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Nice article. The point he makes about Linux devs vastly outnumbering OpenSolaris devs is true for all of the free operating systems. Look at the CVS commits in

by 16s 16y ago

Nice article. The point he makes about Linux devs vastly outnumbering OpenSolaris devs is true for all of the free operating systems. Look at the CVS commits in OpenBSD. You can count on both hands the number of 'primary commiters' Thousands versus dozens makes a huge difference as does corporate involvement. I like all the free/open source operating systems, but I tend to go with GNU/Linux for this very reason.

dedward 16y ago
As a long-time user of Open/FreeBSD & Linux & solaris/opensolaris.... The point about # of devs is true - linux is the new nix reference platform (well, not new anymore I guess). It used to be SunOS/Solaris. OpenBSD has a small number of committers and developers more because of the attitude of it's community and head honcho - OpenBSD is fantastic at what it's fantastic at, but the developer community is very much "If you don't like the way we do it, F* off" (which is perfectly fine...no moral judgement implied). FreeBSD on the other hand doesn't get enough cred... it's solid, it's constantly incrementally improved. It's a single distribution with a very focused core - so while it doens't have all the fire and brimstone of linux, those FreeBSD guys have been cranking out solid, wonderful, well engineered and well documented code for a long, long time. I'm often on the brink of wishing I could switch an enterprise to FreeBSD completely - the commercial support isn't all there, but from a purist point of view it's pretty much THE best free *nix out there, and I'm never really sure why it doesn't get the same focus linux does - I suppose it's just the way things went and media hype about the GPL.
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  For starters, there is no FreeBSDBuntu, and Ubuntu has done wonders flying the flag for Linux.
  - cylinder714 16y ago
    I haven't used it, but PC-BSD looks like the "Ubuntu" BSD. http://www.pcbsd.org/ http://www.pcbsd.org/

by 16s 16y ago

dedward 16y ago

As a long-time user of Open/FreeBSD & Linux & solaris/opensolaris.... The point about # of devs is true - linux is the new nix reference platform (well, not new anymore I guess). It used to be SunOS/Solaris. OpenBSD has a small number of committers and developers more because of the attitude of it's community and head honcho - OpenBSD is fantastic at what it's fantastic at, but the developer community is very much "If you don't like the way we do it, F* off" (which is perfectly fine...no moral judgement implied). FreeBSD on the other hand doesn't get enough cred... it's solid, it's constantly incrementally improved. It's a single distribution with a very focused core - so while it doens't have all the fire and brimstone of linux, those FreeBSD guys have been cranking out solid, wonderful, well engineered and well documented code for a long, long time. I'm often on the brink of wishing I could switch an enterprise to FreeBSD completely - the commercial support isn't all there, but from a purist point of view it's pretty much THE best free *nix out there, and I'm never really sure why it doesn't get the same focus linux does - I suppose it's just the way things went and media hype about the GPL.

sliverstorm 16y ago
For starters, there is no FreeBSDBuntu, and Ubuntu has done wonders flying the flag for Linux.
- cylinder714 16y ago
  I haven't used it, but PC-BSD looks like the "Ubuntu" BSD. http://www.pcbsd.org/ http://www.pcbsd.org/