Why not?

[Loren M. Lang]

On Sun, Mar 13, 2005 at 04:53:36PM -0500, Bart Silverstrim wrote:
> 
> On Mar 13, 2005, at 4:34 PM, Loren M. Lang wrote:
> 
> >On Sun, Mar 13, 2005 at 01:24:42PM -0500, Bart Silverstrim wrote:
> >>
> >>On Mar 12, 2005, at 2:45 PM, Chris wrote:
> >>
> >>>Aperez wrote:
> >>>>Hello everybdody
> >>>>
> >>>>I read an interview of Linus Torvald made by Linux Magazine. In that
> >>>>interview Linus mentioned the following:
> >>>>
> >>>>"On the other hand, no, Linux does not have that stupid notion of
> >>>>having totally separate kernel development for different issues. If
> >>>>you want a secure BSD, you get OpenBSD; if you want a usable BSD, 
> >>>>you
> >>>>get FreeBSD; and if you want BSD on other architectures, you get
> >>>>NetBSD. That___s just idiotic, to have different teams worry about
> >>>>different things."
> >>>
> >>>Here's irony posed as a question:
> >>>
> >>>... and how many distros of Linux are there?
> >>
> >>I think the difference is that Linus is working on the Linux kernel.
> >>The distros, numerous as they are, all run the same kernel.  Those
> >>separate distros package the other applications and userland apps and
> >>default configs.  The kernel itself isn't under separate forks, 
> >>whereas
> >>from what I understand the kernels for FBSD/NetBSD/OBSD are very
> >>similar, share a lot of crossed-over code, but are not identical and
> >>have separate "management" teams behind them.
> >
> >While each distros kernel is probably less different than a NetBSD vs.
> >FreeBSD kernel, there still each different and a lot more of them.  I
> >had to download and install a very specific kernel from redhat to use 
> >on
> >my debian system so I could use my wireless card.
> >
> >Also, some features can very wildly like IPSEC, some distros patch in
> >FreeSWAN's stack, others the KAME stack.
> 
> Some vendors may be directly patching certain features, for the most 
> part you shouldn't have to download a specific kernel for a feature to 
> work in Linux unless you wanted it pre-packaged.  You should be able to 
> update it by downloading the latest features, running the config to 
> enable/disable what features you want compiled into the kernel (or as 
> modules), then compile it.

Well, the vendor for my wireless card provided a binary-only driver with
a small open-source wrapper.  The wrapper was just a piece of garbage
though and compiling it for a different kernel didn't work.  The driver
was designed for redhat's 2.4.18-3 kernel.  That kernel had a couple of
issues and redhat issued an update, 2.4.18-10.  The wireless card driver
wouldn't even work on the -10 kernel, it would crash my system
everytime, I had to use the -3 kernel to use it at all.  This is one of
the problems/features of the linux kernel, it doesn't work with binary
device drivers like the *BSD kernel do.

> 
> When everything else breaks because the kernel version changed and 
> something specific is linked to something that depends on something 
> from the previous kernel's config, then you get to delve into some real 
> fun.  But still, there is one source kernel, and unless the vendors did 
> something proprietary (which I don't believe they're supposed to be 
> allowed to do), you can compile your own kernel with your own set of 
> enabled and disabled features from the Linux kernel source tree whether 
> you're running Red Hat or Debian; it may break if that particular 
> distro is depending on certain features as you have it configured and 
> you fubar the new kernel's config, but it is still a matter of tweaking 
> that configuration to get it working again.
> 
> I can't download the sources for NetBSD's kernel, compile it on my 
> FreeBSD box, and have it work no matter how much tweaking I do to the 
> configuration...if I'm wrong, please someone correct me.
> 
> I *think* (and I'm not following the story closely) what Linus was 
> saying is that it's stupid to have so many people working in parallel 
> on such similar cousins...NetBSD, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD.  They share 
> code, they share info, but optimize for certain goals and have a lot of 
> redundancy.  Linux's kernel is Linux's kernel, modified by individuals 
> but still one big bulky source tree to work from.  Is one way less 
> intelligent than others?  I don't know.  I never studied it :-)  All I 
> know  is that in general, for most end users, it doesn't matter...if 
> they stick with a particular distro and their sources and packages, 
> then things tend to work.  Linux has fragmented so much that it's 
> difficult to get a package aimed at distro A and have it work on distro 
> B despite them both being Linux.  For the BSD's, it's pretty much 
> always worked as if it's in the port tree, you have the package in 
> question work.  Otherwise, work from sources.  And instructions to get 
> a package working on *BSD pretty much always work whereas for Linux you 
> may run Debian but find instructions for what you're trying to do 
> written for an audience running Red Hat, so you need to translate 
> things as you go along.

-- 
I sense much NT in you.
NT leads to Bluescreen.
Bluescreen leads to downtime.
Downtime leads to suffering.
NT is the path to the darkside.
Powerful Unix is.

Public Key: ftp://ftp.tallye.com/pub/lorenl_pubkey.asc
Fingerprint: CEE1 AAE2 F66C 59B5 34CA  C415 6D35 E847 0118 A3D2
 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/attachments/20050313/05266bc6/attachment.bin