[Tfug] BSD flavors

christopher floess skeptikos at gmail.com
Tue Mar 13 00:35:34 MST 2007


Benevolent master (I know you used dictator) is one of my favorite terms :)

I wouldn't get into a debate about centralized vs. decentralized
development, since I don't really know enough about
either. I actually got into FreeBSD b/c I wanted something
adventurous, and I liked the FreeBSD mascot better than the linux. I'm
constantly debating which way I should be going though. In the end I really
just think they both have their place.

On 3/12/07, Jude Nelson <judecn at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/6/07, christopher floess <skeptikos at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I think another thing that bsd advocates see as an advantage, is that
> > freebsd is a centrally developed os while linux is just
> > the kernel with an environment built around it, if someone can
> > elaborate on this better, please do
> > so, but I think I read somewhere that that translates into a more
> > dependable environment, though some times it also means freebsd is
> slower
> > to
> > add support for new stuff. That's my two cents, hopefully I'm not way
> off
> > :)
>
>
> Here's how I understand it:
>
> The BSD community makes use of highly centralized development practices.
> BSD OS's are like small Linux distributions:  only a handful of people
> maintain everything.  Also, each has its own Benevolent Dictator For Life
> (
> a.k.a. the founder), who usually leads the kernel development team for
> that
> BSD.  The BSDs are basically open source OS's with a management model
> similar to proprietary OS's.  Their development cycles are slower, but
> their
> releases have a slightly higher chance of not having bugs.  I don't see
> this
> as an advantage; large distributions like Debian, OpenSUSE, Fedora, Red
> Hat,
> and Ubuntu, for example, while they may on extremely rare occasion have a
> broken package (i.e. Ubuntu had that X server crash bug a while back), the
> development community is HUMONGOUS and quick to react.  Things may break
> more easily in the Linux development community, but things also get fixed
> way quicker than in the BSD community.  Also, the BSD community is usually
> confined to the academic fields, particularly R&D.
>
> At least, that's how I've come to know it.  Please correct me if I'm wrong
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