.
For instance, BSD is ported to more architectures. The author sites 22. But I also know for a fact that if you go to the Linux Documentation Project you will see that Linux is ported or being ported to *at least* 22 other architectures, more if you count the various subsets.
His "argument" that BSD developers are more concerned with "correctness" than Linux developers is pure flamebait and unsupported. That is a slap in the face. If this were true, Linus would never have started coding a new kernel nearly a decade ago and it would not have gotten the support it did.
"Businesses are now the driving force in the Linux community." I think this statement is a combination of jealousy over Linux's success and a statement of ignorance of Linux's roots. Ever hear of Debian: one of the stablest distributions with arguably the most advanced package management tools around, owing *nothing* to business? Is he trying to tell me that if IBM and Oracle decided tomorrow to drop their support of Linux and switch to one of the BSD's that the BSD developers would say "no thanks"?
I think the author also tries to capitalize on the whole GNU/Linux debacle by stating that Linux users neglect what Linux owes to BSD and GNU and that Linus "cobbled" the OS together. I think this is a diversionary tactic. What do you think GNU is for? GNU was envisioned as a non-Unix unix. How could it be inappropriate that the Linux kernel work with GNU software? Or BSD software for that matter? I may not *say* GNU/Linux or GNU/Linux-with-BSD-utilities, but I know where Linux came from, and I support GNU and BSD. I don't appreciate the author labeling Linux users/developers as essentially code thieves and ingrateful hacks.
Finally, the author gives no attention to how old Linux is compared to BSD. Sure, he sites a book proclaiming BSD's 20 year vintage. But does he mention that Linux is barely 10 years old? He seems to neglect the astonishing rate at which Linux has developed, with or without the support of business. Let's wait another 10 years and see how mature and stable and secure Linux is then.
If he wants to caution businesses about implementing Linux, that is fine. Any business *should* weight all the alternatives. Linux does have a long way to go, but it has also come a long way in a short time. It can *only* get better.
I think the author himself should have weighed all the evidence before writing such a flagrantly biased piece.
Nothing can possiblai go wrong. Er...possibly go wrong.
Strange, that's the first thing that's ever gone wrong.
Tyler's words coming out of my mouth.
Interestingly, another major security expert, Bruce Schneier, in his Sept. 15 CRYPTOGRAM , praises Linux for its relative security over Solaris. (Schneier declines even to compare Linux to Windows.)
Schneier attributes Linux's enhanced security to its being open source.
So to say that Linux is insecure gives rise to the question, "Insecure as compared to what?".
Of the three BSD's, OpenBSD is the most secure. It is also Canadian, free from US export restrictions.
Since, as Schneier suggests, open source enhances security and since OpenBSD is the most secure, we might conclude that in some broad sense the term "open source" extends to freedom from export controls as well as freedom from various intellectual property restraints.
Not too bad an article. There's nothing wrong with advocacy, or saying you like something. A couple points though:
-- BSD is not a decendant of the GNU Project. It uses some GNU tools such as gcc, but largely it has an independent lineage.
-- Stability and security. This is the same thing Linux partisans talked about for a long time. The reply was always, "but what about applications and support". Now with the commericalization of Linux, it's the Linux camp bragging about apps and support. This is really where Linux has an edge today.
The contrast between BSD and Linux is the contrast between the Cathedral and the Bazaar. Clearly, Linux development is more anarchic, and one might expect that BSD would have some temporary advantages because of that. However, Richard Gabriel wrote an interesting essay, Worse is Better, explaining why C and Unix had overtaken Lisp, etc. The title is somewhat facetious but the observation is a fine one. The key point (missed, I think, by Gabriel), is not that the weaknesses of C vs. Lisp contributed to its success, but that the "get it working, then get it right" nature, and the openness of C and Unix let it evolve and reach perfection faster than striving for absolute perfection right off would have.
Both approaches have a good deal of merit, and one is not more right than the other. However, I would suspect that Linux will advance at a faster rate than BSD. Perhaps not always in useful directions, perhaps not always doing the One Right Thing, but over time, it will get there.
Currently Linux is actively developed for Alpha, ARM, IA64, x86 (IA32), PPC, MIPS, m68k, and sparc(64). There is also a sh3 port, but I'm not sure how active it is (9 architectures).
NetBSD currently runs on Alpha, m68k, ARM, PPC, ix86 (IA32), MIPS, ns32k, sh3, sparc(64), and vax (10 architectures).
Note these are chip architectures, the "kinds of computers" is much larger. Under NetBSD there are explicit ports to different computers running the same chip, for instance a macppc port and a ofppc port even though they both use PowerPC chips. Linux doesn't differentiate ports like this, so it would appear that Linux is ported to far less machines than NetBSD.
99.5% (give or take) of all exploits for the Linux OS are distribution binary exploits, not kernel exploits.
This means that if you had SSH installed on your box and a security announcement regarding SSH on Linux was put out, chances are you would be vulnerable as well. The real difference is that exploit code examples for Linux are far more common than for *BSD.
I would almost say though that a lot of the daemons *BSD uses are typically higher quality than what the Linux world uses, but nothing really stops someone from packaging say an OpenBSD FTP server with a Linux distribution (I believe Debian does now).
I've seen this argument a lot, but I have yet to see a benchmark performed on any modern kernel. The last benchmark I saw as for a 1.2.x kernel which was quite a while ago.
Linus Torvalds is one of the most anal retentive people on this planet (no offense Linus). You see him all the time rejecting patches because of poor architecture design. Of course, he only handles (for the most part) the intel port & generic linux system, but the other subsystem heads are just as bad.
Really, unless you are a kernel developer (ie, you've had patches accepted), you really can't begin to understand the pain and torture that one has to go through to get a patch accepted, especially when they implement new features
Really, when it all comes down to it, how different is Linux from *BSD? I mean, if you took a *BSD system and stuck a Linux kernel instead of a *BSD kernel and changed any type of incompatibilities... would you think it still inferior?
Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong
--
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.