4 ms·
>The reason your work machine, running BSD, works the way it does (and self-assembles that way) is because each part of its software environment is independent,
by papsosouid 14y ago
>The reason your work machine, running BSD, works the way it does (and self-assembles that way) is because each part of its software environment is independent, designed for different goals and constraints and it just happens to work together well enough you can work with it
No, that's not the case at all actually. FreeBSD like the other BSDs is a complete OS, designed and built as a complete OS. It is not a collection of random tools by various people thrown together like a linux distro is.
- rbanffy 14y agoThe expression "a complete OS" is not what it used to mean. Are you implying FreeBSD has an X server, a dozen compilers and interpreters, a GUI and other components equally "designed and built" as a cohesive thing?
- papsosouid 14y agoNo, I am implying that those things aren't part of the OS. You can tell, because they aren't part of the OS, they are installed with the 3rd party package management tools. In linux there is no base OS, everything is 3rd party packages. There is no difference between firefox and ls. In BSDs there is, ls is not 3rd party software packaged up to be installed, it is part of the OS, written by, maintained by, documented by the same people as the kernel, the standard library, etc.
- rbanffy 14y agoI would suspect GNU ls is more a part of a Debian install than, say, Gnome desktop. While not as clear-cut as in the BSD world, it's still the same idea. Except that GNU ls was not designed to run on top of the Linux kernel, which is, on my book, a feature rather than, as you imply, a bug.
- papsosouid 14y agoThe only thing keeping ls on your debian system is other packages having a dependency on it. There is no distinction between operating system and 3rd party packages, all of it is 3rd party packages. I have no idea where you are getting this weird notion about ls and where it was designed to run being a bug. I simply corrected an erroneous statement about what makes up a BSD operating system.
- rbanffy 14y agoWhy would it make a difference whether ls is part of the operating system or not? It works. And if, next week, I write a better ls, I can install it and use it.
- papsosouid 14y agoWould you mind simply reading the thread? You are inventing an argument that does not exist. I did not make a value judgement, I corrected an erroneous statement. Nothing more.
- rbanffy 14y agoI did read it. I just think the "complete OS" think doesn't really make sense. Is it superior because of it? More elegant?
- papsosouid 14y agoI do not how to make this any clearer for you. You said the reason his freebsd system works is because a bunch of independent components happen to fit together. This is false, and that is what I said. That's it. If you said 1+1=3 and I said "actually, 1+1=2" would you then insist on a giant thread of trying to create an argument about whether or not two is a good number?
- lmm 14y agoarcueid ~ $ du -hs /usr/src 728M /usr/src arcueid ~ $ du -hs /usr/src/contrib/ 307M /usr/src/contrib/ So actually almost half of the FreeBSD OS is "random tools by various people thrown together". Compared to that, in something like Debian the GNU tools, designed and built by the GNU with the intention to form a complete OS, probably constitute a greater proportion of the core OS.
- papsosouid 14y agoGoing by the size of the source code, including the configure scripts, makefiles, etc for other operating systems is a rather disingenuous way to measure.
- lmm 14y agoIt was the simplest 30-second way to compare I could think of. If you have a more accurate measure then by all means post your results.