Fragmentation?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| r_a_trip Aug 27, 2009 6:05 AM EDT |
Seems the myth that the three BSD's don't fork and that the BSD ecosphere doesn't have a myriad of distro's is shattering. Let's see: FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, PC-BSD, DesktopBSD, Dragonfly BSD, FreeSBIE, MidnightBSD, OliveBSD, AErieBSD. Probably some more. They're not at "Linux level" yet, but it's coming. I don't think it's a bad thing. More choice caters to more people. |
| Scott_Ruecker Aug 27, 2009 2:29 PM EDT |
Wouldn't having just one other version be considered fragmentation? Fragmentation is a word that is overused. The 'fragmentation' of Linux and/or BSD happened a long time ago and doesn't matter anymore. I do not see what the big deal is, imitation is the greatest form of flattery no? |
| Steven_Rosenber Aug 27, 2009 11:15 PM EDT |
The BSD world is a lot different than Linux. I think the fact that the Linux kernel hasn't been forked is a lot more noteworthy than that the BSD kernel has (and so many times). Whatever Linus and co. are doing, they've managed something that looked impossible: building a new kernel from scratch and keeping hold of the project for x many years (somebody fill in the X for me ... it's late and I'm lazy). But back to BSD. ... You could (and should) consider PC-BSD, DesktopBSD and FreeSBIE to be "distros" of FreeBSD, since they're all based on it. OliveBSD is dead (it is a live CD based on OpenBSD). There are a couple of OpenBSD live CD projects out there that are under active development. I, for one, would like to see a "distro" culture form around one or more of the BSD projects. There are hundreds of Linux distros but almost no BSD distros. That means unless you use PC-BSD or DesktopBSD, you pretty much have to build the system up from a minimal install to whatever desktop environment and set of apps you want. That's all well and good, but it IS nice to have a premade distro, and I'd love to see somebody take any or all of the BSDs and turn them into something desktop-ready. ... PC-BSD an DesktopBSD are BOTH based on KDE. Not so great for those of us who use something else. The big stopper for BSDs -- for me, anyway, is Flash. You can do Flash 7 under Linux emulation in most BSDs, but I think it's hard to get Flash 9 and impossible to get Flash 10. So if Flash is a big part of your computing experience, it's a bit of a roadblock. Otherwise, I had a great time in my six months running OpenBSD (until the whole thing blew up during my 4.4-4.5 upgrade; most OpenBSD users reinstall instead of upgrade ... I should've done that but thought the upgrade would be "easier"). |
| caitlyn Aug 28, 2009 1:22 AM EDT |
@Steven_Rosenberg: For some reason I thought you ran DragonFly BSD. I guess I was wrong about that. Let's see, it's late August, 2009. x=18 |
| Sander_Marechal Aug 28, 2009 6:35 PM EDT |
Quoting:The BSD world is a lot different than Linux. I think the fact that the Linux kernel hasn't been forked is a lot more noteworthy than that the BSD kernel has (and so many times). Define "forked". Almost no Linux distribution uses a vanilla kernel. They all change stuff. Especially Red Hat has been known to ship franken-kernels (as Linus calls them). Compare that with the BSDs. How different are the kernels in the various BSDs from eachother? More different that a Mint kernel is from a Red Hat Enterprise kernel? |
| jdixon Aug 28, 2009 6:48 PM EDT |
> More different that a Mint kernel is from a Red Hat Enterprise kernel? AFAIK, Red Hat doesn't upgrade the kernel in their Enterprise editions, they backport fixes to it, so that's not a valid comparison. It'd be more valid to compare Mint to Fedora. |
| Sander_Marechal Aug 28, 2009 7:07 PM EDT |
jdixon: It's not about the upgrades. It's about the initial kernel. They start off with an (older, stable and tested) vanilla kernel and many pacthes, changes, backported drivers and out-of-tree functionality. It ends up very different from a vanilla Linux kernel. |
| Steven_Rosenber Aug 28, 2009 11:41 PM EDT |
The Linux kernels get modified, but development remains in a single project. ... p.s. ... did a Debian Lenny install tonight after another OpenBSD upgrade attempt kills the box. |
| Sander_Marechal Aug 29, 2009 2:22 AM EDT |
Back to Lenny again Steven? You just can't leave it, can you? :-D |
| gus3 Aug 29, 2009 10:03 AM EDT |
Like me and Slackware. You never forget your first love. |
| Steven_Rosenber Aug 30, 2009 1:31 AM EDT |
I've been through a lot with Debian, and with Lenny in particular. I did my first Debian install in April 2007 when Etch went Stable. Just to see Aptitude do its thing, add 200-some packages at a crack (to add Xfce to a Standard install) and do all that installation and configuration automatically. |
| Bob_Robertson Aug 30, 2009 1:50 PM EDT |
> Almost no Linux distribution uses a vanilla kernel. They all change stuff. Very true. However, they all go back to the main trunk when that core Linux is updated. So there may be a Debian 2.6.26, but it is based upon new changes to Linus' 2.6.26, NOT Debian's 2.6.25. > Just to see Aptitude do its thing, add 200-some packages at a crack (to add Xfce to a Standard install) and do all that installation and configuration automatically. My preferred method is to use the Debian 150MB netinstall disk (or 30MB bootable business card!) to get the system up and running, without a network connection. This creates a beautifully lean-and-mean minimal install, although to get wireless up one must use the CD#1. Then after updating /etc/apt/sources.list to a good selection of sources including Debian-multimedia, and because aptitude drives me crazy, I use dselect to choose a whole slew of packages and meta-packages, KDE, xfce, Xorg, xine, mplayer, etc. Dependencies are solved and presented to me first, so I can see what it is that will be installed, but I also get a thrill when it says, "47 packages to upgrade, 1259 new packages to install, 3 packages to remove. Continue? (Y/n)" And then I can (for the most part) just walk away and let it go. I know it will work. There are a few packages which require input, "Do you want to restart these processes?" yes, please, as if there is any reason I wouldn't. I'm not updating a live mission-critical server, get on with it! :^) I've had no luck installing any of the BSDs, but then the last time I tried was several years ago. Not sure why I'd bother, since the Linux kernel does everything I need in a kernel, and the applications are (as far as I can tell) the same. #Edit: Am doing a test amd64 install under VirtualBox, for poops and grins, and without specifying "Install Alternative Desktop" at the start, it will give an option to UNSELECT "Desktop" when getting to the point of choosing the packages to install. Just "Base System" stays selected. After that, it's dselect time! |
| Steven_Rosenber Aug 30, 2009 1:58 PM EDT |
I've been a big proponent of BSD, and OpenBSD did very well for me as my main OS for awhile, but specific to OpenBSD, I can do an install in a few minutes, but the upgrade and the reinstall when trying to leave /home in place have eluded me, meaning they haven't worked. |
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