From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2004 12:38:42 +1000 From: George Michaelson To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] UN to fund linux for the 3rd world Message-Id: <20040903123842.52370512@garlic.apnic.net> In-Reply-To: <200409030213.i832D9J17857@augusta.math.psu.edu> References: <20040902091027.GC23610@lb.tenfour> <200409030213.i832D9J17857@augusta.math.psu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: cross@math.psu.edu Topicbox-Message-UUID: dcda5626-eacd-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 On Thu, 02 Sep 2004 22:13:09 -0400 Dan Cross wrote: >Dick Davies writes: >> > Seriously, though, I can understand why they might not be in a hurry >> > to push something like Plan 9, but (a) if this is funding new development, >> > why not pick a technically superior platform? (b) why Linux? Why not >> > one of the BSD distributions? (c) Can't technology win just this once? >> >> Linux admins are two a penny? > >At that level, are there really that many differences between Linux >and FreeBSD? I was a Unix sysadmin for a bunch of years, and I usually >found it easier to keep BSD running than Linux, but at the end of the >day there wasn't too much difference between them. Maybe I'm too old >school or something. > > - Dan C. the marginal OT here is that since Free and Net BSD both adopted a SYSV rc.d/ form (albiet very mangled) with dependency chaining, within certain limits no, the admin differences are scant and about flavour for many things. betwixt the penguin and the cute devil. but of course, when it breaks, the POLA for either side can be broken hunting for hints on how this OS does task problem is that we're dumbing down everything these days. an admin coming from Linux probably expects a GUI to do stuff. and I mean G-UI. While NetBSD and FreeBSD have tiny amounts of UI to admin stuff, (nothing much as AIX for instance) the vast majority of admin is still vi on a file. So you can find that the skillset to keep an L-box running is lower, cheaper than to keep a B-box running, absent major problems. YMMV. -George