Comment Linux vs. *BSD fracturing (Score 2, Insightful) 937
This is the one thing that I have never quite understood and have always heard people in the BSD camps complain about.
I always hear complaints of how fractured the linux community is because of the umpteen different linux distributions. Now I have used about 5 different linux distributions over the years and I have to say that I have been able to sit down at everyone that I have tried and felt pretty much at home. The base operating system is always made from the same packages. I have yet to see a mainstream distribution that didn't use glibc, util-linux and the like. The only major difference you see between the distributions is the package managment.
On the other hand I currently use both Open and FreeBSD and while mostly similar I would have to say that there was a greater difference in the core OS between them then between different linux distributions. For example the disk partitioning program. Also since they use seperate kernels it can result in other incompatabilities. I know in the past filesystems were not quite compatible, or all features were not supported, such as UFS2 and soft updates.
Also when he talks about the installation from ports being snazy for install because they find dependancies and install them for you I am suprised he doesn't bring up any of the linux tools that do the exact same thing such as apt or emerge. He mentions the distributions that they are a part of so I think he knows about them. It is possible that he thinks that linux users know about them and therefore doesn't have to.
I always hear complaints of how fractured the linux community is because of the umpteen different linux distributions. Now I have used about 5 different linux distributions over the years and I have to say that I have been able to sit down at everyone that I have tried and felt pretty much at home. The base operating system is always made from the same packages. I have yet to see a mainstream distribution that didn't use glibc, util-linux and the like. The only major difference you see between the distributions is the package managment.
On the other hand I currently use both Open and FreeBSD and while mostly similar I would have to say that there was a greater difference in the core OS between them then between different linux distributions. For example the disk partitioning program. Also since they use seperate kernels it can result in other incompatabilities. I know in the past filesystems were not quite compatible, or all features were not supported, such as UFS2 and soft updates.
Also when he talks about the installation from ports being snazy for install because they find dependancies and install them for you I am suprised he doesn't bring up any of the linux tools that do the exact same thing such as apt or emerge. He mentions the distributions that they are a part of so I think he knows about them. It is possible that he thinks that linux users know about them and therefore doesn't have to.
