thoughts on UNIX and older systems

From: Miles O'Neal <meo_at_netads.com>
Date: Sat Jan 16 18:21:39 1999

Someone said:

|> Linux = DOS
|> FreeBSD = CP/M
|>
|> Therefore, Linux will come to dominate the world. So don't worry.

This is just the sort of silliness I was hoping to avoid.

Then Max Eskin asked...

|I'm sorry, but I don't know the vital distinction between the two, and
|would like to find out. As I understand, Linux is somewhat less secure and
|less stable; but what else? And why is Linux less secure/stable?

98% of what you will hear is just one group bashing the other.
Both have strengths and weaknesses. I am running Linux for
one reason, and one reason only:

   When I needed to get a commercial site up fast on the hardware
   available, *no* BSD implementation available supported the
   onboard SCSI chip the system used. [1] Linux did. I really
   wanted to go with BSD because I *knew* it. But I went with
   Linux, and it's done fine.

My 1.2.8+ [2] Linux kernel has proven plenty stable - slightly more
so, in fact, than the BSD kernel we run on the web/ftp/mail/DNS
server at work. I have now switched to a 1.3.97 kernel, *without
recompiling a single pice of software*, and have had exactly one
problem, which will require recompilation.

But both my Linux system and the BSD system at work easily stay
up for months at a time. How many production NT boxes under a
real load will do that? (And of course a decade ago, smarts SAs
tended to reboot UNIX boxes more often than that, anyway.)

We're switching to Linux at work only because there's more software
available, and we have more knowledge available for Linux than BSD.

-Miles

[1] They encouraged me to write my own driver. In a perfect
    world, sure, but (a) I needed a working OS right then,
    and (b) I was hardly an expert on SCSI driver chips.
[2] patched a fair amount
Received on Sat Jan 16 1999 - 18:21:39 GMT