Is Linux For Losers?

http://www.forbes.com/2005/06/16/linux-bsd-unix-cz_dl_0616theo.html

by apotheon • 17 years ago

14 45 17 years ago

Who hasn't editorialized on whether certain code belongs in its current location? It's just a note to say that we need to revisit this later and decide if it should be refactored.

antonovka6• 17 years ago

In applications? Sometimes.

The kernel is a different matter. Speaking generally, the BSDs endeavor to not commit "revisit this later" code to the kernel at all. In the idealized development approach of the BSDs, it's either done right, fully analyzed for performance impacts across the usage spectrum, long-term API maintainability, security, et al, or it's not done.

billswift• 17 years ago

Or at least if they do it, they don't admit it in their comments.

psadauskas• 17 years ago

Torvalds, via e-mail, says De Raadt is "difficult" and declined to comment further.

TallGuyShort• 17 years ago

This is why I use Linux 2.6: http://bulk.fefe.de/scalability/

To summarise: Linux 2.6 scaled O(n) on almost every benchmark, and OpenBSD was called a "real stinker".

antonovka6• 17 years ago

6 year old benchmarks? Here's more complete/balanced/nuanced information: http://people.freebsd.org/~kris/scaling/smp.html

This sort of thing is complicated, depending on OS, workload, application design, etc, and your mileage may always vary.

windsurfer5• 17 years ago

Somehow I don't think that information could be "balanced" coming from the freebsd.org domain.

hristov• 17 years ago

Wow, I think it says a lot that the MS publicity people have stopped even trying to make Microsoft look better in comparison to Linux but are trying to split the camp between Linux and BSD.

As far as the comparison between BSD, it is clear why most people prefer Linux, it works with more things than BSD.

I think that at least one of Theo's complaints is completely meritless -- that Linux developers are being exploited in some way. First Linux developers do their work on their own free will, nobody tricks them or forces them to do the work. Also, Linux developers are getting treated better than BSD ones, because Linux has the GPL. So IBM can use the work of Linux developers, but if IBM has to have something done in house, they cannot keep it closed, they have to submit their own code to the community just as any Linux developer would.

This of course is very different than BSD where companies like Microsoft and Apple and Sun routinely take code and use it for their own close sourced projects.

apotheon7• 17 years ago

> Also, Linux developers are getting treated better than BSD ones, because Linux has the GPL.

Please prove:

1. that Linux developers "are getting treated better"

2. that it's because of the GPL

I'm afraid I don't believe you.

> This of course is very different than BSD where companies like Microsoft and Apple and Sun routinely take code and use it for their own close sourced projects.

. . . and how Linux developers sometimes do the same thing to BSD code -- except that it's a different kind of "closed", and closed to a different set of people.

noelchurchill• 17 years ago

Written by Dan Lyons, AKA The Fake Steve Jobs www.fakesteve.net

Not that it validates/invalidates the article, but just to keep in mind.

thaumaturgy2• 17 years ago

All validation aside, it does explain why that was one of most factually sparse articles I've ever read.

I can't imagine that Theo is going to take kindly to OS X and Solaris being cited as "two of the best operating systems in the world" in an article in which he was extensively quoted.

Theo's personality and opinions aside, I've been a fan of OpenBSD for a long time, and it really is a solid operating system.

antonovka6• 17 years ago

OpenBSD has done a lot of interesting work with networking software over the past few years, too:

OpenSSH - No explanation required

pf(4) - A fantastic stateful firewall.

CARP/pfsync - Zero downtime automatic router/firewall fail-over.

sasyncd - Zero-downtime failover of IPSec tunnels.

relayd - layer 3/7 pf-integrated load balancer

OpenBGPd, OpenOSPFd - Free BGP/OSPF implementations.

windsurfer5• 17 years ago

Troll troll troll.

Tichy2• 17 years ago

Is it very ignorant to say that I don't even care? I am not very deep into OS internals. I want an open source UNIX on my computer. Currently Ubuntu does it nicely. If there was a BSD distro with a nice GUI and everything, I might use that instead. I don't really care if it is Linux or BSD under the hood.

mapleoin2• 17 years ago

http://www.pcbsd.org/

Tichy2• 17 years ago

Thing is, I haven't heard much about it. Will it

- support all my hardware including printers and external monitors?

- support all file and media formats?

- have equivalents for all the important software?

I am not much of a pioneer in such things. I prefer others to do the testing. If I see a significant amount of people using PCBSD without problems, I might give it a shot. Also I don't have much of an incentive to switch, as Ubuntu does OK for me.

apotheon7• 17 years ago

You don't have to care about the quality of the code. It affects the system whether you care or not.

. . . or: "You don't have to believe in the devil. He believes in you."

paulreiners• 17 years ago

The article says, "a Red Hat coder published an essay criticizing IBM's Linux programmers". Where is this essay published? Is it online somewhere?

puredemo2• 17 years ago

Joey Naylor: ...so what happens when you're wrong?

Nick Naylor: Whoa, Joey I'm never wrong.

Joey Naylor: But you can't always be right...

Nick Naylor: Well, if it's your job to be right, then you're never wrong.

Joey Naylor: But what if you are wrong?

Nick Naylor: OK, let's say that you're defending chocolate, and I'm defending vanilla. Now if I were to say to you: 'Vanilla is the best flavour ice-cream', you'd say...

Joey Naylor: No, chocolate is.

Nick Naylor: Exactly, but you can't win that argument... so, I'll ask you: so you think chocolate is the end all and the all of ice-cream, do you?

Joey Naylor: It's the best ice-cream, I wouldn't order any other.

Nick Naylor: Oh! So it's all chocolate for you is it?

Joey Naylor: Yes, chocolate is all I need.

Nick Naylor: Well, I need more than chocolate, and for that matter I need more than vanilla. I believe that we need freedom. And choice when it comes to our ice-cream, and that Joey Naylor, that is the defintion of liberty.

Joey Naylor: But that's not what we're talking about

Nick Naylor: Ah! But that's what I'm talking about.

Joey Naylor: ...but you didn't prove that vanilla was the best...

Nick Naylor: I didn't have to. I proved that you're wrong, and if you're wrong I'm right.

Joey Naylor: But you still didn't convince me

Nick Naylor: It's that I'm not after you. I'm after them.

- Thank You For Smoking

mapleoin2• 17 years ago

I didn't get the last line.

puredemo2• 17 years ago

He isn't trying to win the argument rationally, he is simply trying to persuade the audience (them).

chasingsparks• 17 years ago

Title of the movie.

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

'them' = the customers/general public: lowest common denominator vs highest common factor. This is the basis of all propaganda, and why you should be happy that trial by jury is a right rather than an obligation.

pavlov• 17 years ago

This is from 2005, and also not very interesting.

aurora72• 17 years ago

I haven't noticed it at first but that's right, it's really outdated. But still interesting as it depicts the inner workings of OS OS'es in a lively manner.

bsaunder• 17 years ago

They almost got the title right:

"Is Linux For Lusers?"

(not that I agree with the content). Pretty much a meaningless rant. Seems like MS propaganda.

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

BSD guys make fun of Linux on message boards and Web sites, the gist being that BSD guys are a lot like Linux guys, except they have kissed girls.

c00p3r• 17 years ago

Linux is not an OS, it is a gold rush, while OpenBSD is just an OS.

btw, there are very important contributions from OpenBSD's team - openssh and pf (primary IP packet filter imported into FreeBSD).

FreeBSD itself is an example of very successful "niched" UNIX-like system - think about network interface's performance, removal of GKL from most used device drivers, SMP-aware scheduler and memory manager, kqueue, netgraph subsystems and so on.

OpenBSD is a great toy for hobbyist to resurrect some ancient SUN's 1U Netra server as firewall and proxy for home or very small business. I have several of them for pleasure and enjoyment. And of course it is a very good choice for some low-power single-core single-CPU system without heavy pthreads.

My opinion it cannot be compared to the "open source business ecosystem" that Linux[based systems] became.

apotheon7• 17 years ago

Wow . . . Linux must be ready for the Enterprise, because the Enterprise buzzwords are being used to tout Linux superiority now.

talleyrand• 17 years ago

"Unlike Linux, which is a clone of Unix,"

False.

wglb• 17 years ago

Please elucidate.

thyrsus• 17 years ago

At one point Red Hat paid to get one of their releases "officially" tested as conforming to the POSIX standard, and passed, and was thus able to officially call that version of Linux "Unix(TM)". I may be mistaken, but I haven't heard them pushing that any time recently, and the market doesn't seem to care, so I doubt they've continued jumping through that hoop.

Now, if you want to take a deeper interpretation of the analogy of "clone", as in duplicate DNA, then Linux is less of a clone of "Unix" than BSD, since it was independently written, and a judge has pretty much declared that it contains no copyrighted content that originated with "Unix". Read the SCO travesty timeline at groklaw.com. Meanwhile, the Berkeley (Berkeley Standard Distribution - BSD) folks actually worked from a copy of the original Bell Labs Unix - but worked so hard on it that in a much earlier court case, a judge made a (sealed) declaration that BSD had only a handful of lines left from the original code, and that Berkeley could distribute their work, with the exception of that handful, on their own terms. Berkeley quickly replaced/removed any infringing content, and that became the basis for the *BSDs.

For the glorious history of Unix, read Peter Salus's "A Quarter Century of Unix".

beret• 17 years ago

openBSD Slogan: NO REMOTE ROOT EXPLOITS IN THE DEFAULT INSTALL IN THE PAST SIX MONTHS AS FAR AS WE KNOW

growt• 17 years ago

Made me remember that old slogan: "NetBSD: because Theo is an asshole!"

Is Linux For Losers?

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