Re: [tlug] Linux and Windows {2k|Xp|Vista} Comparison

[<stephen@example.com>]

Scott Robbins writes:

 > You are correct, however, my point was that something like ssh is part
 > of a base BSD system, whereas in Linux, the kernel is worked on by Linux
 > and company while ssh will be added by the distribution's developers.  

Ehem ... what do you consider to be a "base Linux system"?  (I'm
teasing, of course, but doesn't that question shed some light on the
issue?)

 > In both cases, it's actually a 3rd party program (well, in ssh's case,
 > save for OpenBSD) :) but in the BSDs the kernel people and the people
 > porting ssh are all in the same organization.

This just is saying that the development organization and the distro
are the same people.  But that's true of Linux to a great degree (at
least, Uli Drepper was quite firm that Red Hat's glibc was the best
there was :-).  Despite some detractors of commercial distros, Linux
hasn't splintered nearly as much as 386BSD did, but on the other hand
the BSDs have grown back together over the years where cooperation is
profitable.

 > This integration is often listed as an advantage by BSD advocates.

Not to mention commercial Linux distros. :-)

 > When I said to an administrator, it's not necessarily a good thing,
 > I was referring to the fact that sometimes, an essential security
 > patch means rebuilding the whole system, including the kernel,
 > whereas in Linux, one would only have to rebuild the program and
 > perhaps others that had it as a dependency.

Huh?  That's certainly not true for NetBSD; you can do a make; make
install anywhere in the tree if you know what you're doing.  And the
cascades of rebuilds that are typically induced by any change to a
GNOME component are pretty Byzantine, whatever OS you use, assuming
that they succeed at all (which they cannot be counted on to do unless
you're using the same OS and same toolchain as the GNOME developers).

 > I would have thought that to be the case with most Linux distributions
 > as well, that you would only have to update the program, its
 > dependencies and those programs which use it.  With a port, of course,
 > this is also the case.  (On the other hand, if there is a major
 > revision, you usually have to rebuild all your ports as well.)  

If you do this as a top-level make, yes.  But surely in FreeBSD you
can cd to where you need to be and do only that build.  Right?  That's
your risk, of course.

The downside for Linux is programs that just stop working on an
upgrade, because the dependencies are too sparse.  This is the reverse
side of the Gentoo coin---because Gentoo generally defaults to "hold
the pickles, hold the lettuce", dependency cascades don't upset us.

But even so, Gentoo, like most Linux distros, has the bloody annoying
habit of depending on applications like GNU Emacs just because you
install a support package (in Gentoo, add a USE flag) that among other
things includes 45 lines of GNU Project permissions notice along with 3
lines of Emacs Lisp code ;-).

 > Even programs like ssh and sendmail, part of the base system, are also
 > available as 3rd party ports.  My original point, which was not phrased
 > clearly (obviously)  :) was that this particular difference might sound
 > more important in theory than in practice. 

IMHO it is more important in practice, the theory's basically the same
(except that BSDs tend to emphasize source rather than binary distros,
with FreeBSD somewhat less emphatic for userland).  But BSDs depend on
the blunderbuss makedepend tool for source dependencies ("change
comment did we in <string.h>? must you everything rebuild that uses
strncat!") and human expertise of the admins to make exceptions, while
Linux tends to reify that expertise in dependency databases.  That
makes Linux very accessible to newbies, at fairly low cost in
reliability (but it's a PITA to "those of us who do [know everything]"
cf. my remarks about "USE=emacs" :-).

 > > Even taking his
 > > compromise at face value, the "GNU System" subsumes TeX, perl, X11,
 > > lots of "OEM" BSD code, and so on.  RMS has every right to call that
 > > collection "the GNU System" if he likes; the rest of the world
 > > similarly has the right to add a Linux kernel and call the whole thing
 > > "the Linux OS" if it likes.
 > 
 > I guess I'm thinking primarily of bash and gcc (gcc is of course, used
 > by the BSDs as well, and included in the base install if you choose
 > developer version.)

The point is valid.  (More central than either is glibc.)  There is a
GNU system, and the GNU Project has made a huge contribution.  That
deserves recognition.  Linus himself insists that without gcc there
would never have been a Linux kernel.

But the business of trying to control nomenclature is propaganda at
best, and in RMS's case somewhat hypocritical given his tirades about
terms like "intellectual property" and (copyright) "piracy"[1].


Footnotes: 
[1]  Which is in any decent dictionary, and has been since Daniel
Webster (or pretty close).