Slashdot Mirror
Why is BSD Not As Popular As Linux?
hill writes "An article over on Economic Times explains why BSD is as not as popular as Linux. Both use an open-source model, but Linux demands the user community to disclose modifications on its source code, while BSD allows its users to make proprietary changes. The current size of the BSD community is estimated at 2 million, with Linux being around 10 million. This is definately worth the read for anyone interested in comparing the two operating systems. " I'm sure we have a few opinions on the subject.
First, we should look at it this way: there are 12 million people that use a free unix-like operating system. Most if not all opensource applications run equally well on both. One (Linux) is an implementation from scratch, the other (Free/Net/OpenBSD) has royal blood as it is the direct descendant of 4.4BSD which itself descends from Unix. This should keep happy both the new army of coders that like to toy with new concepts, and the traditionalists for whom 30 year old code doesn't mean outdated, but proven and stable. Both points of view can be defended I think. We therefore have 12 million users and users-developers of free unixish applications, that's great and was absolutely unthinkable 10 years ago!
:). Same for NIC drivers usually (hello, donald becker, do comment weird things :-). But the linux kernel is full of good and new ideas.
:) Long and happy life to all the linux and free/open/netbsd hackers, be it kernel or office applications writers :)
As for the technical side, I keep having to look at both the linux and freebsd kernels as part of my work; they are good references. Both have very good parts. I have to say that usually, the solution adopted by FreeBSD is simpler and a lot more commented/documented (take the bogomips case for example; people are starting to wonder what will happen if the cpu speed changes at runtime, how to detect and recalculate it, etc; freebsd spins simply by looking at changes in the hardware clock counter. simpler
So we need both if we want to keep the high standards we are used to have in the free unices now. That was my original point
What I am convinced of, however, is that the BSD's are each a solid piece of work, and each deserves as much attention as Linux has gained lately. It isn't that much work to write software that will run on the BSD's as well a Linux, and I think vendors should be encouraged to support them.
In the end I'll probably keep using Linux, I'm comfortable with it, but I don't want that choice to be based on a lack vendor support for BSD -- we've all had enough of the "one supported OS" syndrome, let's not continue it.
More people are interested in Linux simply because more people are interested in Linux. It's sort of like a rolling ball of snow; Linux is collecting more people as it goes. So are the BSDs but they are a little behind right now.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
There is no billion dollar IPO backing the hype about BSD.
The hype will come when:
1) There is a billion dollar BSD IPO.
2) When the BSD community starts explaining the biggest advantage of the BSD licence to Multinational corporations. That advantage is, you can choose to HIDE your own source code if you wish. (Get them to at least start supporting OpenSource. Once they find its not as bad as Microsoft says, they will keep coming back for more. Like drugs...the first hit, we'll give ya free.)
3) Some cleaver BSDers (Hi Pat!) start whispering in Wall Streets ears "Feel that you mised out on the Linux IPO frenzy? Take heart, here is BSD...the next big IPO launchpad. It runs Linux binaries, its OpenSourced, AND the licencing difference over Linux doesn't cause the heads of the lawyers in your IP departments to spin about."
When the first IPO of BSD is successful, then you will see the people who use Linux instead of the word OpenSource, refer to BSD as OpenSource...and Linux also. And, the more OpenSource is out there, the better for BSD, Linux, Apache, Sendmail, vi,
NO CARRIER
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
1. Time. BSD was held back by the ATT lawsuit and Linux already had so much mindshare when that was over.
2. The BSD license doesn't enforce the quid-pro-quo. This is a real sticking point for me personally. When I put a lot of work into something, I like to be a partner in a free software development, not someone's unpaid employee dupe. But I feel like a dupe when somebody takes that work private, makes proprietary modifications to my work and doesn't return their modifications to me or the other free software authors who gave him our work.
Unfortunately, history shows that without a license requirement the return of code doesn't happen. Most of the workstation Unix systems are BSD-derived (although these days there is more System V in there) and all of their X servers are derived from software under a very similar license to the BSD. Try to get the source code for those systems. Sun only released its modifications to the BSD system recently, 10 years late, and then under a license that would not allow their reincorporation into the BSD system as free software! Most other workstation manufacturers didn't bother to release source at all.
So, I am more likely to put work into a GPL project. It is possible to take the BSD system and GPL it. The new BSD license and the GPL are compatible, and you can GPL all new work that you do, and in general establish a GPL source thread. But that would annoy a lot of the long-time BSD folks.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Yes, but we all have to agree that both camps are adequately staffed with a bunch of radicals who will give you one hundred reasons why their brand is superior.
When, for instance, they both run EMACS, VI, Apache, and loads of other GNU software.
I think that if you don't like the look of the "alternative alternative operating system", A)Your information is out of date B)Wait 6 months and see if it has what you want C)What, you're using a MAC!!!
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
The answer is so obvious is isn't a wonder that we are missing it: Linux is more popular than BSD because Oreilly has published more books that pertain to Linux.
I mean, we all know that the only way we ever learn anything is by reading an Oreilly book.
This applies somewhat to users and to an extreme with developers. As a user, a question revealing that you don't know UNIX, not just *BSD, is enough to have you shouted out the door. As a developer, unless you're a 20 year BSD veteran, suggest an idea or ask where you can begin to help and you should be prepared to be stomped on. Hard and repeatedly. Largely by many of the project principals.
Review some of Matt Dillon's contributions to FreeBSD in the mailing lists. He's repeatedly helped to pull large portions of FreeBSD up to and even past their Linux equivalents. Then consider the rationale behind the community's treatment of him.
A similar type of treatment resulted in the split of NetBSD and OpenBSD. Again, reviewing their mailing list archives shows that this kind of childish animosity and cliquish cult behavior abounds.
To the contrary, it takes all of five minutes to find something to do for Linux and to find a mentor who will help you find your way to the in crowd the first few times you've got a core-level contribution to make. They give you the benefit of the doubt as a new contributor, reviewing and considering your contribution, not your credentials or your ability/willingness to pose as a BSD veteran long enough to be heard.
Frankly, it's surprising that this group exists outside of acedemia at all.
I suspect the real reasons for GNU/Linux's popularity over the BSDs are historical rather than technical. The BSDs were bogged down in legal battles at a critical time, a time when GNU/Linux systems were less mature but starting to take off. If not for that, 90% of the GNU/Linux geeks would probably be BSD geeks today.
BSD has been around for a long time in the academic world, but it hasn't had the massive user-coder base that Linux developed fairily quickly (This is the true genious of Linus). So it has been maintained AFAIK by a small group of people. BSD isn't as userfriendly as Linux, because that small group of pelple is more interested in the development of BSD than in helping newbies.
Some BSD distros are really tough to install -- things like making your own boot disks from scratch for certain systems etc specifically because they want to discourage lusers from bugging them about it.
So in general BSD is smaller because it is smaller -- there is not as big a user/developer community as there is for Linux, hence less development and exposure...
As the OSS model starts to take more and more market share, BSD will develop a a strong competitor for Linux, especially in professionally administrated systems. This is a good thing -- competition provides for improvement. For example if this occurs we may see companies providing BSD service contracts, and improved security for linux.
As self-fufilling prophecies go, this is another one. BSD continues to be less known, because it is less known. Over half of those same college undergrads I knew in computer science and engineering got hands on experience with Linux before they graduated, myself included.
BSD continued to languish in the realms of unknown software.
Many of the undergrads went out into the work force and are now doing jobs where they can at least provide knowledgable input about Linux. Many of them went to find jobs specifically where they could work on Linux systems. There was no similarly large pool of individuals who knew BSD amongst the dozens of fellow students I knew, including the systems operators (I was one) for our UNIX systems, or much in the faculty. Perhaps a few people seemed knowledgable about BSD, but they didn't talk about it much, because people knew more about and were already interested in Linux.
For the most part, colleges provide the ground where our next generations of individuals in the computer industry learn UNIX-based OS's and determine what technologies they will bring to their initial workplaces. If BSD is as absent from most colleges as it was from mine, BSD won't catch on, because many of the people who would use it will not know about it.
B. Elgin
B. Elgin
"Read at your own risk; feel free to ignore."
The first free version of BSD (Networking Release 2) was distributed in June 1991, but got tied up in lawsuits from 1992 to 1994. By the time that was cleared up, early versions of Linux were already available.
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
Yes, I fully agree that *BSD has numerous merits and that this is something that could easially be flamebait. However, Linux is just a bit ahead of the game (most likely due to the ATT crap), and it has caught the media attention. Its one thing when something comes out of a university, but when "the young finnish student created his own operating system because he didn't like what was out there" grabs peoples' attention, it seems to be a more heartwarming story.
Ok, now let's look at this part about the "heartwarming". Yes, we as techies like to look at things for their technical merit, not their popularity. As I said above, they are both quite good and nitpicking is justified, but almost pointless. Wall Street knows about BSD, but they just don't really care. There are no Red Hats or VA Linux companies for *BSD, and Microsoft doesn't acknowledge *BSD (from what I've seen; tell me otherwise, please). I remember a few months back reading in the Wall Street Journal an article on how "If you thought Linux was the underdog, BSD is underground". People have read about it. They don't care.
I guess I could rant about this for a while, and I'm sure people will flame and argue with this. The point I'm getting to is that Linux just has the head start on the public eye, and it is simply the center of a lot of attention. *BSD may be better than Linux. Linux may be better than *BSD. However, they're both quite good and certainly much better than that software from Redmond. RedHat and VA have both brought Linux to the public attention. I fear, however, that if there is a 'Red Hat BSD', it will just confuse people; it could turn out to be a good thing, but it could also just bring us back to the 80s when there were 20 different platforms and little in the way of 'cross platform' standards.
Rant, rant, rant. I better stop before I talk in circles
--
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
Initially Linux is decipherable with IRC help, mailing lists and on-line docs. Whereas, BSD takes some previous understanding and the man pages on BSD assume Unix know-how. The LDP HOWTOs are written for the uninitiated and that is a major reason why Linux appeals to people more.
This whole Unix rebirth is very new. So people new to Unix will choose Linux first. Once they realize there is something objectively more mature for advanced purposes, they may consider a switch.
I started out learning Unix by trying out the various Linuxes. Now I've settled on OpenBSD b/c security a huge issue for my business. And my level of security must be high. That is not so for other people. While I'm a huge proponent of security and privacy I feel most people can be by with their Windows computers if they have a good firewall/ip-masquerading gateway installed that runs either Debian (most secure Linux), FreeBSD or OpenBSD. With the growth of the home LAN, such a configuration is a no-brainer and you can install it on some relic of a PC that you thought could only have been used as a door stop.
If people want to try a more stable desktop system; I usually will configure a system with KDE and FreeBSD or Debian for them. In terms of application capability they are about the same so it boils down to the person's taste in licencing features.
But for someone who wants to go it alone and install and learn as one goes, I recommend something easy to install like Corel Linux or Caldera Linux (no not Red Hat which I recommend for the corporate environment).
If a company came along that made a BSD easy to install and use it would be a truly awesome product; that is what Darwin and MacOS X is all about and they are awesome but expensive. If you have the money for Apple's new OS, the advantages for using a BSD based system speak for themselves after you've used them for a while. Unix gurus don't need convincing. They either only run BSD because it's 'real' Unix or they only run Linux because the GPL is preferrable. The arguments about Linux having more applications and better hardware support are, of course, silly because if that is the basis for an argument then we'd all be using Windows instead.
The bottom line for new users is documentation that's easy to access and meant for them and an install process that people perceive as easy (i.e., it has a GUI). Linux has it and BSD doesn't.
Shrug. I could really care less if it's more popular or not. It works wonderfully for me, and at the time that I switched from Linux, it worked much better. Popularity be damned.
I've contributed a few ports to FreeBSD. I contribute in the little ways that I can because I believe in BSD and know that if no-one contributed at all, BSD would indeed die. (In the BSD-kernelled Debian threads, someone seemed to think that BSD was dying ``because of its license''. I would challenge that by asking them if ``not dying'' means ``growing to an unmanageable size''.) By the same token, if contributions to Linux stopped, Linux would die.
I believe in BSD because it works, and because the source code is open (though some seem to think that anything non-GPL'd is not ``open'' -- we need not rehash those arguments here.) I can do with it what I want.
The community spirit of BSD ensures -- without encumbrance of license -- that BSD will be around as long as there are still people working on it.
The article contends that Linux is not as sophisticated as BSD. While I agree that certain features of BSD might be more advanced (e.g. from a brief chat with one of the NetBSD folks, the UVM sounds cool), Linux is braving uncharted water in a number of previously shunned areas (I was stunned to find, for example, that I can choose to enable a kernel-based static http server in my Linux kernel as of 2.3.x). This willingness to break with UNIX tradition is what sets Linux apart, and frankly is the reason that many of us like it.
I also like BSD (I was a huge fan of 4.2, back when Ultrix was 4.2 with the serial numbers filed off). BSD has a tradition of stability and innovation that is hard to match, and look forward to a world where BSD and Linux are equal participants in the operating system development community. But can we stop pretending that one OS is "better" than another, and focus on which OS is right for a given task/environment?
1)FreeBSD aims to be a stable production exnviroment while Linux is more "Bleeding Edge" development enviroment.
2)FreeBSD is still relatively unknown , since its distrobution was restricted for a long time due to the AT&T lawsuits. Linux did not have any lawsuits to contend with. So for a long time it was only free UNIX-type system available
3)As a result of lack of knowledge about FreeBSD not much commercial software is available for it. Linux has a growing amount of commercial software for it.
4)As a result of a smaller user base, FreeBSD is less likely to have drivers for brand-new boards than linux.
some of these points may not help this discussion at all but I sure hope some do
Buying a Dell computer is equivalent to dropping the soap in a prison shower.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
And all of these things will run, mostly without modification, on BSD.
Who cares which kernel is used! That's a small (but very important) part of the whole picture. The important thing is that we are rapidly developing more and more user-space stuff that will run on any modern UNIXy platform -- whether its Linux, FreeBSD, or the Hurd.
Linux's success helps to insure BSD's long term viability. Don't forget it. From some stuff I've seen, I gather that the core *BSD teams are well aware of it.
-- Slashdot sucks.
A nice theory, but people don't. Linux is normally pronounced by the great unwashed with two syllables, although Europeans tend to pronounce it differently than Americans. BSD, three syllables. Just like the Net is one syllable (three in French, but at least it's shorter than most words).
Spiff it up, give it a new name, a plush toy that won't poke kid's eyes out, and you've got marketing acceptance. Stick to the computerese and it loses points.
Sigh.
People frequently mistake my descriptions of reality for my personal opinion as to How Things Should Be - this is what I'm saying, not What Should Be.
Will in Seattle
Hah! Proof that complaining about Slashdot doesn't work: JonKatz will be right back after this short break...
No offense, but didnt you read the article? The point was not that BSD is superior or inferior to Linux. It was that fewer people are contributing to it.
Yes, applications written for Linux may run on BSD and vice-versa. But the catch really is the license. If NT were as stable as *BSD or Linux, do you think that the development community would switch over to NT? No way - and this is because of the license.
Note that the user community might switch over - but that isnt the point. When we talk of contributions, its the development community that we are talking about.Now, if the BSD license was changed to make a closed source distribution impossible, then you would see contributions increasing tremendously.
PS : The story to which we are commenting is a bit confused in that the writer is unable to distinguish between the development community and the user community. Linux achieved a bigger user community because of features provided by a bigger development community.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
3. Linux supported IDE long before *BSD did, and these were the inexpensive drives that the masses had.
To that, I would add, now that Linux is way ahead,
4. Linux is way ahead in market share, and just like the internal combustion engine, the incandescent bulb, Microsoft OSes, and other less than optimal technologies, once a product is entrenched with sales networks, R&D networks, customer support networks, etc., it takes a vast improvement in the underlying technology to overturn the economic advantage of sticking with the status quo.
Any open sourced kernel offered just that sort of advantage over windows (to developers) and with the internet paradigm shift to vastly increase the numbers of servers, open source (especially of unix) on the commodity platform offered a compelling enough functionality jump to create the new market/new standard. But since Linux won the initial sprint, expect it to continue its hegemony. The BSDs have a chance of gaining share by being very compatible and utilizing highly transferable skills, so all is not lost for them, but things are often the way they are for many small good reasons, not by random chance, nor for one reason.
I will attempt not to fall into the dreaded "*BSD vs. various distributions of Linux" flamebait here. Here's my story:
;-). Needless to say, that box is still running Open (uptime is nearly 500 days!), and I'm rather impressed by its ability to simply reject repeated exploits and intrusions.
;-) machine for the "good stuff" and a NT4 machine for gaming.
I'm still primarily a NT user. Why? Better IDE, more game support and more robust (not to mention widespread) hardware support. However, many, many moons ago I began the Slackware trek. Its simplicity and stability (courtesy of Linus's kernel, of course) really impressed me. I installed a few servers out of curiosity and promptly forgot about them. Four or five months later I realized that they were still running strong (given the requisite `kill ` that one must force on some runaway thread). This was utterly positive; I was used to checking my computers daily to ensure they were still running. Additionally, I noticed that performance wasn't hampered as much as under NT when more users connected or accessed the mounts. Thus, Linux became the fileserver OS.
A few short months later I installed my first copy of FreeBSD (2.7?), again, just out of curiosity. I setup ircd, nfsd, a few other daemons and went on vacation. When I returned, needless to say, ircd (known for its uncanny ability to split) was still running. Of course the other parts of the installation were doing just fine. So when I was called to do a security-apparent job, I tried OpenBSD. Perhaps I was entrigued by the entire "secure by default" mentality (or was it the line-by-line auditing?
Linux has never failed me, nor has *BSD. My limited experience does not qualify me to say that *BSD is any more able to handle mission-critical jobs than Linux, but I will say this: the degree of success that surrounds Walnut Creek is simply amazing. If a site that handles unimaginable daily traffic can withstand attacks and impatient ftp'ers, then I can trust its mission-critical status.
I now use two primary machines: a FreeBSD 3.4 (just made world a few nights ago!
Waah!!! The links to the graphics are broken. I can't see it.... :)
-BrentThanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Let me start off by saying that my first exposure to *nix was 4.2BSD on a VAX-11/780 back in 1985. I spent the remainder of the 1980's using 4.2, 4.3 and 4.3-Tahoe on various VAXen as well as SunOS on Sun 3's. While I also played with other UNIXes such as Ultrix, HP/UX, A/UX, Xenix, Venix and AT&T SVR2 and SVR3 in those days, BSD was my primary platform.
In the early 1990's I spent a lot of time with various SVR3 derived commercial UNIXes including Motorola's SVR3 on 88000 machines and AIX on RT's and RS/6000's. While still *nix, I pined for a lot of things that were missing compared to BSD. By late 1992 I was back to SunOS 4.1.x on Sparc which was more to my liking.
The main reason I chose Linux over *BSD is back in 1993 when *BSD and Linux were first coming to my attention and I was able to scrape together enough cast-off parts and $$$ to hack together a decent enough box (a 386DX-20) to run them, I couldn't get *BSD to run on the junk hardware I had. Linux, on the other hand worked. With the olvwm window manager I was astounded how well it made a clunky PC look and act like a SparcStation running SunOS.
Nowdays I use Solaris on Sparc at work (and some at home, although my primary home platform is Linux and my home SparcStations are all old and slow models) and I could afford to run *BSD as well as Linux at home (I've got dozens of machines), and I do occasionally load one of the *BSDs onto a box to see how things are coming along. I really have nothing against *BSD. If Linux didn't exist, or if it ever somehow falls apart, I will certainly look at switching to one of the *BSDs.
But I have to say that Linux for me has the comfort level now, after six years, I've spent more time with it than any other *nix family. Every time I have tried the *BSDs lately, I just haven't been able to find a compelling reason that would lead me to pick one of them over Linux. Linux still seems to have a better combination of hardware support, easier installation and wider software availability. Mind that the *BSDs aren't really that far behind, but without any real compelling advantage, it is just enough of a subtle turnoff to keep me complacent.
Well, there it is, just one person's opinion. Take it for what it's worth and with a grain or three of salt.
For the various posts that seem to be interested in the BSD release timeline, here is how it went:
:) Rather trust the book "the design and implementation of the 4.4BSD operating system" by marshall kirk mckusick et al.
1977: 1BSD (based on UNIX time-sharing system sixth edition from Bell)
1978: 2BSD (based on 1BSD)
1979: 3BSD (based on 2BSD and 32V which itself was derived from unix seventh edition)
mid-79: 4.0BSD (derived from 3BSD)
1981: 4.1BSD (derived from 4.0BSD)
1982: 4.1aBSD
1983: 4.1cBSD (not based on System V)
1984: 4.2BSD (not based on System V release 2); SunOS is based on it.
1986: 4.3BSD
1988: 4.3BSD-Tahoe
1990: 4.3BSD-Reno
1991: NET/2 (386BSD spun from it)
mid-1992: NetBSD 0.8 spawns from NET/2
1993: FreeBSD 1.0 spins from 386BSD as well
mid-1993: 4.4BSD
1994: 4.4BSD lite 1
1995: FreeBSD 2.0, 4.4BSD Lite-2, BSDI 2.0 spin from 4.4BSD lite 1
Note that I'm a linux person, so don't hold me accountable for those dates
Linux of course appeared in 1991.
You missed out the most important reason : the BSD licence.
Think about it : the Linux developers are just as smart as the BSD developers. The BSD movement also had the advantage that they were a mature operating system at the time Linux was a blip on the horizon. So why didnt the BSD movement gain as many developers as Linux did? Simply because the license was unattractive to them.
Some people also say that the centralized committee nature of BSD is a detractment. Bosh! Linux also has the same committee nature where a patch doesnt appear in a distribution unless it has been blessed by the core developers and / or Linus. The only difference is that this committee is not as formalized as the *BSD committees.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
I also am a kernel programmer, and like getting the source code to all components of my system.
The OS most often running on my home machine is FreeBSD. I have full source code to the kernel and to all components of my system.
Liking the idea of getting the source code to every app on your system is not a reason to prefer a Linux distribution to {Free,Net,Open}BSD; it's a reason to prefer an open-source OS - such as a Linux distribution or {Free,Net,Open}BSD - to a closed-source OS.
(Note also that having Linux is not only not necessary if you want source to every app on your system, it's not sufficient, either - you have to avoid installing third-party apps that aren't open-source, which are available for Linux and {Free,Net,Open}BSD as well as for closed-source OSes.)
Generally BSD used UFS, but free varients are now incorperating SoftUpdates into the filesystem. I've been told that for the most part, UFS is slightly slower than ext2, but safer. The main reason is because ext2 doesn't sync as often, though both can be tweaked either for the speed or for the safety. Softupdates will do the same as a JFS for Linux, so both systems can have safe and speedy filesystems.
I haven't seen to much of an explanation of softupdates, only on McKusick's page.
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
If moderation extended to articles I'd mark this one down Score -1: Flamebait. Not necessarily because it's inflammatory in and of itself (although the last comment was practically asking the soapboxers to come out of the woodwork), but because we've all seen this ground hashed over again, again, and again: "BSD license sucks! Disinfect the GPV! BSD==Proprietary! GPL==Commie Facists! BSD users are elitist jerks! Linux users are clueless idiots! BSD is k00l! Linux is k00l!" /. to try for a little more discretion in posting articles and to try to cut a little of the hype and bullbaiting. Not that the odds are in favor of this occuring..
I've browsed the first few comments and found that, unsurprisingly, they say nothing that hasn't already been repeated ad nauseum. I'd like to ask
Luck,
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Licensing is not the cause. Linux runs lots of software using BSD-type licenses (Apache has a similar license, IIRC), and that hasn't driven anyone away except for the die-hard zealots (who are in the minority). The real cause is a lack of support, and that needs to be addressed before BSD starts garnering popularity.
Perhaps it can be addressed with commercial *BSD distributions, more *BSD web sites, or maybe just a new mindset in the community - perhaps the *BSD users don't want popularity. But the conditions won't change until the support arrives.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
No, not particularly. I know a number of people who've been using various Linux distributions for quite a while - i.e., they haven't "graduated from Linux to *BSD" - and people who've been using BSD for a while, but haven't personally seen a significant amount of movement in either direction.
I'd like to see a very broad survey before I drew any conclusions about people moving from Linux to *BSD. The evidence people have presented seems largely anecdotal....
It really shouldn't matter which you use. All the interesting source is open, so doing a BSD-like dist of Linux (slakware?) or a Linux-like dist of BSD should be quite possible. I've found porting C code between two UNIX systems is relatively straight forward. At this point BSD seems to be able to run Linux binaries as well. So what does it really matter?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
At most, they quote somebody from Novell India as saying that "The reason why it is not as popular as Linux is the lack of commercial support".
There's no place I can see where they attribute the difference in popularity to the license. I see a place where they make the factual statement that the BSDL and GPL are different, but I see nowhere anything in the article claiming that this is the reason for a difference in popularity - the sentence after the one about the license difference might, at most, be suggesting that, as a result of the license difference, "the BSD operating system" (although they don't say which particular flavor of BSD - one of the free ones, or BSD/OS) is inside some firewalls (however, there are plenty of "appliances" with Linux Inside, as well; some even have, I think, proprietary code in them, even if it's not in the kernel).
Well, first of all, Network Appliance doesn't run BSD on their boxes (I joined the software engineering group at NetApp when there were about 7 or 8 people in the group, and I'm still there, so I know what I'm talking about here) - we use the BSD networking stack, and various BSD commands, but it took a fair bit of work with a chainsaw to fit them into our environment (which is a kernel-mode-only, single-address-space OS that would probably not be completely unfamiliar in its innards to a BSD developer, but which is very much not a BSD kernel).
Second of all, there are also embedded boxes that use Linux, e.g. Cobalt's boxes, and, I'm sure, plenty of others.
As for whether Linux is "flakey and not meant for real world use", there are Web sites using it, there are places (including, err, umm, Network Appliance, Inc.) where people use it on their desktops and on their compute servers (most of our compute servers are running Solaris or Digital UNIX, but there is one Linux PC, and there will probably be more over time), and so on. People seem to manage to use it in "the real world" even if it's "not meant for real world use".
This is the US of A. It dosnt matter who is right-It matters who has the most $$$.
A very cynical view not born out by fact. Examples:
STAC vs. Microsoft - Microsoft loses.
Apple Records vs. Apple Computer - Apple Computer Loses.
Dow Corning vs. various private parties. Dow Corning now bankrupt.
Phillip-Morris vs. various private parties - Phillip Morris loses.
Johns-Manville vs. various private parties - Johns Manville bankrupt.
McDonald's vs. old lady who spills coffee - McDonalds loses.
Exxon Corp (Oil Spill) vs. various parties - Exxon loses.
Hooker Chem vs. Love Canal residents - Hooker Chem no longer exists.
GAF vs. Woburn MA residents. - GAF loses.
man who invents intermittant wipers vs. Ford. Ford loses.
A number of these cases are quite questionable as to whether the large company did anything really wrong.
While money allows you to buy a lot of nice fancy lawyers, jurys have a heavy bias against large corporations. If you go into a lawsuit against somebody like the Free Software Foundation you are in trouble right from the beginning.
...which would also be true of {Free,Open,Net}BSD, as you have the source code.
...which is also often true of {Free,Net,Open}BSD as well.
Umm, how quickly do things happen in, say, the 2.2[.x] Linux kernel tree, as opposed to the 2.3[.x] tree? You appear to get at least some choice of "bleeding-edge" vs. "stable" there...
...and you also do with FreeBSD (and possibly the other BSDs), by going with the "-current" tree if you want to be on the bleeding edge or going with a "-stable" release if you don't.
That has nothing to do with adopting features, it has to do with whether they're available for the open-source BSDs to adopt - and there appear to be people contributing stuff back to the BSDs, e.g. Whistle have contributed a number of things to FreeBSD.
Well, maybe. Perhaps the ISA PnP tools, or the ISA PnP kernel patch, for Linux can be made tow work as well as the ISA PnP support has worked for me on my box (it handles my PnP ISA sound card just fine - no, I do not want a PCI sound card, I'd rather leave my PCI slots available for cards such as networking and SCSI cards), but the PnP ISA patch didn't work very well on the 2.0[.x] kernel on my Debian partition (I could've debugged it, but didn't particularly have any interest in doing so, as it Just Worked on FreeBSD), and it wasn't clear whether I'd have to update some config file to use the ISA PnP tools (I could've dug into that, but didn't particularly have any interest in doing so, as it Just Worked on FreeBSD).
I.e., I don't think it's as clear-cut as you describe - you can do bleeding-edge stuff with FreeBSD (and perhaps the other ones) if you want, and you can do trailing-edge stable stuff with Linux if you want. (Note: "trailing-edge" is not being used as a pejorative here; heck, I don't run "-current" on my home machine, as I'm primarily using it for development of stuff for the Ethereal network analyzer, and for surfing/reading mail/etc., so I'm reasonably happy to be somewhat on the trailing edge.)
The distributions of software from the University of California at Berkeley were called "Berkeley Software Distribution"(s).
A company named Berkeley Software Design, Inc. sells a commercial OS - called "BSD/OS", not "BSDI" - based on the BSD 4.4-Lite source.
I think he's trying to imply that they may have adopted it now, but rejected it originally.
The CVS tree seems to imply that it may have been in FreeBSD at least as far back as 2.0, however; the comment from the initial checkin, with a date of Mon Sep 19 15:41:43 1994 UTC, says "Obtained from: NetBSD", so NetBSD may have had it even longer.
No one seems to have mentioned that this article is shot full of errors. The first one's in the first paragraph: BSD stands for Berkeley Software Distribution. The company BSDI changed the D to Design, for their company name only.
...so long as the other guy has this license too."). Those two years were all it took to give Linux the edge. Linux was at that time clearly less stable than BSD, which had had fifteen years to get the kinks out. But Linux was freely available and BSD wasn't. That made all the difference. I daresay that in those days the only contribution of the GPL (and it was a minimal contribution) was negative. Several largish institutions (including, as I recall, Purdue University) wouldn't let GPL software onto their campuses because their lawyers got wind of the GPL, read it, said, "We have no idea what this would really mean in court. Don't you dare go there." And, let's face it, while you can't have a software revolution without thousands of individuals pushing things at a grass-roots level, that isn't enough. Big institutions have to pick it up and support it, too, or the revolution doesn't happen. The GPL has, arguably, been of assistance in preventing some large corporations from forking private versions of Linux, but it has been of no assistance in convincing large institutions to adopt the software in the first place. Quite the reverse.
Bill Joy didn't write free UNIX. He wrote a lot of code, but Sam Leffler, Kirk McKusick, Keith Bostic et al. are not exactly slouches either. Not to mention the whole effort was overseen on a continuing basis by a design board of academics chosen by DARPA. You like the socket interface? Thank DARPA's board. They pounded Bill Joy really hard (probably for the first time in his career) until he "got it" that most of the brilliant things CSRG came up with originally had been tried and rejected by them severally at their own institutions. The Berkeley socket mechanism was the result of several go-rounds of this sort of thing.
Here's another. "When Berkeley stopped funding the project..." Hoo-hah. Berkeley never funded the project. DARPA did. They did it because they got tired of paying all of their research institutions in parallel just to support their computing environments: they wanted a stable base of Internet code that would be used by everybody, and they figured they'd pay for it just until commercial versions became viable. When the Internet took off the funding stopped. CSRG hung on for a year or two looking for other funding, didn't find any, and folded. There was a tag end of work there, by the way: 30,000 lines of OSI networking code (think X.25 & Co.) was inserted. I think it's probably gone by now, but it left its mark in the data structures, at least.
Then there's that amazing quotation: "In terms of sophistication, the BSD operating system is better than Linux. What flame-bait. This was definitely true in earlier days, but these days it's probably a push, for most applications. I believe that BSD may be better for truly huge server installations, but in comparison with the total installed base, this isn't a very high percentage.
Looking back, I think the history of Linux and BSD can be compared with current theories of the early universe. Very small things result in huge differences later on. Frankly, I don't think the preponderance of Linux over BSD has squat to do with licenses. The BSD system was designed in an encumbered environment, with everyone under license. It took two years in court to get out from under the AT&T license, which was the exact opposite of free software ("You can exchange software freely!
I grew up in a BSD world. (Truth in advertising: I was on that DARPA board.) I recommend FreeBSD for really large server applications. For smaller outfits, and for desktops, I recommend Linux enthusiastically. Not for the GPL, on which I'm neutral (now THAT makes me a rarity, I think!), but for the ease of acquisition, the base of available software, and the size of the support community. (My understanding is that ease of installation for many of the Linux distributions has a ways to go yet, at least compared to FreeBSD.)
Those actively involved in development know that GPL or not, Linux and the BSD movement trade software back and forth all the time, freely, openly, and in an atmosphere of mutual support. The bigots for one side or the other are, in the main, out of the loop. I hope it stays that way.
Oh, you mean the discussion that includes
i.e., that Linux later accepted the change:
As for "others can be found elsewhere", please give references - perhaps they're also not bad implementations.
That is just bullshit, who decides not to use BSD because they have to add a comment about the original authors.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
2,000,000 is an awfully big number of users. In no sense does it represent any kind of failure.
Frankly I'm stunned by the swift rise of FreeBSD - I thought nothing would ever touch the success of the Linux movement. Being a relatively new Linux convert I'm willing to admit that I suffered from a kind of parochialism with respect to FreeBSD - when I heard news of it I kind of wanted not to hear it because, hey, I've already found the answer and it's Linux, right?
I think I'm probably not alone in that: many of you probably have the same feelings (you know who you are:) Recently though my attitude towards the BSDs has changed from a kind of jealousy to admiration and respect. A lot of that has been due to the sympathetic and interesting coverage on Slashdot. A larger part of it is the obvious truth that there's a lot to respect technically in the BSD's - look at the security audits just for one thing. I now see the BSD's as another tool in the toolbox - it's what I'll do when I need a slimmer, tighter box that doesn't necessarily have to get all dressed up to kill.
Now, I don't seriously believe that the BSD's will ever pass Linux in popularity, for reasons that are set out nicely in your article and are beaten to death elsewhere in this thread. But neither do I believe that there is room in this world for only one open OS, especially when they are interoperable. The BSD's will help us achieve world domination. They are but one more division in the open source army.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
That part showed up after that issue of KT came out; I don't know whether it showed up after I checked it earlier today or not (I'd assumed that issues of KT are invariant after publication, and I saw that issue before the note was added).
Some stuff in the FreeBSD archive indicates that they may have decided that the unlock optimization couldn't be done that way, either, although I'd have to plow through a ton of -current code and, perhaps, CVS logs to see exactly what they did do - see this message, for example, and this message.
(And, the hypothesis in, as I remember, one of the linux-kernel messages nonwithstanding, the FreeBSD folk do have P6 machines - some of Matt's timing experiments were, as I remember, done on a Pentium III.)
The comment in the code also suggests that it might be useful to have a way of building a kernel without the lock, if it truly can be removed on all but the early PPro's to which the comment refers.
I would really like to see such a Slashdot poll
I bought BSD/Linux because
My personal guess is that only those who actually program might rank the type of open source license so high that it influenced their decision. And these are a minority, I believe, maybe ranking in the ten thousands but not in the millions.
As I see it, there are a few reasons...
1) PR. Not that BSD has bad PR. It just doesn't get as much of it as Linux does. Most people have at least heard of Linux, but you don't hear about BSD in the media very often. You can't use what you don't know exists.
2) The license. Say what you will, but the non-quid-pro-quo has a lot of disadvantages, not the least of which is that it discourages development by independent authors. Look at it this way: a commercial company can do whatever it wants with BSD-licensed software, make it proprietary, and make a ton of money off the stuff (witness Solaris). Corporations have nothing to fear from BSD, the way they do GPL. An independent author could theoretically do this, but it's not practical; one person simply doesn't have the marketing power of a corporation and thus isn't going to be able to profit. Therefore, the independent author has no real choice but to keep his code free and Open-Source. This tips the balance of power, and means that independent authors usually end up working, in effect, as unpaid coders for the companies that leech off of BSD's work.
3) Fragmentation. The fragmentation of BSD really isn't that bad. But it is there; you have three major versions (FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD) and a few others (Darwin could, in a way, be considered one, though it's hardly a major variant at this point in time). Is this a Bad Thing? No. It's not good, but it's not bad. But it does scare most bosses. It scares them enough so that it doesn't take much extra FUD to sway their decisions (unless the bosses know what they're talking about, in which case it takes considerably more effort).
Is BSD a bad system? Hardly; I don't have very much experience with BSD but I like what I've seen so far (though I think I'll stick with Linux all the same). But it does have a few issues. Linux does too; don't get me wrong, no OS is perfect, and they both have some way to go. It just happens that, for now, Linux is farther ahead. That might change, or it might not. Either way, it keeps things from being dull.
While I really enjoy using Linux and have no inclination to "jump" to BSD myself... I'm also of the opinion that BSD deserves some attention. Great to see it hit the shelves too.
Ah, yes. GNU advocacy at it's finest. Makes me so proud to use Linux. After all, there was no such thing as Free Software until the concept mythically sprouted from the forehead of Richard Stallman. Since then we have been freed from the bondage of, of, of... non-GNU software.
After all, the GPL demands that all those who use gcc must worship Richard Stallman.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
"The unwritten rule of the BSDL seems to be "you can make a proprietary version, but not a GPL'd version""
The reason for this is that the GPL extends to third parties, the "viral" clauses in other words. No other license that I am aware of, proprietary or otherwise, does this (except for those few derived from the GPL). BSDL developers have no desire whatsoever to impose anything on third parties.
However, there is nothing preventing you from copylefting your mods to BSD code. Just don't expect it to get rolled back into the source tree. If GNU will refuse, or even sue, those who would return modifications under BSDL, why should BSDL behave any differently?
"They seem to resent the fairness we insist on."
Enforced fairness is not fair. It is impossible to commit a moral act if you have no choice. If you choose to use a fairness enforcing license, that is your choice, but by making on airs of moral superiority by doing so is utter hypocrisy. That's like calling taxation charity.
"Perhaps they're trolling for work from naive coders.."
Okay, now I'm completely offended! My actions are my own, and it's none of your damn business what they are. It's interesting how Stallmanistas rant on and on about freedom, but once someone makes a free and conscious choice, they call us dupes and knaves. You guys don't know the first thing about freedom.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned