From: blymn@awadi.com.au (Brett Lymn) Subject: Re: 386bsd, linux: which runs more out of the box Date: 27 Mar 1993 16:43:20
>>>>> On 24 Mar 1993 11:00:37 GMT, malik@dfki.uni-kl.de (Thomas Malik) said:
T> NNTP-Posting-Host: ws-409.dfki.uni-kl.de
T> hwr@snert.ka.sub.org (Heiko W.Rupp) writes:
T> : cgd@erewhon.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Chris G. Demetriou) writes:
T> : >In article <1993Mar23.085058.13670@serval.net.wsu.edu> hlu@luke.eecs.wsu.edu (HJ Lu) writes:
T> : >>Linux can do POSIX, SYSV and most of BSD.
T> :
T> : >(which tends to be fine-tuned per platform), you'll end up
T> : >being able to compile things just as, if not more easily
T> : >under 386bsd...
T> :
T> : There is another thing to consider:
T> : 386bsd has a stable BSD-FFS and stable networking, while there are bugs in
T> : the Linux efs and in their networking.
T> : While most peoble only use Unix Domain IPC and no Internet Domain IPC, the
T> : later is not grave, but the former leads to data loss.
Before I start, there is a big key on the right hand side of your
keyboard, normally labelled enter or return. Using it occaisionally
would be a good idea.
T> 386bsd ? STABLE BSD-FFS ? Hah hah hah ... i used 386bsd for 3/4 a
T> year; and i had to repair my filesystem almost EACH time my system
T> crashed down (and that was fairly often! ).
What is wrong with having to repair a file system after a crash? If
you cache your writes in memory you are always going to be in danger
of having an inconsistent file system on disk after a crash. This is
not just an attribute of the BSD FFS. 386BSD *is* stable, I have used
it for weeks on end without a crash, I expect that linux is the same.
T> I didn't see real bugs in linux efs ( which i use for 4-5 months ).
Lucky you. I have not seen any bugs in the BSD FFS either but
considering number of sites using the code that is not unexpected (I
am NOT just talking 386bsd here). BTW whats the fragmentation like on
your disk?
T> So for me, it's no question which OS to prefer ( but the most
T> important reason why i moved
T> to linux were the missing shared libs in 386BSD, giving me such
T> file sizes as 1/2 MB for xterm , over 120 KB only for this simple -
T> minded xlogo (compared to about 9 KB under linux). My very minimal
T> /usr/X386/bin was over 18 MB big (compared to about 5.5 MB now,
T> including idraw , doc & xv, which are partly statically linked))
*sigh* It seems like this argument comes up all the time. For a
start, 386bsd *can* have shared libs, the patches were posted some
time ago. Personally I would much prefer shared libs that worked
something like Sun's rather than a fixed jump table that forces you to
recompile everything when you make a change to the library. If you
are /really/ cramped for disk space, why not buy another disk?
Considering what it would cost to buy the sort of software that
linuxers and 386bsders are getting for "free" you can get a pretty big
hard disk. IMHO dumping on 386bsd just because of it's size is silly.