Impressions: FreeBSD vs Linux
Brant Katkansky
and although most of my experiences have been positive, I felt that Linux was
lacking in some areas, so I decides to look at FreeBSD.
So, I ftp'd FreeBSD-1.0 (binary and source) off freebsd.cdrom.com and installed it.
I found it to be very easy to install, despite my limited UNIX experience. I did
have to juggle a few of my Linux filesystems around to make room, but once
that was accomplished, I had few problems.
I am using a AHA-1542B controller, with existing partitions, so I had top specify
the disk geometry rather than using the defaults. No problem, except that the
first time I installed, I couldn't create the /usr filesystem. As it turns
out, I had entered the wrong cylinder count for my first drive (I had included
an extra cylinder). So, I reinstalled. Since I had the binary distribution
on a DOS filesystem, this was fast and painless. Twenty minutes later I had
a working FreeBSD system happily co-existing with Linux and DOS.
My initial impressions of how FreeBSD compares to the Slackware 1.1.1 release
of Linux are as follows:
* Linux includes more frills, FreeBSD doesn't include any support for news,
or a decent mail reader. Also some of the GNU utilities that I prefer (such
as less) aren't included. This isn't a huge problem, just download the source
and compile it.
* I like the FreeBSD source distribution better. Although the source for
all the Linux utilities are available, hunting them down can be a problem.
* Speaking of sources, I had trouble compiling some things under Linux, compiling
them under BSD seems to be simpler. I'm no C guru, and I think that compiling
for a "standard" BSD UNIX is easier than Linux. Just MHO, of course.
* FreeBSD has a more polished look and feel. Linux definately looks and feels
like a beta product. FreeBSD seems to have consistancy where Linux does not.
The only real problem I have right now with FreeBSD is it doesn't seem to
recognize my tape drive (Archive VP-150e with SC-402 controller). I have
customized the kernel to match the configuration of the controller (IO 0x100h,
IRQ 9, DRQ 3). The kernel initializes the drive on bootup, but reports
that the wt0 device is not found. Hmmm. It works under Linux, so I suspect
that I just haven't configured the kernel right in some way. In contrast,
all of the other devices in my system (ethernet card, sound card, SCSI, etc.)
were easy to configure for, and are recognized by the kernel.
One other thing that I can't seem to figure out is if there is in-kernel
support for a Microsoft bus mouse. Didn't see anything in the docs.
I'm going to work at getting my FreeBSD setup up to production level, adding
X, news, elm, and some custom stuff. If I can get it working, I'll
probably stick with it.
--
bra...@atlas.com | "Electricity is made up of very small particles called
Atlas Telecom | electrons, which you cannot see unless you have been
Portland, OR | drinking."
--- This message printed with 100% recycled electrons ---
Jordan Hubbard
or a decent mail reader. Also some of the GNU utilities that I prefer (such
as less) aren't included. This isn't a huge problem, just download the
source and compile it.
While you're correct that SlackWare does contain more interesting
goodies "out of the box" (I have a copy myself!), we do try to provide
such things in the form of "ports", which you can get in the ports
collection on freefall.cdrom.com (~ftp/pub/FreeBSD/ports). We also
provide binary releases of things in "package" format
(~ftp/pub/FreeBSD/packages). For 1.1, this has also be substantially
enhanced and organized, and you can get a good preview of this by
looking in ~ftp/pub/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-current/ports (you can also grab
all or some of it by asking for `<dir>.tar.Z' and the ftpd will
automatically tar, compress and send it to you as one file).
The only real problem I have right now with FreeBSD is it doesn't seem to
recognize my tape drive (Archive VP-150e with SC-402 controller). I have
customized the kernel to match the configuration of the controller (IO 0x100h,
I don't actually think we support this controller.. :-( If you can
give more detail on the SC-402, it's possible that someone can hack a
driver up by looking at the Linux sources. One advantage to Linux is
that they _are_ faster than writing drivers for less main-stream
devices than we are; they have the numbers! :-(
One other thing that I can't seem to figure out is if there is in-kernel
support for a Microsoft bus mouse. Didn't see anything in the docs.
There is support - take a look at the mse entry in the /sys/i386/conf/LINT
file.
I'm going to work at getting my FreeBSD setup up to production level, adding
X, news, elm, and some custom stuff. If I can get it working, I'll
probably stick with it.
All of those are already ported and available in the ports collection
(some in ready-to-run package form).
Jordan
Amancio Hasty Jr
Related to mail and news , please consider exmh and tknews both
can be found at harbor.ecn.purdue.edu:/pub/tcl/code.
Also mh-6.8.3 and metamail. I use exmh and tknews at work all the
time.
Also, if you get a change there is safe-tcl so you can have some
fun with MIME and active-mail.
Regards,
Amancio
--
FREE unix, gcc, tcp/ip, X, open-look, interviews, tcl/tk, MIME, midi, sound
at freebsd.cdrom.com:/pub/FreeBSD
Amancio Hasty, Consultant |
Home: (415) 495-3046 |
e-mail ha...@netcom.com | ftp-site depository of all my work:
aha...@cisco.com | sunvis.rtpnc.epa.gov:/pub/386bsd/X
Douglas Pratt
unsubscribed from all the BSD groups the day I discovered ObjectBuilder for
Linux in my mailbox. Guess I better check again ........
lilo
Hehehe yes. I never *subscribed* to them, and as a Linux enthusiast I find
these postings on the Linux side to be highly amusing....I had thought
everyone on both sides got that "let's compare apples to oranges" stuff out
of their systems a long time ago.... ;)
lilo
Ismo Peltonen
Brant Katkansky (bra...@atlas.com) wrote:
> I have been running Linux (Slackware 1.1.1) on my 486 at home for
> several months, and although most of my experiences have been positive,
> I felt that Linux was lacking in some areas, so I decides to look at
> FreeBSD.
[...]
> * FreeBSD has a more polished look and feel. Linux definately looks and
> feels like a beta product. FreeBSD seems to have consistancy where
> Linux does not.
What do people mean with this (`looks and feels like a beta/not finished')?
What in Linux makes that unfinished look'n'feel?
(The thing I most would like to see now is different keymaps/fonts on
different multiscreens, but I can well live without. If nothing comes
out, I'll probably hack something that satisfies me.)
I have yet to try new things with linux (I have hard time trying to keep
up with updates - last time I got route-binary I noticed I'd better
update my libs, which lead to downloading about 7 megs, some installing,
some compiling, and cursing for not to having yet changed my system to
conform to FSSTND), but whatever I've compiled has been fairly easy. Of
course having had Xenix before might have some influence in that
(anything on Xenix was a major headache).
> bra...@atlas.com | "Electricity is made up of very small particles called
> Atlas Telecom | electrons, which you cannot see unless you have been
> Portland, OR | drinking."
--
Elandal (aka Ismo Peltonen) ## snail Hanuripolku 5B15
Home (UUCP) Ismo.P...@tower.nullnet.fi ## mail 00420 Helsinki
Univ (inet) Ismo.P...@Helsinki.FI ## Finland
Errare humanum est.. ## phone +358-0-537515
ЖДЕжде <- Is Your link 8bit clean?
Warner Losh
li...@slip-11-12.ots.utexas.edu (lilo) writes:
>On Sat, 19 Mar 94 16:30:25 GMT, Douglas Pratt
(ds...@troi.cc.rochester.edu) wrote:
>> I'm sorry- but which newsgroup is this? I could have sworn I'd
>> unsubscribed from all the BSD groups the day I discovered ObjectBuilder for
>> Linux in my mailbox. Guess I better check again ........
Glad to hear it.
>I had thought
>everyone on both sides got that "let's compare apples to oranges" stuff out
>of their systems a long time ago.... ;)
I have found that FreeBSD-current (soon, hopefully, to be 1.1)
compares quite well to Linux. Its networking is better for my
situation, but the shared libraries are a tiny bit slow when compared
to Linux' implementation. It works for me.
Last time I checked, compiling OI and uib took almost exactly the same
amount of time on Linux that it did on my FreeBSD box. Something like
33:06 for uib on one and 32:59 for uib on the other.
I really like the way that source is distributed for FreeBSD. It is
well organized and trivial to build (make world in one place) and I
have everything, except a new kernel installed. Or I can do parts of
it as I see fit. Really slick.
I've tried both and like FreeBSD better personally at the moment.
However, I grew up on Suns and BSD VAXen, so I'm a little biased
toward that side of the house. For most people, either will fill
their needs equally well. Unless there is an issue of non-support/bug
in the support for some piece of hardware.
They are both well done. Kudos to all involved.
Warner
P.S. I have no reason to believe that NetBSD would be any different
than FreeBSD for the things that I use it for. All my comments about
FreeBSD would likely apply to NetBSD, but I haven't actually run it.
We now return you to the apples and oranges discussions....
--
Warner Losh i...@boulder.parcplace.COM ParcPlace Boulder
"... but I can't promote you to "Prima Donna" unless you demonstrate a few
more serious personality disorders"
Geoff Rehmet
>What do people mean with this (`looks and feels like a beta/not finished')?
>What in Linux makes that unfinished look'n'feel?
>(The thing I most would like to see now is different keymaps/fonts on
> different multiscreens, but I can well live without. If nothing comes
> out, I'll probably hack something that satisfies me.)
>I have yet to try new things with linux (I have hard time trying to keep
>up with updates - last time I got route-binary I noticed I'd better
>update my libs, which lead to downloading about 7 megs, some installing,
>some compiling, and cursing for not to having yet changed my system to
>conform to FSSTND), but whatever I've compiled has been fairly easy. Of
>course having had Xenix before might have some influence in that
>(anything on Xenix was a major headache).
In my opinion, one of the big advantages of FreeBSD (and NetBSD) is the
availability of a complete (controlled) source tree for the operating
system. (A tree that can be found in one place, and which can be
installed easily.) All that needs to be done to install new stuff is
a "make world". (As far as I can gather there is no complete
maintained source tree for Linux.)
Geoff.
--
Geoff Rehmet, Computer Science Department, | ____ _ o /\
Rhodes University, South Africa |___ _-\_<, /\/\/\
email : cs...@cs.ru.ac.za | (*)/'(*) /\/\/\/\/\
: ge...@neptune.ru.ac.za |
J Wunsch
> Brant Katkansky (bra...@atlas.com) wrote:
>> * FreeBSD has a more polished look and feel. Linux definately looks and
>> feels like a beta product. FreeBSD seems to have consistancy where
>> Linux does not.
Q:
>What do people mean with this (`looks and feels like a beta/not finished')?
>What in Linux makes that unfinished look'n'feel?
...
A:
> (I have hard time trying to keep
>up with updates - last time I got route-binary I noticed I'd better
>update my libs, which lead to downloading about 7 megs, some installing,
>some compiling, and cursing for not to having yet changed my system to
>conform to FSSTND)...
What you're describing there *is* the ``beta look'n feel''. Inacceptable
for a release. Not that FreeBSD doesn't need beta's or development -
but people getting a release are not suspected to run into those upgrade-
by-the-patch-of-the-day troubles.
With {Free,Net}BSD, you can easily live with one distribution on a fairly
stable basis. Unless you really need the new features of an upcoming
release, you might stay with your old one until the new stuff is out
of beta. (Though i'm running a FreeBSD-almost-current at home for
development purposes, i'm just sitting on a box that ran the 1.0-GAMMA(!)
version for quarter of a year, it was quite stable with average uptimes
of 14 days or more.)
--
cheers, J"org work: joerg_...@tcd-dresden.de
private: joerg_...@uriah.sax.de
Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming:
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle.
Michael L. VanLoon
>In article <CMzw6...@tower.nullnet.fi> Ismo.P...@tower.NullNet.FI writes:
>>> * FreeBSD has a more polished look and feel. Linux definately looks and
>>> feels like a beta product. FreeBSD seems to have consistancy where
>>> Linux does not.
>>What do people mean with this (`looks and feels like a beta/not finished')?
>>What in Linux makes that unfinished look'n'feel?
>From my point of view it is the building of a system. On FreeBSD, all
>I type is "make world," then go out for the night. When I come back,
>all my user level utilities have been build and installed (in addition
>to libraries, include files, etc). For Linux I must have missed
>something because I've never seen a source distribution I could do
>this with (feel free to prove me wrong). This is due, I think, to the
>fact that there is exactly one core distribution and an central group
>running the show that is responsible (as a group) for the entire
>system.
[...]
>Finally, I can get the latest sources to FreeBSD every night and
>rebuild w/minimal effort, since there is one place for the sources for
>the entire system. I just sup new sources, and type make and I'm off.
>I usually get and install new sources about once a week, however,
>because a build does take quite a while.
[...]
>I've also seen various nits wrt files and file placement on Linux that
>may have gone away.
[...]
>P.S. the usual disclaimer about FreeBSD v NetBSD: They are likely the
>same, but I haven't used NetBSD and I indent it no slight by my
>comments.
Everything you've stated does apply exactly the same to NetBSD as it
does FreeBSD -- with one addition. You mentioned the nits about weird
locations of files on Linux, and that being better on FreeBSD. NetBSD
not only has the cleanness of FreeBSD for the main system, but also
has made significant effort to clean up the machine-specific parts of
the sources and move them into architecture-specific sub-trees.
All common parts of the the kernle, libraries, etc. are in the normal
locations, and the machine-specific parts have their own sub-trees.
The build scripts automagically use the right machine-specific
sub-trees to build your system with so you could have one source
repository mounted on several different architecture machines and they
could all build from the one location without conflicts.
--
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Michael L. VanLoon Iowa State University Computation Center
mich...@iastate.edu Project Vincent Systems Staff
Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free Un*x for PC/Mac/Amiga/etc.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Terry Lambert
If you find that the reason you saw the article is that it was crossposted,
then you may wish to consider resubscribing. Linux is not the only platform
that ObjectBuilder will run on. 8-).
Terry Lambert
te...@cs.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.
Philippe Steindl
: lilo
Well,
I'm a linux user. Why reacting so hostile? BSD existed long before linux and
BSD systems are for sure good systems. Comparisons maybe doubtful, that's true
(because all the time there's yeeling "but we have that, too!"), but on the
other side it's very informative. Don't laugh at others just because you
*think* you are superior, you may fall into a pit :-)
Happy Springs Start
Philippe Steindl
Warner Losh
>> feels like a beta product. FreeBSD seems to have consistancy where
>> Linux does not.
>
>What do people mean with this (`looks and feels like a beta/not finished')?
>What in Linux makes that unfinished look'n'feel?
From my point of view it is the building of a system. On FreeBSD, all
I type is "make world," then go out for the night. When I come back,
all my user level utilities have been build and installed (in addition
to libraries, include files, etc). For Linux I must have missed
something because I've never seen a source distribution I could do
this with (feel free to prove me wrong). This is due, I think, to the
fact that there is exactly one core distribution and an central group
running the show that is responsible (as a group) for the entire
system.
Also, the many different distributions on Linux is confusing and adds
to the perception that it isn't quite there yet in terms of the
integration part of the project. FreeBSD has one place to get the
sources for the entire system, while I have to grab sources from
hither and yon for Linux. I can't grab n tar balls of source from
somewhere and expect one make command to compile and install the
system.
Finally, I can get the latest sources to FreeBSD every night and
rebuild w/minimal effort, since there is one place for the sources for
the entire system. I just sup new sources, and type make and I'm off.
I usually get and install new sources about once a week, however,
because a build does take quite a while.
I've also seen various nits wrt files and file placement on Linux that
may have gone away.
Don't get me wrong. The binary distributions of Linux are nice, but
sometimes you just wanna have the warm fuzzies that you only get with
a fully integrated build enviornment.
To be sure, this is a minor point. It was the first thing I noticed
about FreeBSD when I started using it.
Warner
P.S. the usual disclaimer about FreeBSD v NetBSD: They are likely the
same, but I haven't used NetBSD and I indent it no slight by my
comments.
Ismo Peltonen
J Wunsch (j...@uriah.sax.de) wrote:
> ela...@tower.nullnet.fi (Ismo Peltonen) writes:
> Q:
> >What do people mean with this (`looks and feels like a beta/not finished')?
> >What in Linux makes that unfinished look'n'feel?
> A:
> > (I have hard time trying to keep
> >up with updates - last time I got route-binary I noticed I'd better
> >update my libs, which lead to downloading about 7 megs, some installing,
> >some compiling, and cursing for not to having yet changed my system to
> >conform to FSSTND)...
> What you're describing there *is* the ``beta look'n feel''. Inacceptable
> for a release. Not that FreeBSD doesn't need beta's or development -
> but people getting a release are not suspected to run into those upgrade-
> by-the-patch-of-the-day troubles.
Of course I wouldn't need to upgrade everything every day. I just happen
to want to keep my kernel within at most two patch levels of the
latest.. And, if I grabbed only sources (no binary distributions), I
wouldn't need to upgrade everything as often.
Often when I grab some source package, I just make config (or sh
configure, or whatever), make, and make install. That's it. But, when
I grab an odd binary (eg. when testing slip, a friend uploaded new route
binary) I may have to upgrade something I wouldn't otherwise need to do.
> With {Free,Net}BSD, you can easily live with one distribution on a fairly
> stable basis. Unless you really need the new features of an upcoming
> release, you might stay with your old one until the new stuff is out
> of beta. (Though i'm running a FreeBSD-almost-current at home for
> development purposes, i'm just sitting on a box that ran the 1.0-GAMMA(!)
> version for quarter of a year, it was quite stable with average uptimes
> of 14 days or more.)
I know. I get longest uptimes when I'm not at home.. When I'm at home, I
decide to check what's new, and then just _have to_ grab everything new
and build the latest, greatest things to see if I can crash it now :-)
Eg. I could let this system run as it is. I don't think there is
anything that really needs much work. Still, I'm about to shutdown and
reboot with /vmlinuz.test, which is the latest, greatest kernel.
Oh yes, what's that ``one source distribution, juts make world and all
utilities You've ever wanted are built and installed'' thing? I know
I've eliminated things from the distribution I grabbed, added new, and
so on.. I don't want to have everything, and I know I want to have some
things that should never belong to normal distributions.. So, I rather
grab packages I want, compile them, install them, and am happy.
I know I _could_ write a Makefile to /usr/src that built and installed
everything, but I don't want to. I want to do it to each package at a
time, hack and slash here and there, and never install everything in one
session. And most packages can be forgotten, removed, gzipped, or
otherwise handled after they are installed once.
> cheers, J"org work: joerg_...@tcd-dresden.de
> private: joerg_...@uriah.sax.de
> Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming:
> Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle.
--
Steve Nunez
>In my opinion, one of the big advantages of FreeBSD (and NetBSD) is the
>availability of a complete (controlled) source tree for the operating
>system. (A tree that can be found in one place, and which can be
>installed easily.) All that needs to be done to install new stuff is
>a "make world". (As far as I can gather there is no complete
>maintained source tree for Linux.)
Isn't the tamu distribution supposed to be like this? A single source
tree with a "make world"??
dave, are you listening?
- Steve Nunez
Michael L. VanLoon
>In article <2mmlhp...@bonnie.sax.de>
> J Wunsch (j...@uriah.sax.de) wrote:
>> ela...@tower.nullnet.fi (Ismo Peltonen) writes:
>> Q:
>> >What do people mean with this (`looks and feels like a beta/not finished')?
>> >What in Linux makes that unfinished look'n'feel?
>> A:
>> > (I have hard time trying to keep
>> >up with updates - last time I got route-binary I noticed I'd better
>> >update my libs, which lead to downloading about 7 megs, some installing,
>> >some compiling, and cursing for not to having yet changed my system to
>> >conform to FSSTND)...
>> What you're describing there *is* the ``beta look'n feel''. Inacceptable
>> for a release. Not that FreeBSD doesn't need beta's or development -
>> but people getting a release are not suspected to run into those upgrade-
>> by-the-patch-of-the-day troubles.
>Oh yes, what's that ``one source distribution, juts make world and all
>utilities You've ever wanted are built and installed'' thing? I know
>I've eliminated things from the distribution I grabbed, added new, and
>so on.. I don't want to have everything, and I know I want to have some
>things that should never belong to normal distributions.. So, I rather
>grab packages I want, compile them, install them, and am happy.
You can do this under {Net,Free}BSD just as easily.
>I know I _could_ write a Makefile to /usr/src that built and installed
>everything, but I don't want to. I want to do it to each package at a
>time, hack and slash here and there, and never install everything in one
>session. And most packages can be forgotten, removed, gzipped, or
>otherwise handled after they are installed once.
The point is, you *can't* just type "make; make install" in /usr/src
and come back the next day and have *everything* completely rebuilt
and installed. I *can*. And I can be sure it was done correctly and
completely.
Sure, I can cd into /usr/src/usr.sbin/traceroute and type "make; make
install" there, and a few minutes later I have a new traceroute and
nothing more. The point is, I have a choice.
This is just one of the things he was referring to. NetBSD just
"feels" to me like a genuine commercial "Unix" product. It is very
well layed out with much careful thought and foresight. My friends
linux boxes, while fine, reliable systems, simply didn't feel that way
to me. They felt to me like something you'd expect to get for free.
Please don't take this as a slam, I'm just trying to give you an idea
of my impressions.
Harvey J. Stein
i...@boulder.parcplace.com (Warner Losh) writes:
In article <CMzw6...@tower.nullnet.fi>
Ismo.P...@tower.NullNet.FI writes:
>> * FreeBSD has a more polished look and feel. Linux definately looks and
>> feels like a beta product. FreeBSD seems to have consistancy where
>> Linux does not.
>
>What do people mean with this (`looks and feels like a beta/not finished')?
>What in Linux makes that unfinished look'n'feel?
From my point of view it is the building of a system. On FreeBSD, all
I type is "make world," then go out for the night. When I come back,
all my user level utilities have been build and installed (in addition
to libraries, include files, etc). For Linux I must have missed
something because I've never seen a source distribution I could do
this with (feel free to prove me wrong). This is due, I think, to the
fact that there is exactly one core distribution and an central group
running the show that is responsible (as a group) for the entire
system.
I believe that the TAMU distribution allows this.
Also, the many different distributions on Linux is confusing and adds
to the perception that it isn't quite there yet in terms of the
integration part of the project. FreeBSD has one place to get the
sources for the entire system, while I have to grab sources from
hither and yon for Linux. I can't grab n tar balls of source from
somewhere and expect one make command to compile and install the
system.
Maybe when Linux development becomes as slow as FreeBSD development,
with as few people working on it, then Linux will only be on one
server too.
--
Harvey J. Stein
Department of Mathematics
Hebrew University
Warner Losh
hjs...@sunset.huji.ac.il (Harvey J. Stein) writes:
>I believe that the TAMU distribution allows this.
TAMU isn't exactly cutting edge, and they have a rather small system.
Not that TAMU isn't good, it just doesn't allow the same sorts of
things that FreeBSD allows (eg, grab new sources via sup, and type
make to update to the very latest).
> Also, the many different distributions on Linux is confusing and adds
> to the perception that it isn't quite there yet in terms of the
> integration part of the project. FreeBSD has one place to get the
> sources for the entire system, while I have to grab sources from
> hither and yon for Linux. I can't grab n tar balls of source from
> somewhere and expect one make command to compile and install the
> system.
>
>Maybe when Linux development becomes as slow as FreeBSD development,
>with as few people working on it, then Linux will only be on one
>server too.
This is pure flame bate. It is still a point in FreeBSD's favor. The
development is anything bug "slow." The single point of contact for
the core system makes FreeBSD look better due to the high level of
integration that has gone into it (and NetBSD). I do understand how
Linux got to the point that it is at now. I'm merely saying that if
there was some way to grab, say, the sources to the latest slackware
release by sup, type make and have a new system, then this would stop
being a point in FreeBSD's favor.
Like I've said before, it makes the Linux distributions look just
tossed together when it comes to source. They have improved quite a
bit over the last year (when they merely look just tossed together).
Finally, let me reiterate what I've said before: This isn't that big
a deal. Both systems have their plusses and minuses. I, at this point
in time, happen to prefer FreeBSD, but that doesn't make it better or
worse than Linux. If you want to know which one is better for you,
run both and chose the one you like better. They are about the same
with difference areas where they shine.
Warner
Rob Newberry
going to post it.
For the last 36 hours, I've been trying desperately to get NetBSD and
FreeBSD working (separately, of course :-). Now, I am definately NOT
a Unix guru. But I was able to get a very nice Linux system working
in much less. In addition, I never had any trouble compiling kernels
or anything -- I was up to 1.0 before I decided to try the *BSD systems.
The main reason for doing this was because Linux's net code doesn't seem
to forward packets between a SLIP internet connection and our LAN very
well. Alan Cox, one of the main developer's of Linux's net code, told
me I ought to try *BSD and see if it works.
IMHO, *BSD has a LONG way to go before its ready for users like me. I
guess what they need most is a kind of Slackware install, where someone
can get the system and many utilities installed quickly. I was
VERY VERY disappointed to find that, even though I downloaded every
distribution file for NetBSD at iastate.edu, I didn't even have a good
way to talk to my modem -- kermit is not there, I can't get tip
to work, and there's just not any instructions anywhere. Plus, when
there are instructions, they're wrong. The FAQ for makeing a new
*BSD kernel tells me to switch to a directory that doesn't exists on
my machine, and config a file that isn't there. Yes, I did manage to
find the right place, and create the GENERICISA file from the
GENERICAHA, but it wasn't in /sys/i386/conf. Plus, there's no
description of all that junk in the configuration file -- the FAQ
says, "Perhaps someone should tell us what all these options actually
mean." I thought that's what the *!@# FAQ was for!
It's not just the FAQ's, either. The man pages are screwy. I wanted
to add some users. In linux, "adduser" does the trick. So I do a
"man adduser", and it says that this is a command for adding new users,
and furthermore that it has been around since 3.0BSD. Great! So I
try "adduser" and whammo! "adduser: Command not found." Yes, I
did finally find out to use "vipw" (Thanks, O'Reilly), but that's
just plain dumb.
*BSD desperately needs the type of installation packages available for
Linux. Linux installed on my system, and I added the users I needed,
and they had POP accounts immediately, and I could run "DIP" to set
up our SLIP connections out of the box, and I could compile kernels
right out of the box and install them quickly, and I got tons of
utility programs that I never even used. In *BSD, none of the things
I was looking for were there -- no virtual consoles, no comm package,
no "adduser", no good mail reader, no "pico", no nothing. *BSD may
have fine networking code, but I won't know about it until they make
it easy enough to use.
Now, I do realize that many of the *BSD people like it fine. But I
will bet that they have a firmer grasp of Unix sys administration
than I do. I won't say its a bad system...I don't know. I will say
that its packaging and installation process for novices like
myself is absolute crap.
So I guess I'll go back to Linux for the rest of the day. Hopefully,
they'll get better net code working in it before long. If not,
maybe someone will make something like "Slackware/*BSD". And if
not that, well, maybe we'll be able to afford one of the packaged
systems (anybody got recommendations?)
My two pennies. Not worth much to most of the Unix people out there,
but maybe they'll help discourage another novice from thinking
*BSD will work as easily as Linux.
Rob Newberry
ro...@clark.net
Brant Katkansky
>In <CMzw6...@tower.nullnet.fi> ela...@tower.nullnet.fi (Ismo Peltonen) writes:
>
>>What do people mean with this (`looks and feels like a beta/not finished')?
>>What in Linux makes that unfinished look'n'feel?
>
>>(The thing I most would like to see now is different keymaps/fonts on
>> different multiscreens, but I can well live without. If nothing comes
>> out, I'll probably hack something that satisfies me.)
>
>>I have yet to try new things with linux (I have hard time trying to keep
>>up with updates - last time I got route-binary I noticed I'd better
>>update my libs, which lead to downloading about 7 megs, some installing,
>>some compiling, and cursing for not to having yet changed my system to
>>conform to FSSTND), but whatever I've compiled has been fairly easy. Of
>>course having had Xenix before might have some influence in that
>>(anything on Xenix was a major headache).
>
>In my opinion, one of the big advantages of FreeBSD (and NetBSD) is the
>availability of a complete (controlled) source tree for the operating
>system. (A tree that can be found in one place, and which can be
>installed easily.) All that needs to be done to install new stuff is
>a "make world". (As far as I can gather there is no complete
>maintained source tree for Linux.)
>
Linux are not Linux problems per se, but problems with the distribution. It seems
that the desinger couldn't decide whether to put stuff in /usr or /var, among
other things. This results in a lot of symlinks which, to me, does not appear
like a "finished product". Lack of a unified source tree was a major headache.
Don't get me wrong. I like Linux, and I like it a lot. I think within a year,
it'll get better and more consistant. At the present time, though, I think I
am leaning towards FreeBSD. It does lack some of the bells and whistles that
Linux has, but I can live with that.`
--
bra...@atlas.com | "Electricity is made up of very small particles called
Atlas Telecom | electrons, which you cannot see unless you have been
Portland, OR | drinking."
Michael L. VanLoon
>In article <HJSTEIN.94...@sunset.huji.ac.il> hjs...@sunset.huji.ac.il (Harvey J. Stein) writes:
>>In article <Cn1KJ...@boulder.parcplace.com>
>>i...@boulder.parcplace.com (Warner Losh) writes:
>> >What do people mean with this (`looks and feels like a beta/not finished')?
>> >What in Linux makes that unfinished look'n'feel?
>> From my point of view it is the building of a system. On FreeBSD, all
>> I type is "make world," then go out for the night. When I come back,
>> all my user level utilities have been build and installed (in addition
>> to libraries, include files, etc). For Linux I must have missed
>> something because I've never seen a source distribution I could do
>> this with (feel free to prove me wrong). This is due, I think, to the
>> fact that there is exactly one core distribution and an central group
>> running the show that is responsible (as a group) for the entire
>> system.
>>I believe that the TAMU distribution allows this.
>Out of curiosity I got the README entries for all the packages on my machine
>and the size of source + build space. To make world my entire system I'd
>need 4.6Gb of disk space, or 3.1Gb assuming I did a make clean on each
>package after building. Whoopee... There are good reasons for binary
>releases at time.
The *operating system* is what we're discussing. Not every known
piece of fluff utility someone in some remote corner of the world
thinks would be neato to have. Last time I estimated with
NetBSD-current, the operating system source (kernel, /bin, /sbin,
/usr/bin, /usr/sbin, /usr/libexec, and /usr/lib, plus the things in
/usr/include and /usr/share) took roughly 90 meg to keep around. The
object directory tree (everything resulting from the build process)
took another 40-50 meg (this is just the object tree, not counting the
disk space taken up by the installed binaries). Hardly an unmanagable
amount.
My own source tree of favorite things I've ported/compiled myself
takes up another unrelated chunk of disk real-estate.
>On the other hand I do wish the slackware_src was layed out better and
>unpacked as /usr/src/<binarypathname>/* for each thing, but I don't have
>the time sort that out and I'm sure Patrick has far more useful things to
>do with his life...
It is very nice. Especially when dealing with multiple architectures.
Having one unified source tree that can be made to automagically build
for several different architectures into architecture-specific object
subtrees without any conflice is not only nice, but essential in even
a medium-sized operation. The uniformity and organization is quite
nice to work with.
Michael L. VanLoon
>As I see it the major difference (from a user impact perspective) is that
>FreeBSD has better network code and Linux has shared libraries. Give FreeBSD
>shared libraries and I would probably pick it over Linux...
>atk
Both NetBSD-current and FreeBSD-current have had shared libraries
since around October last year. The impending release of FreeBSD 1.1
has shared libraries, and NetBSD 1.0, when it comes out (before the
end of the summer, I would hope) will also have them in a major
release.
I've been running shared libraries in my NetBSD-current machine since
mid-November.
(NetBSD-current and FreeBSD-current are the freely available
development sources for the next major releases of the respective
Operating Systems.)
sky...@iac.net
Date: 29 Mar 1994 09:51:12 -0500
: >> >What do people mean with this (`looks and feels like a beta/not
finished')?
: >> >What in Linux makes that unfinished look'n'feel?
: >> A:
: >> > (I have hard time trying to keep
: >> >up with updates - last time I got route-binary I noticed I'd better
: >> >update my libs, which lead to downloading about 7 megs, some installing,
: >> >some compiling, and cursing for not to having yet changed my system to
: >> >conform to FSSTND)...
Why 7 megs? there ARE binary versions of libc in the image-4.5.21.tar.gz
file. that's how I upgraded. I didnt put that in a FSSTND system and it
worked like a charm. (well except for the fact that I unlinke the old
libc and suddenly had NO libc and had to reboot from floppy to fix :) but
that was my fault) If not lic, what libs are youu speaking of?
: >> What you're describing there *is* the ``beta look'n feel''. Inacceptable
: >> for a release. Not that FreeBSD doesn't need beta's or development -
: >> but people getting a release are not suspected to run into those upgrade-
: >> by-the-patch-of-the-day troubles.
Linux, especially the v1.0 kernel, is a NEW piece of software that
doesnt have the several YEARS that BSD has. I upgrade my box to the
newest patchlevel (it's now at 1.0.5) whenever possible because...
A) My machine is NOT mission critical. I dont have and entire
development squad hanging on it as their only machine. Nor am I
running it to control life support for the space shuttle. I run it to
learn Unix and because it's a hell of alot of fun! There are machines
right now with 70+ day uptimes running 0.99pl14 without problem. Need
I point out that, by definition, that's a BETA version.
B) Linux is only improved by user interaction. If I dont run it
and give feedback on bugs, then I am not doing my part to help the
development. I can program in C, but not OS kernels. This is my
contribution, I TEST!
: >Oh yes, what's that ``one source distribution, juts make world and all
: >utilities You've ever wanted are built and installed'' thing? I know
: >I've eliminated things from the distribution I grabbed, added new, and
: >so on.. I don't want to have everything, and I know I want to have some
: >things that should never belong to normal distributions.. So, I rather
: >grab packages I want, compile them, install them, and am happy.
: You can do this under {Net,Free}BSD just as easily.
What, then, is the point? Never in the year and a half of running Linux
(since 0.99pl6) have I ever needed to make the WHOLE system again. I've
recompiled the kernel maybbe 100 times, but that once you have the
config to the way you want it (SCSI/NO SCSI, etc) it's
'make dep;make' if I need a new route binary, I get the new route
source and make it. It's not exactly brain surgery.
: >I know I _could_ write a Makefile to /usr/src that built and installed
: >everything, but I don't want to. I want to do it to each package at a
: >time, hack and slash here and there, and never install everything in one
: >session. And most packages can be forgotten, removed, gzipped, or
: >otherwise handled after they are installed once.
: The point is, you *can't* just type "make; make install" in /usr/src
: and come back the next day and have *everything* completely rebuilt
: and installed. I *can*. And I can be sure it was done correctly and
: completely.
: Sure, I can cd into /usr/src/usr.sbin/traceroute and type "make; make
: install" there, and a few minutes later I have a new traceroute and
: nothing more. The point is, I have a choice.
That's true. you have a choice. My car has a 36000 mile warranty. I
have a choice between just driving like everyone else, or I can drive
36000 miles nonstop until I get to the end.
I cant comprehend a situation where I would want to recompile EVERY
binary on my system. Please, tell me, unless I have upgraded the source
to every single program, what is the point of recompiling inetd if the
source hasnt changed? Even a lib upgrade isnt a good enough reason. I
have yet to see UPWARD compatibilty problem with libc.
Give me an hour and I'll write a make file that spools through the
/usr/src/[bin,sbin,usr.bin,usr.sbin,etc] directories and does a touch -R
* ; make install. The reason nobody has, IS BECAUSE NOBODY CARES!
: This is just one of the things he was referring to. NetBSD just
: "feels" to me like a genuine commercial "Unix" product. It is very
: well layed out with much careful thought and foresight. My friends
: linux boxes, while fine, reliable systems, simply didn't feel that way
: to me. They felt to me like something you'd expect to get for free.
: Please don't take this as a slam, I'm just trying to give you an idea
: of my impressions.
Please dont take this post as a flame, it wasnt meant that way at all,
like you I was just trying to state MY opinions. I guess FEEL is a
relative term. Let me give you an example.
A friend wanted Linux from me, but I was working 70hrs a week at that
time and couldnt get it to him. (He had no internet at that time and a
the only local board with linux has MCC 0.99.10+ :^| ) so he went out and
bought unixware. I believe that fits in your definition of 'a genuine
commercial "Unix" product.' After spending weeks trying to get it to work
(and being quoted $200 for an X driver for an ET4000 at 1024x768) he
chucked it all. I had a new job (read: I had time!) by then and last
weekend I took slackware 1.1.2 (2 days before 1.2.0 :^| ) to his house.
He told me that he couldnt believe how EASY the slack setup was and that
he was glad he had gotten rid of Unixware. slack setup is VERY easy and
straight forward. If I need to upgrade, say, the net binaries because I
want to run the news net3 instead of net2 (hush hush top secret, you
didnt hear it from me, but Linux with IPX! Coming soon) I will download
the slack n series again and re install.
Are there things in Linux that need to be changed? yes, FSSTND doesnt
thrill me. /usr/X11/lib/X11 is the stupides thing I've ever seen. And I
would like a SCO like sysadmsh. (actually, I'm thinking of writing one)
But tell me this about NetFreeBSD (Things I REALLY dont know)
Is there MS-DOG Emulation? ( until I see quicken for Linux, I need DOS apps)
Will WABI/WINE work there? (I'd love to see Word for Windows under X)
is there iBCS2 support? (In ALPHA for Linux, run SCO binaries)
Linux > BSD .
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris Thompson | Linux/fvwm/Emacs/ztalk ARE GOD! Ban MS-DOG/WinBlows
sky...@iac.net | Ztalk 0.2a reception ready on skynet.iac.net
skynet.iac.net | (when my CSLIP is connected that is :) )
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris Thompson
: >> >What in Linux makes that unfinished look'n'feel?
: >> A:
: >> > (I have hard time trying to keep
: >> >up with updates - last time I got route-binary I noticed I'd better
: >> >update my libs, which lead to downloading about 7 megs, some installing,
: >> >some compiling, and cursing for not to having yet changed my system to
: >> >conform to FSSTND)...
Why 7 megs? there ARE binary versions of libc in the image-4.5.21.tar.gz
file. that's how I upgraded. I didnt put that in a FSSTND system and it
worked like a charm. (well except for the fact that I unlinke the old
libc and suddenly had NO libc and had to reboot from floppy to fix :) but
that was my fault) If not lic, what libs are youu speaking of?
: >> What you're describing there *is* the ``beta look'n feel''. Inacceptable
: >> for a release. Not that FreeBSD doesn't need beta's or development -
: >> but people getting a release are not suspected to run into those upgrade-
: >> by-the-patch-of-the-day troubles.
Linux, especially the v1.0 kernel, is a NEW piece of software that
doesnt have the several YEARS that BSD has. I upgrade my box to the
newest patchlevel (it's now at 1.0.5) whenever possible because...
A) My machine is NOT mission critical. I dont have and entire
development squad hanging on it as their only machine. Nor am I
running it to control life support for the space shuttle. I run it to
learn Unix and because it's a hell of alot of fun! There are machines
right now with 70+ day uptimes running 0.99pl14 without problem. Need
I point out that, by definition, that's a BETA version.
B) Linux is only improved by user interaction. If I dont run it
and give feedback on bugs, then I am not doing my part to help the
development. I can program in C, but not OS kernels. This is my
contribution, I TEST!
: >Oh yes, what's that ``one source distribution, juts make world and all
: >utilities You've ever wanted are built and installed'' thing? I know
: >I've eliminated things from the distribution I grabbed, added new, and
: >so on.. I don't want to have everything, and I know I want to have some
: >things that should never belong to normal distributions.. So, I rather
: >grab packages I want, compile them, install them, and am happy.
: You can do this under {Net,Free}BSD just as easily.
What, then, is the point? Never in the year and a half of running Linux
(since 0.99pl6) have I ever needed to make the WHOLE system again. I've
recompiled the kernel maybbe 100 times, but that once you have the
config to the way you want it (SCSI/NO SCSI, etc) it's
'make dep;make' if I need a new route binary, I get the new route
source and make it. It's not exactly brain surgery.
: >I know I _could_ write a Makefile to /usr/src that built and installed
: >everything, but I don't want to. I want to do it to each package at a
: >time, hack and slash here and there, and never install everything in one
: >session. And most packages can be forgotten, removed, gzipped, or
: >otherwise handled after they are installed once.
: The point is, you *can't* just type "make; make install" in /usr/src
: and come back the next day and have *everything* completely rebuilt
: and installed. I *can*. And I can be sure it was done correctly and
: completely.
: Sure, I can cd into /usr/src/usr.sbin/traceroute and type "make; make
: install" there, and a few minutes later I have a new traceroute and
: nothing more. The point is, I have a choice.
That's true. you have a choice. My car has a 36000 mile warranty. I
have a choice between just driving like everyone else, or I can drive
36000 miles nonstop until I get to the end.
I cant comprehend a situation where I would want to recompile EVERY
binary on my system. Please, tell me, unless I have upgraded the source
to every single program, what is the point of recompiling inetd if the
source hasnt changed? Even a lib upgrade isnt a good enough reason. I
have yet to see UPWARD compatibilty problem with libc.
Give me an hour and I'll write a make file that spools through the
/usr/src/[bin,sbin,usr.bin,usr.sbin,etc] directories and does a touch -R
* ; make install. The reason nobody has, IS BECAUSE NOBODY CARES!
: This is just one of the things he was referring to. NetBSD just
: "feels" to me like a genuine commercial "Unix" product. It is very
: well layed out with much careful thought and foresight. My friends
: linux boxes, while fine, reliable systems, simply didn't feel that way
: to me. They felt to me like something you'd expect to get for free.
: Please don't take this as a slam, I'm just trying to give you an idea
: of my impressions.
Please dont take this post as a flame, it wasnt meant that way at all,
Douglas Wade Needham
>an application as is TeX and many other things. Should every conceivable
>application be shipped with the operating system?
Anyone care to even guess at the size of the distribution (order of magnitude
is fine) when every conceivable application is shipped...Let's see...how many
GB is on prep.ai.mit.edu... ftp.uu.net..... Now how much of that is duplicated?
We may start talking TB here 8)...now how many tapes is that???
>: says, "Perhaps someone should tell us what all these options actually
>: mean." I thought that's what the *!@# FAQ was for!
Actually, with all the different implementations out there, the best FAQ would
start with "Read your () manuals", commonly known as RTFM. From there, a
hint or two at the commands should do.
>: Linux. Linux installed on my system, and I added the users I needed,
>: and they had POP accounts immediately, and I could run "DIP" to set
>
>What if I don't *want* my users to have POP accounts?
The reason why UCB and others never created a system admin interface is probably
attributable to the "you can please some of the people some of the time"
philosophy. Can you imagine an interface that would be perfect (or even close)
for every site using the OS? I cannot, having been a SA in several different
groups. While some sites use POP, NFS, BIND, or other application/protocol
packages, others have no need or use for them. Add the fact that most sites
who originally ran BSD were universities who could throw students at a problem
(remember that a student is someone who pays to work and learn at the same
time 8) ) to do the tasks or possibly develop an interface to do it, and it was
by definition tailored to their site, a common SA interface never really
developed. And then you have SVRx with sysadm, HP/UX with sam, AIX with
smit, and all the other variants. Those were developed by the vendor to try
to solve the problem for the sites where "Tag!!! You are the SA!" was the
name of the game. The problem with those programs was that longer you used
them, the more likely you would want to do something that was impossible
unless you played something resembling "Twister" at best. Two prime examples
are trying to use sam on an IBM 3151 terminal, or trying to use smit to
put two partitions on a disk, one on the inner edge and the other at the
outer edge. Both of these were a "no can do". (I could do the smit problem
by hand though...)
If you want an SA tool, I would suggest writing a few shell scripts or C
programs, possibly place them inside a menuing system (TCL/TK may fit the
bill), and keep expanding it as you find tasks which you repeat from time
to time. Not ideal, but can you think of a way you get something approching
your level of satisfaction?
- doug
*******************************************************************************
My options are my own. Since I do not want them, why should my employer? 8)
Douglas Wade Needham BSD kernel programmer
Email: dnee...@csi.compuserve.com -or- dnee...@oucsace.cs.ohiou.edu
USnail: Compuserve 216 S. Burgess Ave.
5000 Arlington Centre Blvd. Columbus OH 43204
Columbus, OH 43220
Voice: (614)457-8600 (614)274-0769
lilo
> : way to talk to my modem -- kermit is not there, I can't get tip
> : to work, and there's just not any instructions anywhere. Plus, when
> *BSD is an operating system. kermit is an application. XFree86 is also
> an application as is TeX and many other things. Should every conceivable
> application be shipped with the operating system?
Probably. If you want the novice to have a working system out of the
box. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. :)
lilo
li...@slip-2-70.ots.utexas.edu
Geoff Rehmet
>Warner Losh (i...@boulder.parcplace.com) wrote:
>: I have found that FreeBSD-current (soon, hopefully, to be 1.1)
>: compares quite well to Linux. Its networking is better for my
>: situation, but the shared libraries are a tiny bit slow when compared
>: to Linux' implementation. It works for me.
>BSD and Linux may be technically equal overall, but I find the two very
>different in the way that they are developed. BSD is a closed group with
>"core authors". Linux is an open development environment.
This is possibly a bit misleading: while there is a core group of
people who control changes to the official source tree (I think that
while I speak of my experience with FreeBSD, the same would apply to
NetBSD) the core group is very open to outside contributions, and in
fact actively encourages this. Note for instance that Paul Kranenburg
is neither a member of the FreeBSD nor the NetBSD core team, yet both
products use his shared libraries.
Neither of the *BSD projects is a closed effort. Sure, if you want
your favourite patch of the day put into the distribution, you have to
champion it with someone who has commit rights.
Remember also that most of the problems occuring with *BSD never see
the light of day with normal users - the users of *BSD-current subject
themselves to the joys of finding all of these bugs ;-)
Mitchum DSouza
| As I see it the major difference (from a user impact perspective) is that
| FreeBSD has better network code and Linux has shared libraries. Give FreeBSD
| shared libraries and I would probably pick it over Linux...
|
Well I suggest you stop using Linux now as FreeBSD *does* have shared
libraries. Which implementation is snappier will be left to you to decide
whether to come back to Linux.
Mitch
Geoff Rehmet
>As I see it the major difference (from a user impact perspective) is that
>FreeBSD has better network code and Linux has shared libraries. Give FreeBSD
>shared libraries and I would probably pick it over Linux...
(c.o.3.m has seen a lot of discussions ?flamage? re shlibs, so at the
risk of making myself a lightning rod:)
Both *BSD in their -current flavour have Sun-style shared libraries
(written by Paul Kranenburg), and these shlibs are available in
FreeBSD-1.1BETA.
Francois Berjon
> Out of curiosity I got the README entries for all the packages on my machine
> and the size of source + build space. To make world my entire system I'd
> need 4.6Gb of disk space, or 3.1Gb assuming I did a make clean on each
> package after building. Whoopee... There are good reasons for binary
> releases at time.
Odd, considering that last time I rebuilt the world on my FreeBSD machine,
it was done within roughly 50MB of disk space... (add 70MB for the full
source code).
Your figures seem really _way_ off the mark (or the *BSD teams have added
gigabytes of source code since the last release...)
--
Francois Berjon Francoi...@gwynedd.frmug.fr.net
Othman Ahmad
>
> Is there MS-DOG Emulation? ( until I see quicken for Linux, I need DOS apps)
> Will WABI/WINE work there? (I'd love to see Word for Windows under X)
> is there iBCS2 support? (In ALPHA for Linux, run SCO binaries)
>
How good are all these? I tried the MSDOS emulation before but it was so full
of bugs and limited that I'd rather reboot.
Linux is full of these experimental features and they keep on piling them
quickly without much thought. Soo Linux will be overwhelmed. It now has many
versions of file systems but still none with the capablility of FFS because
Linus hate it.
The last time I studied Linux networking code, it was adapted Net/2
code with hacks to make it work for Linux. Otherwise how could they get those
networking utilities up so quickly.
> Linux > BSD .
Don't be fooled by features that you do not need. Keep it slim and bug free.
Linux is ONLY for X86, whereas BSD is for ALL. If you want a toy to play with,
go for Linux, but if you want to go on to greater things, try BSD.
SABAH is HEAVEN. Beautiful islands, mountains and jungles are next to 5 star
hotels. There are no natural and very few man-made disasters,
BUT for how long will it last?
Disclaimer: I only speak for myself
Geoff Rehmet
> What, then, is the point? Never in the year and a half of running Linux
> (since 0.99pl6) have I ever needed to make the WHOLE system again. I've
> recompiled the kernel maybbe 100 times, but that once you have the
> config to the way you want it (SCSI/NO SCSI, etc) it's
> 'make dep;make' if I need a new route binary, I get the new route
> source and make it. It's not exactly brain surgery.
Believe me, it's far easier to say "make world" every month or two, and
back in the morning to find everything sitting there installed - new. This
is a lot easier than trying to track all of the bugs that are fixed, and
all of the components that are upgraded replaced.
(Those people who receive the commit messages for FreeBSD will attest to
the number and rate at which changes come in. - I assume the same applies
to NetBSD.)
> I cant comprehend a situation where I would want to recompile EVERY
>binary on my system.
As I said - far easier than tracking every bug-fix.
>But tell me this about NetFreeBSD (Things I REALLY dont know)
>Is there MS-DOG Emulation? ( until I see quicken for Linux, I need DOS apps)
>Will WABI/WINE work there? (I'd love to see Word for Windows under X)
>is there iBCS2 support? (In ALPHA for Linux, run SCO binaries)
An MSDOS emulator for *BSD is under development. WINE is the same across
Linux and *BSD. As far as iBCS2 binary compatibility goes - I'm sure that
if someone were interested in developing that there would be interest ;-)
Alan Cox
>How good are all these? I tried the MSDOS emulation before but it was so full
>of bugs and limited that I'd rather reboot.
and with the exception of 386 protected mode DOS stuff its good. I've never
for example got netware clients to run inside of the interactive syste,.
>
>Linux is full of these experimental features and they keep on piling them
>quickly without much thought. Soo Linux will be overwhelmed. It now has many
>versions of file systems but still none with the capablility of FFS because
>Linus hate it.
stable 1.0 release. The new stuff will start to go into 1.1, and we will
all be running our disks twice as fast and running SCO binaries if we wish.
Despite that at least one machine here will stay running known stable releases.
Linux doesn't support FFS because nobody felt like wading through pages of
turgid BSD specific code that might in fact belong to USL anyway (and one
or two files it turned out did and will need rewriting for BSD4.4 lite.). I'd
be interested when/if someone does a BSD FFS for Linux to benchmark it against
ext2. At the moment with the two machines here with fast scsi disks and adaptec
cards Linux + clustering ext2fs is faster than BSD FFS is faster than Linux
without clustering. Some of this will be very application dependant.
There is an old saying that Usenet works best when people who don't know what
they are talking about shut up.... You obviously know so little about Linux
that you are contributing nothing of use.
> The last time I studied Linux networking code, it was adapted Net/2
>code with hacks to make it work for Linux. Otherwise how could they get those
>networking utilities up so quickly.
Fascinating. The Linux network code was written from scratch by a large group
of people. It has no Net/2 code in it at all. A lot of the utilities are
BSD based for two reasons
1) While often not too portable (BSD rather than Posix tty etc) most of the
BSD networking tools are quite good and worth the porting effort
2) Several of them are not even described properly by RFC's because the
older BSD hackers (pre 386BSD) never bothered documenting things - even
the lpr protocol was documented afterwards by someone else.
What will also be interesting is seeing how well BSD networking and Linux
networking adapt to IPng.
>
>Don't be fooled by features that you do not need. Keep it slim and bug free.
Thats good advice. Linux is moving towards loadable modules. BSD has gone
from a fat splodge of code to quite clean refined code.
>
>Linux is ONLY for X86, whereas BSD is for ALL. If you want a toy to play with,
>go for Linux, but if you want to go on to greater things, try BSD.
Linux is X86 and 68K under development. When the 68K port is finished we will
have the portability. This is following the path Unix (thus BSD) took very
closely. V7 was not portable until people started doing ports to System3 and
friends (There is a good CACM paper on this).
Alan
Alan Cox
>Alan Cox wrote:
>> Out of curiosity I got the README entries for all the packages on my machine
>> and the size of source + build space. To make world my entire system I'd
>> need 4.6Gb of disk space, or 3.1Gb assuming I did a make clean on each
>> package after building. Whoopee... There are good reasons for binary
>> releases at time.
>
>Odd, considering that last time I rebuilt the world on my FreeBSD machine,
>it was done within roughly 50MB of disk space... (add 70MB for the full
>source code).
You misunderstand. Thats what it would take to build Linux _ all the tools
and packages I have from scratch (ie gcc,g++,gdb,X386,Khoros,Magic,gpc(alpha),
numerous kits of our own, xntp, [and so on]).
Alan
Robert Sanders
>Linux is full of these experimental features and they keep on piling them
>quickly without much thought. Soo Linux will be overwhelmed. It now has many
Imminent death of Linux predicted.
>versions of file systems but still none with the capablility of FFS because
>Linus hate it.
Exactly what capabilities are you talking about?
> The last time I studied Linux networking code, it was adapted Net/2
>code with hacks to make it work for Linux. Otherwise how could they get those
>networking utilities up so quickly.
Interesting. None of the kernel code is BSD (BNR/2) derived, except for a few of
the constants. Some of the net utilities are BSD derived. From what I've seen,
there are changes to make them work for Linux, but not every deviation from the
one true BSD way is a hack.
>Don't be fooled by features that you do not need. Keep it slim and bug free.
Oh, *BSD are bug free? And SLIM? Care to back up your assertion with some
proof?
>Linux is ONLY for X86, whereas BSD is for ALL. If you want a toy to play with,
>go for Linux, but if you want to go on to greater things, try BSD.
Actually, the Linux port to the AMiga (and theoretically to other 68k
machines) is progressing at a fast clip. Although I admit NetBSD (but neither
of the other free *BSD) supports many platforms with varying degrees of
completeness, it certainly doesn't run on "ALL."
--
_g, '96 --->>>>>>>>>> gt8...@prism.gatech.edu <<<<<<<<<--- CompSci ,g_
W@@@W__ |-\ ^ | disclaimer: <---> "Bow before ZOD!" __W@@@W
W@@@@**~~~' ro|-<ert s/_\ nders | who am I??? ^ from Superman '~~~**@@@@W
`*MV' hi,ocie! |-/ad! / \ss!! | ooga ooga!! | II (cool)! `VW*'
Rob Newberry
: Perhaps that can be rephrased to say "I have a long way to go before
: I'm ready for *BSD". :-)
: *BSD is an operating system. kermit is an application. XFree86 is also
: an application as is TeX and many other things. Should every conceivable
: application be shipped with the operating system?
: As far as 'tip' goes; typing "man tip" points you in the right direction
: for setting up the "remote" and "phones" files.
: What if I don't *want* my users to have POP accounts?
...among other garbage.
At any rate, your post didn't tell me anything I didn't know, nor
anything I didn't figure out BEFORE I ever tried to install *BSD.
My entire post claimed ONLY that I felt much more comfortable with
a installation package like Slackware than I did with the *BSD
install.
As I am STILL having problems with Linux' networking code, I'm
STILL hoping someone will put together such a beast. But until
there is a way to painlessly install *BSD AND lots of utilities
I need, it's not for me.
Thanks for the lecture, but next time, at least say something
that hasn't been said.
Rob
Ken Hornstein
Rob Newberry <ro...@clark.net> wrote:
>At any rate, your post didn't tell me anything I didn't know, nor
>anything I didn't figure out BEFORE I ever tried to install *BSD.
>My entire post claimed ONLY that I felt much more comfortable with
>a installation package like Slackware than I did with the *BSD
>install.
>
>As I am STILL having problems with Linux' networking code, I'm
>STILL hoping someone will put together such a beast. But until
>there is a way to painlessly install *BSD AND lots of utilities
>I need, it's not for me.
I guess the concept of "no pain, no gain" is foreign to you?
I've noticed that everything in life has positive and negative aspects. Linux
has a much nicer install procedure and supports a wide variety of interface
cards; BSD has better networking (so I've heard). You can see that each of
the different groups has focused their energies in different spots. Many
people don't have any problems installing *BSD on their systems; it looks like
the problem is with you.
To be honest, it's hard for me to have any sympathy for you; here you have
two FREE operating systems to choose from, with FULL source, and when something
doesn't work all you can do is whine about it. Why don't you try fixing some
of these problems yourself? What, you don't know how? Then learn. If you
want your hand held, then get a commercial operating system.
--Ken
Matthew Dillon
:oth...@oasys.pc.my (Othman Ahmad) writes:
:
:>Linux is full of these experimental features and they keep on piling them
:>quickly without much thought. Soo Linux will be overwhelmed. It now has many
:
:Imminent death of Linux predicted.
:
:>versions of file systems but still none with the capablility of FFS because
:>Linus hate it.
Personally, having worked on BSD systems for years, I prefer Linux.
BSD has always felt, well, stuffy. From a comparative standpoint,
at least for PC-based UNIXs, Linux is the most compatible and one is
likely to see drivers for new cards developed on it before anything
else. Also from a comparative standpoint, BSD-specific code tends to
be rather archaic... a lot of it is still K&R C (rather than ANSI C),
and a lot of it tends to makes BSD-specific assumptions for system
calls that are incompatible with ANSI C.
No, thank you.
From a stability standpoint, the only reboots I do nowadays occur when
I install a new kernel.
Considering that Linux was alive and well long before it could have
been said to be reasonably complete, now that it IS reasonably complete
it is highly unlikely that it will undergo an imminent demise.
That said, there ARE a few exceptions when it comes to BSD code... I'm
running sendmail 8.6.8 and it compiled without a hitch under Linux.
The primary difference between BSD and Linux, apart from Linux's
SYSVish syscall and tty interface, is in the support programs. BSD
has a very predictable set of programs, whereas Linux has a melange.
For example, there are at least four different getty programs for
Linux, two major system layout configurations (SysVish or BSDish),
two or three different password-related utility sets (though that's
finally been normalized with the incorporation of shadow passwords
in the official shared C lib), etc.
There are also a whole lot of kernel enhancement patches, which I believe
was a sticking point for many arguing for BSD. It really isn't... most
people do NOT bother with the enhancement patches until after they have
been officially incorporated into the kernel by Linus, at which point
they become the standard. On the otherhand, if you need a particular
feature instantly, there is a path you can follow to get it. This
path does not exist under a BSD system.
You have to be a bit more knowledgeable to setup a Linux system than a BSD
system. I believe the result is well worth it.
-Matt
--
Matthew Dillon dil...@apollo.west.oic.com
1005 Apollo Way
Incline Village, NV. 89451 ham: KC6LVW (no mail drop)
USA Sandel-Avery Engineering (702)831-8000
[always include a portion of the original email in any response!]
Eric J. Schwertfeger
>In article <2neomp$k...@clarknet.clark.net>,
>Rob Newberry <ro...@clark.net> wrote:
>>STILL hoping someone will put together such a beast. But until
>>there is a way to painlessly install *BSD AND lots of utilities
>>I need, it's not for me.
>
>I guess the concept of "no pain, no gain" is foreign to you?
Best learning experience I ever had was moving from a single large
root partition to a small root partition and large /usr partition,
when I decided that I was going to figure out what the heck was going
on and move everything over by hand, rather than reinstall. Took an
entire evening, but well worth it.
>To be honest, it's hard for me to have any sympathy for you; here you have
>two FREE operating systems to choose from, with FULL source, and when something
>doesn't work all you can do is whine about it. Why don't you try fixing some
>of these problems yourself? What, you don't know how? Then learn. If you
>want your hand held, then get a commercial operating system.
I fully agree. Both OS's are excellent. I use Linux because at the
time I made my decision, none of the BSD variants had dynamically
linked libraries, and now I've got too much invested to switch for
what would be minor advantages and disadvantages to me.
--
Eric J. Schwertfeger, man...@cs.unlv.edu
Jordan K. Hubbard
Personally, having worked on BSD systems for years, I prefer Linux.
BSD has always felt, well, stuffy. From a comparative standpoint,
at least for PC-based UNIXs, Linux is the most compatible and one is
likely to see drivers for new cards developed on it before anything
else. Also from a comparative standpoint, BSD-specific code tends to
be rather archaic... a lot of it is still K&R C (rather than ANSI C),
and a lot of it tends to makes BSD-specific assumptions for system
calls that are incompatible with ANSI C.
While I highly respect some of the work you have done on the Amiga
front, this statement leads me to believe that you've never really
looked at the code you're criticising. Do you really think we'd
settle for non-ANSI compliant code? Much of both the FreeBSD and
NetBSD teams' effort has been in adding extensive prototyping, and we
run the entire codebase through `gcc -Wall' periodically. The
mainline efforts in *BSD are anything but archaic, and this strikes me
as simply more of the same unthinking bigotry that people in both
camps periodically exhibit. It's both innaccurate and unnecessary.
Jordan
--
Jordan K. Hubbard FreeBSD core team Electric Bivalves Anonymous
On the net, no one can hear you scream.
Eric Youngdale
(Harvey J. Stein) writes:
> From my point of view it is the building of a system. On FreeBSD, all
> I type is "make world," then go out for the night. When I come back,
> all my user level utilities have been build and installed (in addition
> to libraries, include files, etc). For Linux I must have missed
> something because I've never seen a source distribution I could do
> this with (feel free to prove me wrong). This is due, I think, to the
> fact that there is exactly one core distribution and an central group
> running the show that is responsible (as a group) for the entire
> system.
I have seen this thread go on and on, and the big question that I could
never figure out is why anyone would want to recompile their entire system from
scratch.
The one thing that I came up with was that with *BSD until quite
recently there were no shared libraries, so any change to libc required that
you completely rebuild the system if you want to have the change propogated to
all of your binaries. Also, I suspect that the people on the BSD core team and
the people following the Free-current source tree (i.e. using the shared
libraries) would want to do a complete rebuild time a problem related to the
new shared libraries was found.
It was quite similar just over a year ago when the first DLL linux
shared libraries were being developed. You would want to recompile everything
so that you could test the system and see if you could find any bugs. Now that
the linux linker is stable, there is simply no need for massive recompilations
of the entire system.
I am not arguing that there is anything wrong with a unified source
tree - it does have some advantages and it is a worthwhile goal, but personally
I thiuk that the advantages are not as big as some of the BSD people would lead
you to believe.
-Eric
--
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep,
And lines to code before I sleep, And lines to code before I sleep."
Matthew Dillon
>In article <2nhmn3$s...@apollo.west.oic.com> dil...@apollo.west.oic.com (Matthew Dillon) writes:
>
> Personally, having worked on BSD systems for years, I prefer Linux.
> BSD has always felt, well, stuffy. From a comparative standpoint,
>
>While I highly respect some of the work you have done on the Amiga
>front, this statement leads me to believe that you've never really
>looked at the code you're criticising. Do you really think we'd
>settle for non-ANSI compliant code? Much of both the FreeBSD and
>NetBSD teams' effort has been in adding extensive prototyping, and we
>run the entire codebase through `gcc -Wall' periodically. The
>mainline efforts in *BSD are anything but archaic, and this strikes me
>as simply more of the same unthinking bigotry that people in both
>camps periodically exhibit. It's both innaccurate and unnecessary.
>
> Jordan
>--
>Jordan K. Hubbard FreeBSD core team Electric Bivalves Anonymous
>On the net, no one can hear you scream.
Well, I wasn't refering to FreeBSD, but rather the Berkeley BSD release
and the Berkeley source tree (which I have extensive experience with).
You are correct in saying that I have not looked at the FreeBSD release,
and I *did* assume it was a straight port of BSD for which I apologize.
Linus Torvalds
Ken Hornstein <ke...@wrl.epi.com> wrote:
>
>I guess the concept of "no pain, no gain" is foreign to you?
Sorry. I dislike these flame wars intensely, and I just happen to find
the above "concept" one of the more disgusting ones ("Hey, I'm *macho*,
I use an operating system that is PAINFUL because that way I gain
much").
Next I guess you'll tell me "you get what you pay for". I haven't been
this close to flaming someone in a *long* time,
Linus
PS. I tested out Slackware a few weeks ago, and my reaction was "hey,
this install looks like a DOS program". I'm not ashamed to admit that I
was immensely pleased.
cosc19v2
Linus Torvalds <torv...@klaava.Helsinki.FI> wrote:
>In article <2nf0fo$7...@sbus.entropic.com>,
>Ken Hornstein <ke...@wrl.epi.com> wrote:
>>
>>I guess the concept of "no pain, no gain" is foreign to you?
>
Unfortunately, in case *BSD, "Lots of pain, no gain" to most people.
>Sorry. I dislike these flame wars intensely, and I just happen to find
>the above "concept" one of the more disgusting ones ("Hey, I'm *macho*,
>I use an operating system that is PAINFUL because that way I gain
>much").
I strongly agree with Linus. It is like a car mechanic saying the same
thing : "No pain, no gain" with a problem car, implying that the driver
should know how to rebuild the engine, how to fix when oil leaks, etc...
In fact, if the instructions are given correctly, I can do it, but
in case of *BSD, most the instructions are either outdated, incorrect, or
not clear.
>Next I guess you'll tell me "you get what you pay for". I haven't been
>this close to flaming someone in a *long* time,
>
> Linus
Don't worry. For some people, "No flame, no gain". :)
>PS. I tested out Slackware a few weeks ago, and my reaction was "hey,
>this install looks like a DOS program". I'm not ashamed to admit that I
>was immensely pleased.
In fact, I installed it a week ago freshly, and it went very
smooth. I think that the total installation procedure was much more
simpler than SUN workstation's case.
But when I hooked it up with network, I felt that the network performance
was not really satisfactory. I felt it quite sluggish than even SUN3s.
(Linus, do you possibley know why ?).
Here is my experience in installing NetBSD. I somewhat succeeded, so
if people are interested in, they may continue to read.
I think that installing DOS/UNIX in one disk is quite typical, and
if you read the volumenous 386BSD FAQ or succinct NetBSD Install guide,
nothing is clear about it.
First I followed the NetBSD Install guide : It doesn't work. So, I tried
installing in whole disk. In case it works. But I really needed DOS
partition, I don't have enough money just like standard *BSD users, and
I feel that 540M is enough for my use (for DOS and NetBSD together).
So I read 386BSD FAQ, and there is a very interesting (quite amusing,
and looks like a joke to Linux users. Every Linux users should see
386BSD FAQ 2.5.3 - how to install multiple OS in one drive).
How good if that hassle would just work. If you followed the instruction
correctly, it doesn't work either.
After wasting lots of time in figuring out using trial-and-error method,
I finally found a way how to install DOS/*BSD in one IDE drive :
--------------
0) Preparation :
You must have the following available :
pfdisk (from linux dosutils in tsx-11).
fdisk from DOS 5 or higher.
Bootable DOS.
NetBSD Kernel disk, file1 disk, file2 disk.
You must back up any important data in your HD.
1) Since NetBSD wants you to start NetBSD partition to start from
cylinder boundary ( Be careful ! The installation instruction tells
you to prepare calculator and use math for cylinder/head/sector stuff,
but it will eventually wipe out DOS partition),
use pfdisk to partition the disk in cylider number AND to edit the
partition id (you can give a5 to NetBSD in later step).
2) If this is not your first try and you were screwed up previous time,
you will need this step. For safety, you can just include this step.
a) Use fdisk, and see the partition table.
b) Write the partition sizes in Megabytes on a scatch pad
as seen in the table.
c) Do 'fdisk /mbr' to remove NetBSD boot which possibly exists.
d) Use fdisk and remove all partitions. And reboot.
e) Use fdisk to repartition the disk (now you need the scratch pad
in b)). Use the partition size in Megabytes in b) to partition
the disk. Reboot.
f) Use pfdisk and see partition table.
For your safty, check whether it started from the cylinder boundary
(as same as the numbers shown in 1)).
Write all the informations
- starting sector, partition size in sector, ...etc.
on your scratch pad.
g) Give partition id 165 (a5 in hex) to NetBSD using the pfdisk. Reboot.
h) format c:/s/u (if you wish).
3) Use kernel diskette.
Reboot the machine.
... the step is same until you copy the kernel in floppy to HD.....
Insert file system 1 diskette.
Use the informations you got from 2-f) to prepare HD.
Rboot with kernel diskette.
>Copy
>wd0a
4) Now, if you follow the instruction in NetBSD installation guide,
it won't work.
First boot with the kernel diskette.
when the propmt waits on :-, quickly (within 5 sec) type
wd(0,a)/netbsd, which means you are booting from the copied kernel
in HD (the root partition).
It will ask you to insert the file system 2 diskette.
And just follow the simple instructions.
5) When you next boot, do the same thing :
type wd(0,a)/netbsd.
If you want single user mode, type 'wd(0,a)/netbsd -s' while the
prompt is waitin on :- (for a few seconds).
6) Now you may continue to install using 'extract' command.
7) You may wish to hack around the boot sector using os-bxxx, but
in my case, I was afraid of losing what I have done, so I decided to
make boot diskette for myself.
8) However, in next step - to update the old 0.9 version to Current,
The FAQ's procedure (3.1.8) led me to "Bus error. core dump". :(
It seems to me that I should give up.
Too bad that I realized too late that I shouldn't start *BSD stuff at all
:(
Jordan K. Hubbard
In fact, if the instructions are given correctly, I can do it, but
in case of *BSD, most the instructions are either outdated, incorrect, or
not clear.
Oh dear. I think it's time for me to get into some serious capital
letter usage here!
I find it somewhat annoying that you say `*BSD' here and then proceed
to later admit that you've only tried NetBSD. Not to flame NetBSD at
all, but each group is different and has different strengths and
weaknesses. Please do not tar us all with the same brush!
That aside, and speaking more generally, many of the instructions
WON'T GET ANY BETTER IF PEOPLE DON'T HELP US TO IMPROVE THEM! It
never ceases to amaze me how many people seem to regard 100%
perfection in something they have not paid one penny for as a
god-given right, and for every one person that sends in constructive
criticisms that we can _WORK WITH_, ten more simply whine at us for
not doing a `better job', never even stopping to consider how they
might contribute to the effort themselves!
It also seems to me that Linux is blessed with the twin advantages of
both a very large user base (several times larger than FreeBSD's) and
one that is willing to PITCH IN AND HELP OUT. In the FreeBSD group,
at least, we are a VERY SMALL group of SERIOUSLY OVERWORKED
individuals who are now giving up what amounts to pretty much *ALL* of
their free time to bring the general public these releases! I ask
you, would you yourself feel perhaps just a little bit bitter about
the amount of flaming and destructive comparison that goes on here if
you were in my shoes?
Even in the worst situation, where one has tried hard to install some
version of *BSD and had no luck, what do you think that the best thing
to then do is? Jump on the net and say "xxxBSD is a heap of flaming
horse exhaust!" or drop one of our frequently published mailing lists
a line saying "I've had this bad problem trying to install, can anyone
help me? Is there anything I can do to help make it work?" I think
the answer's pretty clear. We're not commercial software
organizations here, and we can't do it without public help and
support. If we get fed up and go away, where will that have gotten
everyone?
Jordan
--
Jordan K. Hubbard FreeBSD core team Raving lunatic
Magnus Y Alvestad
J> without public help and support. If we get fed up and go away,
J> where will that have gotten everyone?
Well, everyone will be using Linux.
-Magnus
Randolph G. Brown
As a long-time Linux user, I'd like to apologize to the *BSD community
for this person's stupid snide comment.
Frankly, I think it's good in the long run that we now have _3_
distinct evolving free-unix communities --- the cross-fertilization
will be good for all three, at least for a while. Their work does us
all good, and the loss of one community will harm us all.
Please don't stop.
-Randy
Magnus Y Alvestad
| Magnus, that kind of cute one-liner doesn't help Linux, doesn't hurt
| BSD, and *definitely* does nothing for your image. If you want to
| do something helpful for Linux, become a developer.
It wasn't intended to help Linux or hurt BSD. It was intended to be a
cute one-liner. As for my image, thanks for the concern. I'll make
sure to think twice about my image before I post here again.
-Magnus
Jordan K. Hubbard
J> without public help and support. If we get fed up and go away,
J> where will that have gotten everyone?
Well, everyone will be using Linux.
This one goes on my refrigerator along with the wonderful `People
Unclear On The Concept' Herman cartoons! :-) They _won't_ be using
Linux if exactly the same things hold true for Linus Torvalds and his
band of merry volunteers! We're all human, and if ANY group of free
software volunteers starts getting that Seriously Unappreciated
feeling, or are left to carry all the work without some `new blood'
coming in to periodically take pieces of the load off their shoulders,
the project eventually falls apart. "Oh no!" you say "that could
never happen to Linux! There are too many of us!" Balls. Keeping
any project like this afloat, and with consistent quality (time and
technology don't stand still, no matter how dedicated and skilled your
team of ENIAC engineers might have been!) takes work, and it takes a
large number of people willing to stay actively involved. It's easy
to pledge allegiance for a week, or a month, but try it for a couple
of YEARS and then you'll start to get the picture of what's required
to take these things to the near-commercial quality level that people
are beginning to essentially demand. Otherwise, the next Big Thing
comes along and everybody jumps ship. I remember when the be-all and
end-all of operating systems was CP/M (and that was commercial, with a
lot of support and money behind it). I don't know too many people who
still run it today.
Amancio Hasty Jr
a volunteer to smooth out the FreeBSD installation and better co-existence
with the DOS file system....
Amancio
--
FREE unix, gcc, tcp/ip, X, open-look, interviews, tcl/tk, MIME, midi, sound
at freebsd.cdrom.com:/pub/FreeBSD
Amancio Hasty, Consultant |
Home: (415) 495-3046 |
e-mail ha...@netcom.com | ftp-site depository of all my work:
aha...@cisco.com | sunvis.rtpnc.epa.gov:/pub/386bsd/X
Russell Marrash
>I hope that after all this postings something good comes out it like
>a volunteer to smooth out the FreeBSD installation and better co-existence
>with the DOS file system....
>
>Amancio
>
When I first installed unix on my system at home, I was very new to the Unix
world. I am the type of person that likes some challenge when it comes to doing
something. It feels good when you accomplish something that takes a little work.
I first tried to install NetBsd and after about a week of trying I gave up. Most
of my problems were related to dos and unix co-existing on one hard disk and
being able to dual boot.
I then tried FreeBsd 1.0 and this one installed with very little effort. Part
of this was probably due to the knowledge I gained while trying to install
NetBsd.
After spending a lot of my time to get things to work, I felt pretting good about
my accomplishment. If I wanted something that installed as easy as a DOS App, I
wouldn't be using Unix. I think a lot of the new users to unix think it should be
DOS, but they need to realize that its not.
Just my .02 worth,
Russell Marrash
Amancio Hasty Jr
>In article <hastyCn...@netcom.com> ha...@netcom.com (Amancio Hasty Jr) writes:
>>
>When I first installed unix on my system at home, I was very new to the Unix
>world. I am the type of person that likes some challenge when it comes to doing
>something. It feels good when you accomplish something that takes a little work.
Well I understand your position, however I think the problem with both
NetBSD and FreeBSD is that many dislike DOS and also there is no
reason why we can't have a bug free installation. Also the state of
our installation procedures does not suprise me, I have seen over
the years both as a group leader and as a software engineer plenty
of programmers failed to write a decent installation procedure.
lilo
> Frankly, I think it's good in the long run that we now have _3_
> distinct evolving free-unix communities --- the cross-fertilization
> will be good for all three, at least for a while. Their work does us
> all good, and the loss of one community will harm us all.
> Please don't stop.
That's so true....what we have here is a case where three separate groups of
people have each done a major service to the free-unix community as a whole.
The only result is that "competition" produces a stronger desire to put out
a better product--which I think is a very good thing. But I'd rather view
the situation as "three success stories" than concentrate on the competitive
aspects.
Thanks again very much to all concerned!
lilo
Brian Somers
-Magnus
IMHO:
____ASSHOLE____
If you don't think much of *BSD, get off this newsgroup !
Brian.
--
Brian <br...@awfulhak.demon.co.uk>
Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour....
Lester Igo
: On 3 Apr 1994 23:27:07 GMT, Randolph G. Brown (br...@cs.swarthmore.edu) wrote:
: > Frankly, I think it's good in the long run that we now have _3_
: > distinct evolving free-unix communities --- the cross-fertilization
: > will be good for all three, at least for a while. Their work does us
: > all good, and the loss of one community will harm us all.
: people have each done a major service to the free-unix community as a whole.
: The only result is that "competition" produces a stronger desire to put out
: a better product--which I think is a very good thing. But I'd rather view
: the situation as "three success stories" than concentrate on the competitive
: aspects.
is to promote unix and at the same time keep some compitition going to
further advances in both sides.
I am somewhat surprised at the Linux people talking about the instalation as
"dos-like". I found it to be absolutely nothing like a dos installation.
It could be caracterized as bug free, informative, menu driven, self
explanitory, etc. but definutely not dos like (for one thing DOS instalations
have bugs). Anyone out there ever try and hack around Microshafts copy
protection on their upgrade (just exit with F3??, run fdisk, sys the partition,
and run install from their [absolutely no previous version required, as the
install program claims]).
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
| Lester Igo | email- igo...@uidaho.edu |
| 316 Gault Hall | Gault Hall Treasurer |
| 5-8653 | |
| Comp. Eng. | |
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Ashcroft
Feh. This is just silly. I too like to learn things, but at the moment,
I just need a X-windows machine at home that works and can deal with gcc
and g++ and gnuplot and whatever for my research. And guess what, Linux
was up and running and with the help of a friend, USEFUL, in only a day
or three. I was amazed, and I was grateful, and I applaud whoever
put the Slackware distribution that way. It turns my 486 into a real
hotrod, and means I don't have to rely on brain-damaged Microsoft
products. And it does it almost painlessly.
Painless installation is a worthy goal, and one too seldom attainted in
even commercial applications. I was a little wary of Linux to begin with,
but this is some of the best software anywhere, whether commercial or not.
I thought only the FSF was doing this sort of quality, but apparently the
spirit lives outside of Stallman's band as well.
None of which is meant, at all, to put down FreeBSD or NetBSD. I have
no experience with either. I'm just really impressed by Linux.
RNA
lilo
> I am somewhat surprised at the Linux people talking about the instalation as
> "dos-like". I found it to be absolutely nothing like a dos installation.
> It could be caracterized as bug free, informative, menu driven, self
> explanitory, etc. but definutely not dos like (for one thing DOS instalations
> have bugs). Anyone out there ever try and hack around Microshafts copy
> protection on their upgrade (just exit with F3??, run fdisk, sys the partition,
> and run install from their [absolutely no previous version required, as the
> install program claims]).
Well, this is obviously a matter that could give rise to a whole different
thread (and has, repeatedly ;) but I assume the intent of the speaker (it
wasn't me) was to refer to those DOS-software installations which are
exceptionally bug-free. It's simple economics; there are many MANY more DOS
users than other operating systems, due to price and availability
considerations. With that large (and diverse) a user base, there are a lot
more vendors to choose from and a lot more competition. While there is
certainly a lot of really bad software (and, paradoxically, Microsoft
themselves are one of the worst offenders), there is also probably more
really good software just due to these factors.
I've found that the Borland development tool installs I've run have
generally been very clean, though some probably are not. I can cite a
number of other examples (but won't here ;); the point is that if we can
achieve the clean, crisp installs that *various* (though certainly not by
any means all) DOS vendors have achieved, we'll be doing really well. Unix
installs tend to be more difficult and less clean, in *general*, in part due
to the fact that the Unix-compatible market is so (relatively) small and the
competitive pressures are less.
Power does not have to imply difficulty. But, this is a debatable point,
and I'm sure there are other newsgroups where this can be better debated.
Feel free to suggest one rather than replying in copious detail in these
forums.... ;)
lilo
J Wunsch
>Rob Newberry (ro...@clark.net) wrote:
>: It's not just the FAQ's, either. The man pages are screwy. I wanted
>: to add some users. In linux, "adduser" does the trick. So I do a
>: "man adduser", and it says that this is a command for adding new users,
>Wrong. It says (and I quote:)
>----
>ADDUSER(8) NetBSD System Manager's Manual ADDUSER(8)
>NAME
> adduser - procedure for adding new users
>----
>"procedure"... Not "command". And reading further (yes; I know it's
Wrong. From the man page:
HISTORY
The adduser command appeared in 3.0BSD.
^^^^^^^
This ought to be a command, and i my memory serves me well, some command
to do this will be in FreeBSD-1.1.
(Why the hell did it ever dissapear? If it appeared in 3BSD, it cannot
be encumbered by the USL.)
--
cheers, J"org work: joerg_...@tcd-dresden.de
private: joerg_...@uriah.sax.de
Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming:
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle.
J Wunsch
>BSD and Linux may be technically equal overall, but I find the two very
>different in the way that they are developed. BSD is a closed group with
>"core authors". Linux is an open development environment.
This is simply not true. The BSD groups are open for any volunteer. The
only thing is, you should subscribe to the *bsd-hackers list, to keep
you informed. Due to the signal/noise ratio there (resulting from the
daily work), this will flood you with up to 150 mails per day though.
Magnus Y Alvestad
J> This one goes on my refrigerator along with the wonderful `People
J> Unclear On The Concept' Herman cartoons! :-) They _won't_ be using
J> Linux if exactly the same things hold true for Linus Torvalds and
J> his band of merry volunteers! We're all human, and if ANY group of
Gee, none of my posts have ever gone on a refridgerator before! The
point I was trying to make was that I think the way development is
being done on Linux is a good idea. Linus holds a crucial role as the
kernel coordinator, of course - but even if he dropped out there are
other that could take over.
Who needs a core team?
J> Jordan -- Jordan K. Hubbard
J> FreeBSD core team Raving lunatic
-Magnus
Ollivier Robert
Jordan K. Hubbard <j...@whisker.hubbard.ie> wrote:
>help me? Is there anything I can do to help make it work?" I think
>the answer's pretty clear. We're not commercial software
>organizations here, and we can't do it without public help and
>support. If we get fed up and go away, where will that have gotten
>everyone?
Please, in the name of all of us *BSD users, don't give up.
Speaking of my own experience, we have in France a big community of Linux
users. A few friends and I are using FreeBSD. I'm traditionnally a *BSD fan
so I choose first 386BSD and then FreeBSD.
There is a dedicated newsgroup for linux but actually it is used for all
the free UNIX systems. There have never been a flame war between us.
Everybody is trying to helpful. On both sides.
Why there is always a flame war lurking here between Linux and *BSD ?
People choose the UNIX they want, for their own reasons whatever they are.
People must realise that the real `difference' is between free UNIXes and
the other commercial ones, not between the free ones. I don't care which
one is better, I choose one that's all.
Grow up people, please.
Thanks as always to all the FreeBSD team which is working very hard and all
others who are trying to useful instead of constantly flaming.
--
Ollivier ROBERT Ollivie...@keltia.frmug.fr.net
A FreeBSD & PERL addict... PGP 2.3a public key on key-servers
Running FreeBSD-current and very happy to do so !
Chris Thompson
: > Will WABI/WINE work there? (I'd love to see Word for Windows under X)
: > is there iBCS2 support? (In ALPHA for Linux, run SCO binaries)
: How good are all these? I tried the MSDOS emulation before but it was so full
: of bugs and limited that I'd rather reboot.
DOSEmu is great. What do you want it to do? Win3.1? No. Wordperfect 6 for
DOS yes. I use it all the time for Quicken, WordPerfect, and an
assortment of DOS shareware like Loan Amortizers.
If you used an old version of DOSEMU then yes, it was pretty bad. (I
never managed to get it compiled back then) but the new DosEMU0.50pl1 is
really stable. It even has DPMI support (not that I use it.)
: The last time I studied Linux networking code, it was adapted Net/2
: code with hacks to make it work for Linux. Otherwise how could they get those
: networking utilities up so quickly.
The Networking Code in Linux is not as stable as NetBSD. I say that only
on hearsay, I have never had a Single problem with it.
: Don't be fooled by features that you do not need. Keep it slim and bug free.
: Linux is ONLY for X86, whereas BSD is for ALL. If you want a toy to play with,
: go for Linux, but if you want to go on to greater things, try BSD.
But we're not talking for everything else. That argument is thrown up
every time a BSD addict gets into a corner. "Yeah, but I can run Vic20BSD
and NewtonBSD and HP48SXBSD and SlideRuleBSD" The argument is a little
thin. So BSD is availible on 11 platforms. I dont OWN 11 platforms and
could care less if it runs on an Amiga. And based on Commodore's recent
liquidation, nobody else does either. There is supposedly an Amiga port
of Linux, but I know nothing about it other than it's existence. the
point is though, WHO CARES? I happen to own an x86. If I owned a Mac I
would run MacBSD instead of A/UX, that's true. but I dont own, and I wont
run. Its kind of like if I owned a Ferrari and you owned a jeep and you
argued that my ferrari is not a real car because it cant go Off-Road,
like your jeep which can 'run anywhere'
I am not now, nor have I ever, tried to convince anyone to switch to
Linux. All I have done is refute inane claims by BSDAddicts that thier
system is better. I have heard everything from 'It runs on 3483 different
platforms, with See-n-SayBSD in ALPHA' to 'you cant recompile the entire
source tree of Linux at once' (which still boggles my mind). So Far I
have not heard a SINGLE good reason offered by a BSDAddict as to why BSD is
better.
: SABAH is HEAVEN. Beautiful islands, mountains and jungles are next to
5 star : hotels. There are no natural and very few man-made disasters,
: BUT for how long will it last?
: Disclaimer: I only speak for myself
I Assume that was a .sigfile and not anything having to do with the real
world. It WAS butted up against the text quoted above like it was a
continuation of the paragraph.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris Thompson | Linux/XF86/Ztalk/Emacs/Mosaic/Rush/Marillion/Linux
sky...@skynet.iac.net | 'We will either find a way, or make one.'-Hannibal
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Sienkiewicz
>
>I think that installing DOS/UNIX in one disk is quite typical, and
>if you read the volumenous 386BSD FAQ or succinct NetBSD Install guide,
>nothing is clear about it.
I think it is *also* typical to blow DOS away and hope to never see it
again.
You may have noticed that many BSD users already have rather strong
biases about what their computer should be like, and it doesn't include
primitive boot loaders pretending to be operating systems. [ :) ] Also,
notice that it seems to be a point of pride to say "My machine has been
up for XX days." That also suggests a lack of DOS.
I think a lot of us don't *want* DOS on our machines, therefore haven't
spent a lot of time figuring out how to make it work.
This is not to say that I think we should disallow DOS completely. Just
recognize that Linux is getting a lot of the more casual users because
it does a better job at accomadating them.
Mark S.
p.s. I liked the Netbsd 0.9 install. It did everything I wanted in a
simple and clear fashion. I guess I'm going to have to go buy a disk
to install Linux on, just to see their install program. :)
Anatoly Ivasyuk
>When I first installed unix on my system at home, I was very new to the Unix
>world. I am the type of person that likes some challenge when it comes to
>doing something. It feels good when you accomplish something that takes a
>little work.
I think there are different challenges when it comes to something like this.
Do you want a challenge in learning how to *use* the system, or do you want
a challenge learning how to *install* the system in the first place?
I have been using Linux since July '92 (version 0.95b, if I recall correctly).
Around that time, all you had was a boot disk and a root disk. There was
a definite procedure for installing the base system and getting the thing
to boot off your hard drive (anyone remember Shoelace?). Everything else
you had to find and install by hand.
I'll admit that finding all the pieces and putting things together was
a definite learning experience, since I had never been at the sysadmin level
before. It was worth all the sweat and tears, but in no case did the
installation procedure for the base system fail.
However, I would not go through that again. I have better things to do
than to fiddle with pieces and parts, since I have my own projects and
a degree to complete by May. I have friends who tried the *BSD
installation (386/BSD, NetBSD, *and* FreeBSD), and then settled on Linux
to get some real work done. Granted, the first time I saw the "new"
Slackware installation, I had this terrible DOS-flashback, but I was
able to calm down enough to appreciate all the care that went into that
piece of software.
I used to compile software by hand, but I prefer a binary release with
all of the software I want to use, since I don't have the time to fiddle
with Makefiles and config files. The only thing I recompile these days
is the kernel and my own projects.
I believe that the three development teams have done a great job on their
respective systems. Of course, there are strengths and weaknesses in
each of the systems (yes, my networking feels a bit slow), but no one
should point out the weaknesses in another system unless he is willing
to admit the weaknesses in his own system. In time, the weaknesses will
be corrected, but in the meanwhile, I hope that the development teams
continue their efforts. I, for one, appreciate all of the spare time
that the developers have put into their systems. I have had to develop
much software in my spare time for less noble causes.
-Anatoly
--
Anatoly Ivasyuk
ana...@nick.csh.rit.edu
ani...@cs.rit.edu
Geoff Rehmet
>Gee, none of my posts have ever gone on a refridgerator before! The
>point I was trying to make was that I think the way development is
>being done on Linux is a good idea. Linus holds a crucial role as the
>kernel coordinator, of course - but even if he dropped out there are
>other that could take over.
>Who needs a core team?
The idea of having a "core team" is basically a good one - these are
the people who coordinate the direction which the OS is taking, build
distributions and maintain proper software management practices with
respect to the source code of the system (among many other hundred
activities ;-). The core teams are also the official spokesmen (umm no
women yet) on the system.
I for one like the degree of control which is created by having a core
team - this makes for a stable develpment environment. The degree of
coordination in the *BSD camps also makes it possible for me to download
*every* morning the latest fixes etc (by sup) (not that I compile my
source tree every day ;-). (There are lots of other benefits of the
degree of coordination that is created by having a "core" team.)
I don't know how Linux is coordinated (apart from that it appears that
Linus coordinates the kernel).
(Maybe some people like the (seemingly) more chaotic way in which Linux
develops, I prefer a coordinated approach.)
Geoff.
(Not a member of the FreeBSD core team.)
--
Geoff Rehmet, Computer Science Department, | ____ _ o /\
Rhodes University, South Africa |___ _-\_<, /\/\/\
email : cs...@cs.ru.ac.za | (*)/'(*) /\/\/\/\/\
: ge...@neptune.ru.ac.za |
Geoff Rehmet
>I think it is *also* typical to blow DOS away and hope to never see it
>again.
>You may have noticed that many BSD users already have rather strong
>biases about what their computer should be like, and it doesn't include
>primitive boot loaders pretending to be operating systems. [ :) ] Also,
>notice that it seems to be a point of pride to say "My machine has been
>up for XX days." That also suggests a lack of DOS.
Actually most of the FreeBSD installations that I have been involved in
doing have been DOS/BSD installs (we didn't follow any "install
procedures" though).
You will find just as many Linux users who pride themselves in saying
that their system has been up XXXX days ;-)
>I think a lot of us don't *want* DOS on our machines, therefore haven't
>spent a lot of time figuring out how to make it work.
Most of us don't do installs very often, and therefor don't often think
of those people doing installs ;-)
I for one have only used the FreeBSD install once - just to see what it
looked like - most of the systems I have built are based on the old
hand-installation procedure for 386BSD-0.1 !!!
The FreeBSD install (can't speak for NetBSD) is getting nicer, and will
continue to get better as people make more input in forums like this.
(On an aside - I think that in both BSD camps install procedures have
been on the back burner because of the need to get _lots_ of serious
bugs removed from the old Net/2 code - we will probably see things like
install procedures coming along now that NetBSD and FreeBSD are stable.
I for one would also welcome it if someone went and built up a
Net/FreeBSD distribution based on the was the Linux ones work - a
distrib with apps etc included.)
Geoff.
(Just a happy FreeBSD user.)
Alan Cox
>In <MAGNUS.94...@haukugle.ii.uib.no> mag...@haukugle.ii.uib.no (Magnus Y Alvestad) writes:
>>Who needs a core team?
>
>The idea of having a "core team" is basically a good one - these are
>the people who coordinate the direction which the OS is taking, build
'core team' name. You only need to look at the SCSI drivers, the net drivers,
the networking, ext2fs etc to see each module has a core person or team, or
in some cases has passed down through such teams.
Unlike the way the BSD organisation seems to be, it is a core per major
module with a Linus on the top of the pile.
Alan
Rob Newberry
>>two FREE operating systems to choose from, with FULL source, and when something
>>doesn't work all you can do is whine about it. Why don't you try fixing some
>>of these problems yourself? What, you don't know how? Then learn. If you
>>want your hand held, then get a commercial operating system.
>I fully agree. Both OS's are excellent. I use Linux because at the
>time I made my decision, none of the BSD variants had dynamically
>linked libraries, and now I've got too much invested to switch for
>what would be minor advantages and disadvantages to me.
Thanks, both of you, for the lecture. As I said from the beginning, I have no
bone to pick with *BSD. I simply said, that for users like me, Slackware was
a much better choice. Your thoughtless comments about spending time
learning how to do things I CAN ALREADY DO WITH SLACKWARE only prove that fact.
Rob
*******************************************************************
Rob Newberry Education and Technology Solutions, Inc.
Email: r...@eats.com 4303 Parkland Court
Phone: 301 438 3915 Rockville, Maryland 20853
FAX: 301 438 3748
"He who laughs first didn't get the joke."
-- Paul Westerberg
*******************************************************************
Rob Newberry
>Sorry. I dislike these flame wars intensely, and I just happen to find
>the above "concept" one of the more disgusting ones ("Hey, I'm *macho*,
>I use an operating system that is PAINFUL because that way I gain
>much").
>Next I guess you'll tell me "you get what you pay for". I haven't been
>this close to flaming someone in a *long* time,
> Linus
>PS. I tested out Slackware a few weeks ago, and my reaction was "hey,
>this install looks like a DOS program". I'm not ashamed to admit that I
>was immensely pleased.
Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap...
And for the operating system as well...clap, clap, clap...
Rob Newberry
>IMHO:
> ____ASSHOLE____
>If you don't think much of *BSD, get off this newsgroup !
>Brian.
>--
>Brian <br...@awfulhak.demon.co.uk>
Er, pardon me, but I just read your whining in comp.os.linux.misc. Who's on
who's turf?
(BTW, yes, I realize this whole thread is cross-posted, but this jerk doesn't.)
Satoshi ASAMI
rob...@keltia.frmug.fr.net (Ollivier Robert) writes:
* Why there is always a flame war lurking here between Linux and *BSD ?
* People choose the UNIX they want, for their own reasons whatever they are.
*
* People must realise that the real `difference' is between free UNIXes and
* the other commercial ones, not between the free ones. I don't care which
* one is better, I choose one that's all.
*
* Grow up people, please.
*
* Thanks as always to all the FreeBSD team which is working very hard and all
* others who are trying to useful instead of constantly flaming.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. This thread was making me really
sick. Both camps are doing remarkable jobs, it's just that there are
some assholes (users from both sides) who can't praise their systems
without degrading what others are using.
Kudos to people who are doing a great job. And please, let's not
crosspost anything to these two groups. It will do no good to both
sides.
Satoshi (a proud user of FreeBSD)
cosc19v2
Mark Sienkiewicz <ma...@elea.umd.edu> wrote:
>In article <2nmeb4$r...@menudo.uh.edu>, cosc19v2 <cosc...@menudo.uh.edu> wrote:
>>
>>I think that installing DOS/UNIX in one disk is quite typical, and
>>if you read the volumenous 386BSD FAQ or succinct NetBSD Install guide,
>>nothing is clear about it.
>
>I think it is *also* typical to blow DOS away and hope to never see it
>again.
WRONG !!!
It is not for using or hacking around DOS or UNIX themselves.
It is the SOFTWARE that we want to use.
Can you tell me how you can run SimCity2000, Typing Tutor, Power Point,
Authorware Professional, ...etc. on your *BSD machine ?
I think that what is different b/w Linux users and *BSD users is that
the former uses DOS/Linux box as a basis for the applications they use
every day, and the latter uses *BSD for *BSD hacking (of course, in this
case, you don't need DOS and you don't want to see it again).
>You may have noticed that many BSD users already have rather strong
>biases about what their computer should be like, and it doesn't include
>primitive boot loaders pretending to be operating systems. [ :) ] Also,
>notice that it seems to be a point of pride to say "My machine has been
>up for XX days." That also suggests a lack of DOS.
So, while their BSD machines are up for XX days, what do they do with them ?
You can say only the software which is ported to *BSD, right ?
(Note also that there are much more software ported to Linux than *BSD).
Let me explain how my old PC is being used at home. It is used by
3 people. I mostly use Linux, my wife uses Linux for her thesis, and
uses Windows for her work. My kid uses it for KID PIX, "Just GRandma and
ME", "Athur teacher trouble" CDROMs, and Mario Teaches Typing.
We all have fun with Lemmings, and learns some aspect while we play
SimEarth, and SimLife. Unlike your (or their) *BSD machines, our PC's
uptime is, in many case, less than an hour, since we all want it.
So what ?
>I think a lot of us don't *want* DOS on our machines, therefore haven't
>spent a lot of time figuring out how to make it work.
>
>This is not to say that I think we should disallow DOS completely. Just
>recognize that Linux is getting a lot of the more casual users because
>it does a better job at accomadating them.
>
>Mark S.
>
>p.s. I liked the Netbsd 0.9 install. It did everything I wanted in a
>simple and clear fashion. I guess I'm going to have to go buy a disk
>to install Linux on, just to see their install program. :)
As I said, installation in a whole drive is no problem.
It is as easy as Linux installation.
I also thought about installing the *BSD in a whole drive, but
I have some useful programs that I already purchased, such as
Dictionary program, Grammer correcting program, speed reading training
program, typing tutor, and Lemmings, or Pinball games (for break).
I really want to use them. And they are not available on any free-*ix
platform.
You are going to say, "Buy two PCs", right ? :) :)
Gees, it is not worth while to deal with this kind of stiff-necked BSD users.
Bye, BSD.
Bror 'Count' Heinola
>In <2nq530$7...@hecate.umd.edu> ma...@elea.umd.edu (Mark Sienkiewicz) writes:
>>primitive boot loaders pretending to be operating systems. [ :) ] Also,
>>notice that it seems to be a point of pride to say "My machine has been
>>up for XX days." That also suggests a lack of DOS.
>You will find just as many Linux users who pride themselves in saying
>that their system has been up XXXX days ;-)
Well, in case with Linux it means that they're using severely
outdated kernels :-)
But using an outdated kernel isn't always bad; networking was
quite broken in some .99 versions so it wasn't very intelligent
to rush into updates. But unless you try the kernel, you won't
know if it works or not, and you can't try new kernels without
reboots, so there goes your uptime... :-)
>Most of us don't do installs very often, and therefor don't often think
>of those people doing installs ;-)
I installed NetBSD 0.9 and Linux Slackware 1.2.0 both yesterday.
Slackware's install program is rather user friendly, but I wish
it would show list of available programs and let user choose
from them, and after that ask for disks. I became majorly annoyed
after waiting a few minutes and seeing that that disk didn't contain
anything I wanted to install.
Anyway things have started to look better lately, I first installed
Linux over a year and a half ago from some crappy SLS and it sucked,
and 1 year 4 months ago I installed 386BSD 0.1 to this machine I'm
now writing this followup..
--
Bror 'Count' Heinola # E-mail: # Network admin of muncca.fi
Perustie 21 A 1 # co...@snafu.muncca.fi # and hole.fi Count in IRC
00330 HELSINKI # an1...@anon.penet.fi # "Be excellent to each
Tel: +358-0-458-4334 # ...free your mind... # other!" - Bill & Ted
Mark Sienkiewicz
>In article <2nq530$7...@hecate.umd.edu>,
>Mark Sienkiewicz <ma...@elea.umd.edu> wrote:
>>
>>I think it is *also* typical to blow DOS away and hope to never see it
>>again.
>
>WRONG !!!
Are you claiming that I'm the only person in the world who doesn't
have DOS on my machine?
>Can you tell me how you can run SimCity2000, Typing Tutor, Power Point,
>Authorware Professional, ...etc. on your *BSD machine ?
How do you run MacPaint on your DOS/Linux machine? I *don't* run those
applications.
>I think that what is different b/w Linux users and *BSD users is that
>the former uses DOS/Linux box as a basis for the applications they use
>every day, and the latter uses *BSD for *BSD hacking (of course, in this
>case, you don't need DOS and you don't want to see it again).
This is partly true. It seems typical (there's that word again :)
that a Linux user is somebody who had a DOS machine and decided to try
Linux. I *bought* a system for the express purpose of running a
BSD-like system on it.
Now it doesn't mean that I use the machine exclusively for hacking. News
and mail are nice everyday applications. So are TeX, xfig, ghostscript,
xv, flexfax, sc (though I did this years taxes on my 3B1 with SYSV),
and missileX.
>Let me explain how my old PC is being used at home. It is used by
>3 people. I mostly use Linux, my wife uses Linux for her thesis, and
...
>SimEarth, and SimLife. Unlike your (or their) *BSD machines, our PC's
>uptime is, in many case, less than an hour, since we all want it.
>So what ?
My point is that a BSD *or* Linux machine that is reporting an uptime
of 60 days has not been booted under DOS for two months. This is
roughly the same as not using DOS at all.
>I also thought about installing the *BSD in a whole drive, but
>I have some useful programs that I already purchased, such as
...
>You are going to say, "Buy two PCs", right ? :) :)
No. I'm going to say "You are substantially *DIFFERENT* kind of user than
I am." I think the BSD install program was written by people like me,
i.e. people with little interest in DOS.
>Gees, it is not worth while to deal with this kind of stiff-necked BSD users.
>Bye, BSD.
Geez, I make an observation that might explain how it came to be that
the install program doesn't get along with DOS and somebody flames me
for not wanting to run the applications that he does.
Re-read my original message. I never said "I am superior because I don't
use dos". I said "I don't use DOS and I think a lot of other people
don't either".
Mark S.
p.s. Ok, everybody flame me now. All together now: 1... 2... 3... :)
Bernd Meyer
>sky...@iac.net (Chris Thompson) writes:
>>
>> Is there MS-DOG Emulation? ( until I see quicken for Linux, I need DOS apps)
>> Will WABI/WINE work there? (I'd love to see Word for Windows under X)
>> is there iBCS2 support? (In ALPHA for Linux, run SCO binaries)
>>
>How good are all these? I tried the MSDOS emulation before but it was so full
>of bugs and limited that I'd rather reboot.
Well, by the end of last year, a friend of mine was doing ALL his DOS
work under the dosemu, including his WYSIWYG textprocessor and his Turbo
Pascal programming. Since then, two new releases with lots of new
features have been out, so he probably is still doing it.... It also
allows machines like mine, which have a modem dialin, still to run that
naughty DOS program.
Wine is clearly stated ALPHA and has no real value yet - or at least it
didn't the last time I ran it (Feb. '94), and since then there has been
no announcement stating otherwise. But I played a few games of solitaire
on it, and it looked very promising. I'm looking forward to the day it
becomes really usable.
iBCS2 support went into official ALPHA a few days back (that is, it is a
step further than Wine, which is still hidden in private directories),
and it works well enough to run the X version of WordPerfect. That's
enough for me, for now.....
>Linux is full of these experimental features and they keep on piling them
>quickly without much thought. Soo Linux will be overwhelmed. It now has many
>versions of file systems but still none with the capablility of FFS because
>Linus hate it.
The nice thing (IMHO) about the "experimental features" is that they
tend to become nonexperimental within a few weeks. This happened to the
sounddrivers, to the QIC-02 tape driver (thank you to the author!) as
well as to the QIC-40/80 tape driver. This happened to UMSDOS FS, the
Cluster patches, the IDE performance packet, the XIAFS.... And the even
nicer thing is that though Linus decides, which THE linux at any given
moment is, I can still chose which patches I want to apply....
> The last time I studied Linux networking code, it was adapted Net/2
>code with hacks to make it work for Linux. Otherwise how could they get those
>networking utilities up so quickly.
Ooops - let's not start this bad debate again... The NET2 code has
nothing to do with Net/2 (BSD). It was written from scratch. Of course,
the BSD networking utilities are used, but that's about it. I hope this
misunderstanding dies when the (hinted at) NET3 sees the light of the
day.
BTW, there actually IS a port of the BSD networking code to linux, and
you have to use that if you want to use ISDN (because the ISDN drivers
author chose to code for that port...), but it certainly isn't the
standard networking code under linux!
>Linux is ONLY for X86, whereas BSD is for ALL. If you want a toy to play with,
>go for Linux, but if you want to go on to greater things, try BSD.
Why this controversial attitude? For example I myself know that I won't
be able to afford anything but a X86 for quite some time from now (and I
can't afford a X86, I just happen to have one :-), so I'm pretty happy
with linux. It gives me all I want (and more), and it has done so for
the last two years.
The same could probably be said about *BSD... I never tried it, so I
can't comment on it. If somebody asks me what to install, I tell them
exactly this, and they'll probably install linux, because they know my
phonenumber and know whom to call when it goes wrong.....
Bernie
--
"And the band played 'Waltzing Mathilda' / as we stopped to bury our slain;
And we buried ours / and the Turks buried theirs | ..... living in Oz ....
And it started all over again" |
(The Pogues, "Waltzing Mathilda", orig by Eric Bogle, "And the band played WM")
Bernd Meyer
>Why there is always a flame war lurking here between Linux and *BSD ?
>People choose the UNIX they want, for their own reasons whatever they are.
Clap clap to this! And to illustrate the point, I might just explain why
I am using linux and not *BSD....
Back in the old old days, when I first thought of installing a unix on
my PC, the README to 386BSD said something like "you can test it out,
from a single disk, but be sure to have your harddisk not recognized
during bootup, as it might get trashed", while the linux README said
something like "You can test it out. There are loads of bugs, and we
guarantee for nothing. It won't do nasty things like dumping core all
over your harddisk, but you still do it at your own risk". And it was
this "dumping core all over the harddisk" that made my decision - and
that's why I am not using *BSD today. Silly, isn't it?
Bruce Jackson
>Here is my experience in installing NetBSD. I somewhat succeeded, so
>if people are interested in, they may continue to read.
>How good if that hassle would just work. If you followed the instruction
>correctly, it doesn't work either.
>After wasting lots of time in figuring out using trial-and-error method,
>I finally found a way how to install DOS/*BSD in one IDE drive :
[long ordeal deleted]
The way I did it was much easier. The only item you need is a
bootable DOS disk with typical utilities like fdisk, a partition
editor, and os-bs from FreeBSD (I've never found this on the NetBSD
archives). The DOS partition should be on the beginning of your hard
disk and space left for NetBSD. If you use drive translation than you
must enter the same number of cylinders, heads, and sectors in the
install script that DOS thinks its dealing with.
Go thorugh the NetBSD install script and when it asks you for the size of
the BSD partiton answer the size of the disk minus the size of the DOS
partition in sectors. When it asks for the offset enter the size of the
DOS partition.
After you have the base system installed, boot the DOS disk and use the
partition editor to make the DOS area back into a DOS partition and
make it active. Boot off of the hard disk and then run os-bs.
I've used this method on both IDE and SCSI disks with no problem although
as everything else goes, your millege may vary.
I don't know what the install notes say. I tend to only read the docs
when all else fails. I haven't used Linux in a while but so far I've
had less trouble with os-bs than lilo. Certainly Linux and *BSD are
all excellent systems. *BSD is not _THAT_ hard to install although
Linux does have an edge in this department.
--
Bruce Jackson | Univ. of North Texas | jac...@cs.unt.edu
UNIX Systems Admin. | P. O. Box 13886 | GAB 550E (817)565-2279
Dept. of Computer Sci.| Denton, Tx. 76203-3886 | FAX: (817)565-2799
cosc19v2
Bruce Jackson <jac...@ponder.csci.unt.edu> wrote:
>
>>After wasting lots of time in figuring out using trial-and-error method,
>>I finally found a way how to install DOS/*BSD in one IDE drive :
>
>[long ordeal deleted]
>
>The way I did it was much easier. The only item you need is a
>bootable DOS disk with typical utilities like fdisk, a partition
>editor, and os-bs from FreeBSD (I've never found this on the NetBSD
> Go through the install script ....
>After you have the base system installed, boot the DOS disk and use the
>partition editor to make the DOS area back into a DOS partition and
>make it active. Boot off of the hard disk and then run os-bs.
In fact, the above is what the Install Notes described and a sort of
common sense. However, if you boot DOS and try to look at the partition
table using any partition editor including fdisk,
there is only single partition, "unkown", which is *BSD's partition.
I received several responses which saying that they had the same trouble
and that they had to install in a whole drive.
>I've used this method on both IDE and SCSI disks with no problem although
>as everything else goes, your millege may vary.
>
>all excellent systems. *BSD is not _THAT_ hard to install although
>Linux does have an edge in this department.
Yes. When all failed, I tried a whole drive installation just to see
wheter it really works. The installation was as easy as Linux this case.
One problem was network configuration.
In case NetBSD, the configure script could not set up the network correctly.
So, I had to went through the rc scripts.
(In case of Linux (Slackware), after I typed all necessary informations,
such as network address, netmask, broadcast, ...etc. it went viola !).
cosc19v2
Mark Sienkiewicz <ma...@elea.umd.edu> wrote:
>In article <2nt3fk$b...@menudo.uh.edu>, cosc19v2 <cosc...@menudo.uh.edu> wrote:
>>In article <2nq530$7...@hecate.umd.edu>,
>>Mark Sienkiewicz <ma...@elea.umd.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>I think it is *also* typical to blow DOS away and hope to never see it
>>WRONG !!!
>
>Are you claiming that I'm the only person in the world who doesn't
>have DOS on my machine?
So, are you the TYPICAL case of the PC owners ?
Don't be obnoxious and look around.
>>Can you tell me how you can run SimCity2000, Typing Tutor, Power Point,
>>Authorware Professional, ...etc. on your *BSD machine ?
>
>How do you run MacPaint on your DOS/Linux machine? I *don't* run those
>applications.
I am not talking about Macs. However, similarly good software do exist
on PC also. If there would be a lot of software such as BSDSimCity,
BSD Power Point, ...etc. it would be fun.
>>I think that what is different b/w Linux users and *BSD users is that
>>the former uses DOS/Linux box as a basis for the applications they use
>>every day, and the latter uses *BSD for *BSD hacking (of course, in this
>>case, you don't need DOS and you don't want to see it again).
>
>This is partly true. It seems typical (there's that word again :)
>that a Linux user is somebody who had a DOS machine and decided to try
>Linux. I *bought* a system for the express purpose of running a
>BSD-like system on it.
>
>Now it doesn't mean that I use the machine exclusively for hacking. News
>and mail are nice everyday applications. So are TeX, xfig, ghostscript,
>xv, flexfax, sc (though I did this years taxes on my 3B1 with SYSV),
>and missileX.
How boring ! Is that all ?
I do the samething and more on my Linux box and
more and more on DOS/Windows for my family.
>>Let me explain how my old PC is being used at home. It is used by
>>3 people. I mostly use Linux, my wife uses Linux for her thesis, and
>...
>>SimEarth, and SimLife. Unlike your (or their) *BSD machines, our PC's
>>uptime is, in many case, less than an hour, since we all want it.
>>So what ?
>
>My point is that a BSD *or* Linux machine that is reporting an uptime
>of 60 days has not been booted under DOS for two months. This is
>roughly the same as not using DOS at all.
>
>>I also thought about installing the *BSD in a whole drive, but
>>I have some useful programs that I already purchased, such as
>...
>>You are going to say, "Buy two PCs", right ? :) :)
>
>No. I'm going to say "You are substantially *DIFFERENT* kind of user than
>I am." I think the BSD install program was written by people like me,
>i.e. people with little interest in DOS.
Every use is different. And do you still think that you are the
TYPICAL (tm)Mark.S PC user ?
>>Gees, it is not worth while to deal with this kind of stiff-necked BSD users.
>>Bye, BSD.
>
>Geez, I make an observation that might explain how it came to be that
>the install program doesn't get along with DOS and somebody flames me
>for not wanting to run the applications that he does.
>
>Re-read my original message. I never said "I am superior because I don't
>use dos". I said "I don't use DOS and I think a lot of other people
>don't either".
I don't like DOS itself either. However, it happens to be a common basis
for much software, and there is a lot of very very good and useful
software (with reasonabe price tag). We just cannot ignore it because
of DOS.
(The only time when I feel "DOS sucks" is when I need to struggle
in installing DOS software properly because of 640K memory limitation,
device driver conflicts, IRQ, DMA conflicts, ..etc.
But anyway, nothing is perfect.)
Besides, I do not feel that I am using DOS when I SimLife (of course,
it does call lots of DOS function calls). The important thing here is
that most software on DOS or Winows are so good that it hides the
complexities of the OS (DOS) and gives us an illusion that OS even
doesn't exist.
Why does Operating System exist ?
I believe that it exists for providing an evironment for application software.
If you believe that *BSD is for everyone's UNIX workstation,
you should not ignore this fact.
>Mark S.
>
>p.s. Ok, everybody flame me now. All together now: 1... 2... 3... :)
Bang ! Did you think that this could avoid my flame :) :) :)
Please ignore my flame in the first paragraph.
Ramiro Estrugo
Hi flammers:
Is there anything that linux can do and FreeBSD or 386BSD cannot or
vise-versa ???
ramiro
rest...@netcom.com
--
##############################################################################
# Ramiro Estrugo #
# Preferred Email rest...@netcom.com #
# Alternate Email rest...@serv7351.scu.edu #
##############################################################################
J Wunsch
>sky...@iac.net (Chris Thompson) writes:
>>is there iBCS2 support? (In ALPHA for Linux, run SCO binaries)
>An MSDOS emulator for *BSD is under development. WINE is the same across
>Linux and *BSD. As far as iBCS2 binary compatibility goes - I'm sure that
>if someone were interested in developing that there would be interest ;-)
Well, the illusion of binary compatibility is one of the biggest
fairy-tales in the U**x history. Programs can (and should be)
compatible at the C source level. This is what C has been made
for.
From a friend using some SVR4, running a SCO version of WordPerfect
there: he lost his edited text since WP attempted to store it to
an inode > 65535:-(, since SCO knows only of 16 bits of inode numbers.
iBCS2 in practice. 99 % compatible is incompatible.
Jordan Hubbard
powder into your jockeys this morning?? :-)
I don't really see the point of this whole debate. Some people have
DOS on their machines. Fine. Some people have DOS and Linux on their
machines. That's fine too! Some people (gasp, shock, horror!) have..
DOS and FreeBSD on their machines! Yowza! Great! Some folks, like
myself, even have DOS, FreeBSD and Linux on their machines! My god!
An ACM Turing award (to say nothing of the Nobel peace prize) is
certainly not out of the question! I'd better go rent my Tux now and
avoid the rush! :-)
All of which brings us to our final conclusion, which is: "So?"
There's nothing mutually exclusive about any of these operating
systems. It might be argued that trying to _emulate_ one of these
OS's from another is a waste of time, but that's not what we're
talking about. We're talking about users are perfectly happy to run
Microsoft Word (or, in my case, DOOM, "Day of the tentacle" and "Alone
in the Dark 2" :-) under DOS and various other bits of software under
Linux or FreeBSD and other people, who obviously don't have enough
to do, are _flaming_ them for it! Sorry, but I just don't geddit.
If I had my choice, I'd have DOS/Windows, FreeBSD and NeXTStep all
running on my PC, and I'd use them all for very different and
useful purposes. It's just a pity that I can't afford NeXTStep! :-)
Jordan
Timothy J Kniveton
FreeBSD partition. i have a SCSI disk with Buslog 742A controller. i
install a dos partition, then boot up the FreeBSD install disks, which
now (1.1B) recognize the dos partition and geometry. i install bsd,
and then reboot. neither partition works. i boot dos floppy and
install os-bs, and now the dos partition will boot, but it says 'error
loading operating system' with BSD. i have tried different
combinations, and permutations of this scheme to get it to work but it
doesn't. help please.
Amancio Hasty Jr
Gee the wonders of a simple script :)
Hmmm. it takes me about a minute to configure the network on a new system.
Amancio
--
FREE unix, gcc, tcp/ip, X, open-look, interviews, tcl/tk, MIME, midi, sound
at freebsd.cdrom.com:/pub/FreeBSD
Amancio Hasty, Consultant |
Home: (415) 495-3046 |
e-mail ha...@netcom.com | ftp-site depository of all my work:
aha...@cisco.com | sunvis.rtpnc.epa.gov:/pub/386bsd/X
Warner Losh
(Eric Youngdale) writes:
> I have seen this thread go on and on, and the big question that I could
>never figure out is why anyone would want to recompile their entire
>system from scratch.
Well, sometimes I'll build it from scratch (for obscure reasons that
aren't important), however, I like being able to say "make depend all
install" and having an up to date system. Sometime only 5 programs
(the ones that have changed) are rebuilt. That is why I like FreeBSD.
> I am not arguing that there is anything wrong with a unified source
>tree - it does have some advantages and it is a worthwhile goal, but
>personally I thiuk that the advantages are not as big as some of the
>BSD people would lead you to believe.
Well, to each their own. I originally made my remarks in the context
of "BSD feels less like beta than Linux." It isn't that big a deal
for most people, because most people don't have the 80-200M of disk
space that it takes to keep a built tree around all the time. For me
it works, and it nice. It isn't critical or anything, but when I
first saw it, I thought to myself "these people have their act
together." I know that is a rather biased thing to base an opinion of
the entire system, but I did it. Linux's installation procedures have
since impressed me as well.
To the person who said, basically, "give me the weekend and I'll do it
for Linux," I must strongly cast doubt on that statement. I spent 20
hours integrating the demos for the latest OI/OB release (aside: it
isn't out yet, so there isn't a new release for Linux or a new release
for other free OSes). There are about 50 programs that already had
makefiles written for them, yet I still had to spend this time making
sure they would compile in a variety of hostile envornments (including
my default environment, oddly enough). To build a unified source tree
would take more than a weekend to achive the degree of integration
that FreeBSD has. I'd love to see someone do this and make it stick
in the Linux commmunity, but I fear that it is a much bigger effort
than people think it is.
Finally, I'd like to say that I have nothing but the highest respect
for Linus, Eric and everybody who has made Linux what it is today. It
is a good piece of software development and works for many people on a
vast array of hardware. I have the same respect for the FreeBSD and
NetBSD teams. I encourage people to try them all, and use the one
the like the most. Or pick one at random and use it.
Warner
--
Warner Losh i...@boulder.parcplace.COM ParcPlace Boulder
"... but I can't promote you to "Prima Donna" unless you demonstrate a few
more serious personality disorders"
Amancio Hasty Jr
>
>Hi flammers:
>
> Is there anything that linux can do and FreeBSD or 386BSD cannot or
>vise-versa ???
>
>ramiro
Linux can not run vat :) The reason mostly because Van Jacobson refuses
to release the source for vat. What is vat ? Well, is a voice
audio conferencing tool used to broadcast ietf meetings world-wide and
other happy broadcasters such as Nasa, etc..
There is also nv for broadcasting and receiving video -- the source
is available however the *bsd camps don't have a driver for
a frame grabber. I began placing a few calls to get a
high performance frame grabber 8)
On the linux side -- idt is working on a port of DOOM.
Doom per-say is just an introduction to *real-time*
virtual-reality for the PCs. Strictly speaking is not true
virtual reality;however, Doom can be quite addictive, scary
and a whole lot of fun listening to it with 3d sound coming
out of Gravis Ultrasound card.
Ala Doom: if you come back I will roast you!
Mr. Self Destruct
lilo <li...@slip-10-11.ots.utexas.edu> wrote:
>On 3 Apr 1994 23:27:07 GMT, Randolph G. Brown (br...@cs.swarthmore.edu) wrote:
>
>> Frankly, I think it's good in the long run that we now have _3_
>> distinct evolving free-unix communities --- the cross-fertilization
>> will be good for all three, at least for a while. Their work does us
>> all good, and the loss of one community will harm us all.
>
>> Please don't stop.
>
>That's so true....what we have here is a case where three separate groups of
>people have each done a major service to the free-unix community as a whole.
>The only result is that "competition" produces a stronger desire to put out
>a better product--which I think is a very good thing. But I'd rather view
>the situation as "three success stories" than concentrate on the competitive
>aspects.
>
>Thanks again very much to all concerned!
>
>lilo
hear, here.
here we have three dynamic groups of people working toward the same goal.
after looking into all that goes into writing something like just the kernel,
let alone all the other stuff, i have to say that these groups have made
such a major undertaking and not a one has failed. that's saying a lot.
each group contributes to the greater good of the user. this is how it should
be. this is really what open computing is about. i'd rather be able to get
something as soon as it's available, then wait for some of these Messy-DOS
and Windoze companies to hype a product up, make pretty pictures for the boxes,
spend so much on hype that they have to charge you an arm, a leg, and several
vital organs so you can have the privilege of running there stuff on your
box. hype and a nice package don't mean you have a great product. they
just mean that someone is getting paid well for making things look nice.
redthing
Mark Newton
> In article <2nmeb4$r...@menudo.uh.edu>, cosc19v2 <cosc...@menudo.uh.edu> wrote:
> biases about what their computer should be like, and it doesn't include
> notice that it seems to be a point of pride to say "My machine has been
> up for XX days." That also suggests a lack of DOS.
> I think a lot of us don't *want* DOS on our machines, therefore haven't
> spent a lot of time figuring out how to make it work.
Yes! I've often mentioned this to people who complain about the lack
of a DOS emulator for BSD. I tell them that the reason it's taking so
long is that the vast majority of people who use BSD are doing so because
they can't stand the sight of a C> prompt and want to use a real operating
system.
They usually don't see the joke. :-)
I think the rapidity with which Linux's dosemu has developed is due to
the fact that most Linux people are DOSers who have been convered to UNIX.
By and large, BSD types seem to be UNIX people who wouldn't even consider
running DOS in the first place, let along emulating it.
- mark
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I tried an internal modem, new...@cleese.apana.org.au
but it hurt when I walked. Mark Newton
----- Voice: +61-8-3735575 --------------- Data: +61-8-3736006 -----
Wayne Schlitt
> cs...@cs.ru.ac.za (Geoff Rehmet) writes:
>
> >sky...@iac.net (Chris Thompson) writes:
> >>is there iBCS2 support? (In ALPHA for Linux, run SCO binaries)
>
> fairy-tales in the U**x history.
> From a friend using some SVR4, running a SCO version of WordPerfect
> there: he lost his edited text since WP attempted to store it to
> an inode > 65535:-(, since SCO knows only of 16 bits of inode numbers.
Are you sure that this is what caused your friend to loose his data?
Why would WP care about the inode, and if it did, then what do they
expect SCO boxes with NFS mount file systems to do? _IF_ the inode
range is what caused the problem, then WP has a bug. And, if you want
to work around that bug, you can always create your SVR4 filesystems
in compatibility mode.
> iBCS2 in practice. 99 % compatible is incompatible.
If you seriously believe this, then you would have to say that all PC's
since the original PC are incompatible. In practice, 99% compatibility
means that you can get a h*ll of a lot done.
-wayne
--
The Fundamental Problem with USENET is that you have at least a couple
of hours, if not a day or so to think up that witty, absolutely
devastating retort... The other Fundamental Problem is people don't
even take a couple of minutes to think before they hit that send key...
Leigh Hart
>Hi flammers:
> Is there anything that linux can do and FreeBSD or 386BSD cannot or
>vise-versa ???
Ramiro, unless you are prepared to make an effort and install both
operating systems and find out for yourself and then post a 4000 line
summary of who can do what, all I can say is "Who gives a flying fuck".
Certainly not this duck.
Cheers
Leigh
--
Leigh Hart
C/- PO Box 758
North Adelaide SA 5006
ha...@eppie.apana.org.au ha...@apanix.apana.org.au ha...@cleese.apana.org.au
Chris Thompson
: I fully agree. Both OS's are excellent. I use Linux because at the
: time I made my decision, none of the BSD variants had dynamically
: linked libraries, and now I've got too much invested to switch for
: what would be minor advantages and disadvantages to me.
That's where I stand. I have WAY too much invested in linux to switch. I
have stuff downloaded, I have working CSLIP, I have working sendmail and
INN. X is set uup the way I like it. etc, etc, and so on.
Also, I have a good number of net.friends on irc on #linux. That's my
Customer Support. I wouldnt be even close to where I am now without their
support. It's very difficult and time-consuming to cultivate a
relationship like that.
I have impressed the hell out of some Unix Guru's just by telling them
about Linux, alot of them havent heard of it. And when I told them that I
had v1.1 and could get iBCS2 to run SCO binaries (some) I suddenly have a
line of people who want it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris Thompson | "Whatever can be Conceived by the human mind
sky...@skynet.iac.net | Can be acheived by the human spirit"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Sanders
> > I think a lot of us don't *want* DOS on our machines, therefore haven't
> > spent a lot of time figuring out how to make it work.
...because, you see, those grapes are sour.
>I think the rapidity with which Linux's dosemu has developed is due to
>the fact that most Linux people are DOSers who have been convered to UNIX.
>By and large, BSD types seem to be UNIX people who wouldn't even consider
>running DOS in the first place, let along emulating it.
Well, nice conjecture, but it's wrong. I don't think I'm being immodest
when I say that I changed the original dosemu from an expensive way
to get a "C>" prompt that wouldn't do anything else to a real, full-fledged,
powerful, but tremendously unstable way to get a "C>" prompt, run a few
vital programs, then lock up your machine. I interpret that as progress :-)
I was a former Amiga owner and UNIX SYSV/386 user before buying a machine
expressly to run Linux. I had run a few programs under DOS on a friend's
machine, but had never really been forced to use it in earnest. When I
picked up the dosemu project, I was probably the single least qualified
person to work on it. Through hard work, disastrous lack of sleep, and
some transactions with a certain netherworld businessman, I managed to
master the black art of DOS programming (and programming DOS). I know
for a fact that both the *BSD and Linux camps are full of people who
program for DOS because they have to eat, regardless of what their tastes
are, and who could do a much better job than I. The crucial factor
wasn't some vague, unsupported demographical difference, but motivation
and persistence. The fact is, many *BSD people owned PCs to start with,
so running DOS must not have been entirely out of the question.
Of course, I'm not sure what my motivation was except that I wanted
to run a macroassembler for my HP48 under Linux. I should have just
rewritten the assembler. I haven't used dosemu since I quit developing
it.
--
_g, '96 --->>>>>>>>>> gt8...@prism.gatech.edu <<<<<<<<<--- CompSci ,g_
W@@@W__ |-\ ^ | disclaimer: <---> "Bow before ZOD!" __W@@@W
W@@@@**~~~' ro|-<ert s/_\ nders | who am I??? ^ from Superman '~~~**@@@@W
`*MV' hi,ocie! |-/ad! / \ss!! | ooga ooga!! | II (cool)! `VW*'
Jordan Hubbard
i am perpetually trying to get a small DOS partition on with my
FreeBSD partition. i have a SCSI disk with Buslog 742A controller. i
install a dos partition, then boot up the FreeBSD install disks, which
now (1.1B) recognize the dos partition and geometry. i install bsd,
and then reboot. neither partition works. i boot dos floppy and
install os-bs, and now the dos partition will boot, but it says 'error
loading operating system' with BSD. i have tried different
This is the classic problem - DOS and FreeBSD are not agreeing as to
the size of the disk (and I'm not sure why this got worse in some
cases with 1.1B! :-( ). The way out is to run pfdisk under DOS to see
what the number of cylinder/heads/secs-per-track information is and
then feed that to the FreeBSD install when it asks (overriding the
bogus defaults that it comes up with). You can also get this
information straight from FreeBSD by booting the install disks and
saying "n" to the first "Do you want to install?" prompt. Then do an
`fdisk /dev/rsd0d' if you're SCSI or `fdisk /dev/rwd0d' if you're
IDE/ESDI and take a look at the numbers printed out for the overall
disk geometry (note: Do this BEFORE you've installed FreeBSD for the
first time or it won't work). Then re-run the install script and plug
those values in.
Good luck.
Jordan
Cliff Green
>... I tell them that the reason it's taking so
>long is that the vast majority of people who use BSD are doing so because
>they can't stand the sight of a C> prompt and want to use a real operating
>system.
>They usually don't see the joke. :-)
>I think the rapidity with which Linux's dosemu has developed is due to
>the fact that most Linux people are DOSers who have been convered to UNIX.
>By and large, BSD types seem to be UNIX people who wouldn't even consider
>running DOS in the first place, let along emulating it.
I partially agree, but I think you're looking at it from purely a 'techie'
point of view and missing a major reason. Which is: the reason that DOS
emulators are needed and used are because of the wealth of good, useful
software written for DOS (and MS Windows). I personally think that DOS
is an abomination and it's shameful that it is considered an operating
system :-), but most of my productive work at home is done on DOS/MS Windows
software (e.g. Borland C++, WordPerfect, Compuserve Info Mgr, Simply Money,
Packrat, Tax something-or-other, etc.). I use whatever tool/application is
appropriate for my needs (and budget), regardless of what I think of the
underlying technology (I would love to see comparable software at comparable
prices running under Linux). Until the Linux world (and Unix
in general) can get enough of a critical mass for these kind of cheap, useful
personal applications, there will be a need for DOS emulation.
Cliff
Terry Lambert
]Gee, none of my posts have ever gone on a refridgerator before! The
]point I was trying to make was that I think the way development is
]being done on Linux is a good idea. Linus holds a crucial role as the
]kernel coordinator, of course - but even if he dropped out there are
]other that could take over.
]
]Who needs a core team?
Anyone who wanted a smooth transition instead of a 16 month power struggle
if the lead developer dropped out.
Terry Lambert
te...@cs.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.