4 ms·

package management and administration is a great start to explaining the differwnces, but what I would really like to see is a low level explanation of the diff

package management and administration is a great start to explaining the differwnces, but what I would really like to see is a low level explanation of the differences. To what extent does BSD follow the "everything is a file" philosophy that linux does. Where is information about devices and processes to be found? coming from a Gentoo background, where portage is based on the bsdports system, package management is not all that foreign in BSD. But when it comes time to tweak things, I start missing my sysfs and procfs, mostly throug ignorance of how BSD does such things.

pygy_ 16y ago
> To what extent does BSD follow the "everything is a file" philosophy that linux does. Where is information about devices and processes to be found? You got this the wrong way around. "Everything is a file" is a core UNIX feature, and predates Linux by more than 20 years.
- snprbob86 16y ago
  I think that "most everything is a file" is a core UNIX feature. "Everything is a file" really comes from Plan 9: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs (see Design Concepts, /net, and /proc)
  - agazso 16y ago
    In Unix it is rather "everything has a file descriptor at API level" while in Plan9 it is really "everything is a file" from the system standpoint. It is not surprising since Plan9 also came from Bell Labs, and they learned the lessons of Unix, raising the idea to a new level.
riffraff 16y ago
I have not been using a bsd system for a long long time, but from what I recall at least freebsd had the same kind of virtual FSs that linux had, procfs on /proc and devfs on /dev but no separate sysfs on /sys. I suspect though that you may have wanted to investigate sysctl(8) for your tweaking needs http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=sysctl&sektion=8 http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=sysctl&sektion=...
silentbicycle 16y ago
The "everything is a file" philosophy came from the original Unix, but didn't quite stay consistent when things like sockets were added later. Like Linux, BSD keeps its device info in /dev. /proc doesn't come from Linux, it comes from plan9. The /proc in Linux is a weak knock-off, since Linux doesn't support per-process mount points the way plan9 does. I don't know about FreeBSD, but OpenBSD has a port of /proc roughly on par with Linux's.
- Luyt 16y ago
  FreeBSD has procfs, although it's not mounted by default. mount -t procfs proc /proc ls -alR /proc
phamilton 16y ago
I understand that this is a UNIX trait, I tried to choose my words carefully. Linux follows that philosophy (to some extent). Not: that is a Linux philosophy. My main curiosity comes from how Mac OS X, being a sort of flavor of BSD, also follows that philosophy. The Mach kernel probably messes all that up though. Anyone familiar with the such things?

pygy_ 16y ago

> To what extent does BSD follow the "everything is a file" philosophy that linux does. Where is information about devices and processes to be found? You got this the wrong way around. "Everything is a file" is a core UNIX feature, and predates Linux by more than 20 years.

snprbob86 16y ago
I think that "most everything is a file" is a core UNIX feature. "Everything is a file" really comes from Plan 9: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs (see Design Concepts, /net, and /proc)
- agazso 16y ago
  In Unix it is rather "everything has a file descriptor at API level" while in Plan9 it is really "everything is a file" from the system standpoint. It is not surprising since Plan9 also came from Bell Labs, and they learned the lessons of Unix, raising the idea to a new level.

riffraff 16y ago

I have not been using a bsd system for a long long time, but from what I recall at least freebsd had the same kind of virtual FSs that linux had, procfs on /proc and devfs on /dev but no separate sysfs on /sys. I suspect though that you may have wanted to investigate sysctl(8) for your tweaking needs http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=sysctl&sektion=8 http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=sysctl&sektion=...

silentbicycle 16y ago

The "everything is a file" philosophy came from the original Unix, but didn't quite stay consistent when things like sockets were added later. Like Linux, BSD keeps its device info in /dev. /proc doesn't come from Linux, it comes from plan9. The /proc in Linux is a weak knock-off, since Linux doesn't support per-process mount points the way plan9 does. I don't know about FreeBSD, but OpenBSD has a port of /proc roughly on par with Linux's.

Luyt 16y ago
FreeBSD has procfs, although it's not mounted by default. mount -t procfs proc /proc ls -alR /proc

phamilton 16y ago

I understand that this is a UNIX trait, I tried to choose my words carefully. Linux follows that philosophy (to some extent). Not: that is a Linux philosophy. My main curiosity comes from how Mac OS X, being a sort of flavor of BSD, also follows that philosophy. The Mach kernel probably messes all that up though. Anyone familiar with the such things?