Re: [9fans] UN to fund linux for the 3rd world

[geoff@collyer.net]

Back in the archives I explained why my preference is Plan 9 >> *BSD >
Linux >>> Windows.  With respect to BSDs and Linux, I find the BSD
kernels to be smaller and of higher quality.  An acquaintance observes
that Linux seems to attract application developers and the BSDs seem
to attrack kernel hackers, which may explain some of the difference.

Since the BSDs have increasingly good Linux emulation, it's hard to
see why one would run Linux (as opposed to swiping Linux applications
from a distribution) rather than a BSD.

Further, the BSDs maintain their systems as integrated systems, with
optional ports, as opposed to most Linux distributions (debian being
an exception but RedHat being guilty) that ship a collection of
modules with tight version-number dependencies: a kernel, user-mode
programs, some documentation, and their best wishes.  When you want to
add an application not in the distribution, you run into
version-number-dependency hell, since the world has already moved on
since the distribution was frozen, and the old versions of various
libraries you need have been expunged from the internet.  The BSD port
machinery at least automates the dependency resolution and the
maintainers seem to keep old versions around, so they can be found
when needed.