Comment by lockem | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lockem | Hacker News Reader

While this was an interesting read, and pretty well written. I - as a long time Linux user, wasn't really able to figure out the advantages BSD has over Linux.

I agree that the author put a nice disclaimer warning us he will not be telling us why BSD is better - but he definitely mentioned that it is .

It is rather obvious the author is biased towards BSD - For example - "Chaos VS Order" and "Right VS Wrong" as titles when comparing BSD and Linux from a philosophical POV. Reading this reminded me of how I was as a young Linux user 15 years ago (Slackware 3.4...) and was proud of using a barely usable OS - blinded by my own pride arguing in favor of Linux without any true understanding of the internals - and unable to hold a single argument of what makes it any better.

If i wanted to sum everything i would basically be saying - Linux is different. But thats why Linux has many different flavors - It depends on what you like - and your level of expertise. If you like compiling everything - you could use Gentoo. If you want it to "Just work" - you could try out Ubuntu. If you need something Robust and supported - use RHEL. While it is true that Linux development might be more "chaotic" than BSD, there is order in the chaos. What seems to be unordered and unorganized in fact has its own way of making things play in harmony.

PS. I would really love if anyone has a more technical comparison of BSD VS Linux (FS, Scheduling Etc..)

From a technical standpoint, Linux is a System V-style Unix and BSD is (unsurprisingly) a Berkeley-style Unix. One of the most striking differences (which he didn't mention) is the init system - SysV uses /etc/init.d/, while BSD uses /etc/rc.conf and the like. Also, see the "hier" (filesystem layout) man pages for FreeBSD (http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=hier) and OpenBSD (http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=hier).

He responds directly to the "Chaos VS Order" bit on his response page, BTW:

"Chaos means that you're moving every which way at once. Linux (and its various distributions) are moving in all sorts of different directions, with very little real coordination. That means they're going to end up in a lot of places the BSDs, with their more careful and orderly progression, will only get to more slowly (if at all). A lot of those places are going to be icky and horrible, and places you don't want to be. But some of them are going to be absolute jewels, that you could never reach any other way.

Thus, Linux may hit lower lows, and they may even be more numerous. But the sheer number of people and projects pushing in so many different directions practically assures you of striking gold. You can't get that sort of serendipitous perfection, without accepting a whole lot of chaos and a lot of wrong turns." (http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/11)

He's being pretty diplomatic about it - I've read far less flattering descriptions of the Linux development model (http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html), though things have gotten better since 2003.

As a matter of fact, some Linux distros use /etc/rc.conf as well (Arch linux). The way Linux is designed and works is that everything is configurable and rather easily done. This is almost definitely true for *BSD as well, but probably not as easy.

In the case of BSD VS Linux I prefer the model of "Shooting at all directions until you hit" kind of philosophy. BSD is a "Like it or not" kind of OS. While Linux is more of a "Everyone can find a flavor he likes" kind.

I am far more of a Linux user, but one thing that irks me on a BSD is that I feel like the GNU tools have more features and feel more natural than the BSD alternatives. I'm probably just not used to them but things like colors and such seem more prevalent with the GNU tools.

"Chaos VS Order" here is about release management practices, and if you look at it in detail you'll see in Linux they are chaotic indeed.

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