At 03:31 PM 1/12/97 -0800, Michael J. Miller Jr. wrote:
>On Sun, 12 Jan 1997, David S. Miller wrote:
>
>I shouldn't do this, but what the hell.
>
>This is a great illustration of why Linux is kicking the hell out 
>of the BSD camps.  David made one smart assed post months ago,
>and he still hasn't been forgiven.  Of course it doesn't help that
>he's from the 'enemy' camp.  This 'us against the world' mentality
>is getting old.  

In this particular case, I thought David was out of line for getting in a huff.
If he'd taken that comment as a bit of a joke then it's really not that big
of a deal.

Besides, some valid points were made:
1) Linux isn't thinking about supporting many platforms NetBSD supports
   When is Linux for Sun3 coming out? Linux for VAX? How's Linux for
   DECstation coming along (weren't they working on it?)?

2) Some Linux distributions are improperly configured out-of-the-box for a
   production server. For example, a system with async metadata writes is
   _not_ a good idea for a server. It is possible to not happen to run
   across a Linux distribution configured correctly for a server.

>I can't keep track of all the variants of 4.4 derived BSD OS's.  The 
>BSD camp has split so many times and over such apparently trivial issues 
>that I don't have much faith anymore.  I stay subscribed in the desperate 
>hope that you guys will someday get your acts together and live up to your 
>potential.

Linux is set up with Linus at the top. BSD is set up with a 'core' group. If
the core splits, whoops. Linus isn't going to split. I mean, with one guy
at the top directing the whole shebang it's a bit different.

To compare with religion: If you could email Jesus, do you think there would
be n^n slightly different versions of Christianity? I doubt it. 

If you don't think it's fair comparing OSs to religions, you haven't met the
Linux people I have. (heck, Redhat employees live in the same city as me).

>Contrast this with the Linux people.  They have some fairly volatile 
>personalities, but they seem to be able to keep things in perspective,

Perhaps on Usenet. 

I'm really sick of running into Linux people on campus, and feeling like
I'm talking to "Gary The Brickyard Preacher" (toned down a bit):

Drew Puch: "You really should switch to Linux" 

Gary: "If you don't switch to Christianity, you will burn in Hell"

(Gary annoys people trying to eat a quiet lunch outside the library, in
the central part of campus)

Sometime this semester I'm going to put up the GeekFest pictures (the what?
Go see my web page). I have pictures of Drew wearing a Linux tee-shirt at
one of our parties. 

Drew isn't alone. When a newsgroup at ncsu was created for students who run
a free Unix to chat on, they created ncsu.os.linux. Why not ncsu.os.free-unix?
Why create a newsgroup for the Linux people to lock out other people? I don't
know, it wasn't my call. I will say that when we did a NetBSD demo, and
announced it on ncsu.os.linux, we got flamed. Well, I didn't really have
a better place to post.  (now we have ncsu.os.bsd, because we have a grand
total of 3 or 4 BSD people on campus -- and dozens, perhaps hundreds of Linux
people (most of which have, for example, IDE CD-ROM drives))

C'mon, take it in stride. People with passion tend to irritate people who
believe in a different direction. It's people. Deal.

>and starting from scratch have basically made BSD irrelevant.  And they
>did this in about five years.  The BSD people had the advantage of
>a huge base of code.  

Which got laughed at at the last LinuxExpo: "BSD has really old code!"

>Heres some free advice.  Borrow all the code from Sparc based Linux
>that you can.  It's the only thing thats going to save you.  

Think so, huh? Perhaps it isn't about "winning". Perhaps the point is to
have a well engineered system later (rather than a less-well-engineered system
that got out the door first, or gets features added in faster).

What's your pick? Mine is fairly obvious.

>Sigh, I used to really care about BSD based unix.

See above paragraph.

>Flames will be sent to /dev/null BTW.

What, aren't up for a good flame war? :) :) :) :) :)

Sheesh. Getting in a huff over something said in email is pretty silly. Who
*hasn't* ever gotten pissed over a perceived insult, and said something nasty
in response? Especially considering that most of the nastyness would never
happen in "real life". 

It's just the Internet. Relax, sit back, and have a good time. I REELY hope
this doesn't turn into another flamewar.
--
XCOMM Kevin P. Neal, Junior, Comp. Sci.    -   kpneal@pobox.com
XCOMM     http://www.pobox.com/~kpn/       -   kpneal@eos.ncsu.edu
XCOMM "What is your fascination with Gunsmith Cats?" - me
XCOMM "They blow stuff up." - Ravi K. Swamy.   January 6, 1997