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Thanks for the response. It seems a bit of a cheat to me, though, to compare the differences in the various linux distributions to the (claimed) cohesiveness of

Thanks for the response. It seems a bit of a cheat to me, though, to compare the differences in the various linux distributions to the (claimed) cohesiveness of FreeBSD. Why not turn it around and compare the differences between FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD to just Debian? Having used Debian (a whole lot) and Fedora (just a little), I've found that, although they have some large differences between them, each of them presents a cohesive system within itself. Despite the package sources coming from disparate places. I know for a fact that both distributions patch their (external) packages so that they fit into their respective guidelines (IE, no junk in /opt, config files in directories in /etc, etc.). I've used OpenBSD in the past--even got the source code from CVS and compiled the whole thing up. I've seen how all the code is organized and it is nice. I definitely see how it's cohesive from the source code's point of view. But I don't see how that produces a more cohesive system from the user's point of view.

Ixiaus 16y ago
Depends on the context with which you are arguing, I suppose. In this case it might have been more correct to argue FreeBSD vs. Debian. I still stress, though, that the difference is still a notable one; even though Debian may be a tight and clean distribution it's still considered "GNU/Linux" - FreeBSD is just FreeBSD. The BSD's do have some cross pollination but they aren't united under a single umbrella as all the distributions of GNU/Linux are. Debian is sort of stepping away from this by building a distribution that matches GNU user land with the FreeBSD kernel. I haven't personally used Debian that much, so I can't reliably argue for or against it (but I've heard good things); my arguments generally stem from my lovely experiences with FreeBSD and my generally frustrating experiences with GNU/Linux (no new argument here, everything I said in this sentence is said in my above post).

Ixiaus 16y ago

Depends on the context with which you are arguing, I suppose. In this case it might have been more correct to argue FreeBSD vs. Debian. I still stress, though, that the difference is still a notable one; even though Debian may be a tight and clean distribution it's still considered "GNU/Linux" - FreeBSD is just FreeBSD. The BSD's do have some cross pollination but they aren't united under a single umbrella as all the distributions of GNU/Linux are. Debian is sort of stepping away from this by building a distribution that matches GNU user land with the FreeBSD kernel. I haven't personally used Debian that much, so I can't reliably argue for or against it (but I've heard good things); my arguments generally stem from my lovely experiences with FreeBSD and my generally frustrating experiences with GNU/Linux (no new argument here, everything I said in this sentence is said in my above post).