[TAG] System V or BSD?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Mike Orr (sluggoster at gmail.com):

> Linux generally follows the System V "style" but deviates whenever it
> feels like it.

And System V wasn't exactly System V, any more, after SysV R3.  ;->
SysV R4 was, after all, one of computing biggest exercises in
syncretism.[1]

> The network stack is closer to BSD's.

Amen to that.  Back when there was a Caldera Systems, Inc. (remember them?),
they kept trying to get Torvalds to accept a huge patch to add the
System V "STREAMS" interproces I/O system.  Torvalds turned them down
flat, repeatedly, saying (and I paraphrase):  "Why would we need that
bloatware in our kernel, when Berkeley sockets already do that same job
at least as well?"

> Some people say BSD's network stack can handle a higher load.

That's largely on the basis of data like this 1999 event:
http://www.bafug.org/news/NewRecord.html 

At that time, Walnut Creek CD-ROM set the world record for most bytes of
network traffic processed in 24 hours by a single host:  One
single-processor PII box (a then-famous FreeBSD ftp server) handled 1.39
terabytes.  (This burst of traffic was, ironically, occasioned by the
release on that machine of Slackware 4.0.)

Fast-forward:  About a year ago, I helped build what became the
second-fastest computational cluster in the world, "Thunder", a set of
1024 quad-Itanium2 Linux boxes.  The interconnects for node-to-node
data passing used Quadrics cards, and I don't have figures handy but it
was a stupendous level of network traffic.

> BSD sticks to the user-compiled route.

Misconception.  It's actually probably more common, in practice, to
install software from the binary packages than to build it from ports.  
I can tell you that BSD admins will often resource to packages when
there are local build problems, if nothing else.

> BSD also tends to have less support for new hardware, and last time I
> checked it had an incompatible disk-partitioning scheme, making dual
> booting a problem.

FYI:  FreeBSD (at least) is perfectly happy booting from an
IBM/Microsoft-style partition table.  For that matter, you can boot
Linux (but not MS-Windows) from a BSD "slice"-style disklabel.

> But if a user-compiled distro appeals to you and you like
> the BSD traditions, FreeBSD would be worth looking into.  That seems
> to be the most popular one for new users, although NetBSD and OpenBSD
> are also free and would be worth comparing.

Don't overlook DragonFly BSD.
http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/conspire/2005-October/001504.html