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发信人: Lg (创造人生的传奇), 信区: Linux
标题: The Oldest Free OS
发信站: BBS 荔园晨风站 (Mon Apr 26 08:01:50 1999), 站内信件 (WWW POST)

Today's trick question: what is the oldest free
operating system around?

If you said Linux, you're not alone, but you're
wrong. The answer is the Berkeley Software
Distribution (BSD) Unix variants.

While they don't get much ink, the BSD operating
systems including Berkeley Software Design's
commercial BSD/OS, FreeBSD, NetBSD and
OpenBSD all are sturdy and capable in their own
right. Don't believe it? Consider then that Yahoo
and Walnut Creek CD-ROM, two of the Web's
busiest sites, run on (drumroll, please) FreeBSD.

Like Linux, the BSD Unix uses an open-source
model. Where they differ and this is important for resellers is in their
licenses.
Linux is protected by the GNU Public License. The gist of that is you can't
modify
the source code without releasing the changes to the rest of the world. The
Berkeley license, generally speaking, does let you make proprietary changes to
the operating system. This is a gross oversimplification, but the main point is
that
if you want to make proprietary changes to an operating system for, say, a
vertical-market medical measurement system, BSD is the way to go.

That leads to another important difference between them. With Linux, the basic
operating system from any distributor is always the same. It's the add-ons,
support, reseller practices and so on that create variation. With BSD, there are
actual differences between operating systems.

For bottom-line purposes, BSD/OS has, by far, the best technical support and
services. FreeBSD is the most popular of the set and has the most applications
that directly support it. NetBSD supports the most platforms, and OpenBSD is
the only free operating system that addresses security and encryption issues in
detail.

Linux, however, beats out all of the BSDs in terms of native device and ISV
support. BSD, in response, is embracing Linux programs. While much is made of
the performance and stability differences between Linux and BSD, I haven't seen
it. I've never noticed any significant differences that couldn't be explained
away by
configuration and hardware issues. At one time, BSD had it all over Linux in
networking, but Linux has, for the most part, caught up.

So, unless you're building fancy customized applications, why consider a BSD
offering? I think there are situations where it is the better choice. For
starters, if
you and your people are first and foremost SunOS not Solaris or university BSD
administrators, you'll find BSD far more familiar than the more heavily System
V-influenced Linux.

In some networking areas, BSD does seem to be above everyone. For instance, if
I were going to set up a dedicated ftp server to do nothing but fire gigabytes
of
files all day, I'd go with one of the BSDs. Any of them do a great job with
networking and file serving. And, like other Unixes, they simply don't go down
until you blow up the computer with a stick of dynamite. Finally, upgrading BSD
to new versions over the Net is much easier than doing so with Linux.

Are BSDs for everyone? Nah. Are they worth considering? In some situations,
yes; yes they are.

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