Re: need help choosing appropriate BSD distro

t2000kw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On 24 Jun 2007 21:47:57 GMT, "Joachim Schipper"
<jdNoOtSPAMschipper@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Most well-written applications would work on any *BSD, but not all.

Are most Unix-compatible (this might not be the best choice of words
for this) programs able to work in Linux and BSD?

Yes.

I understand that Sun Microsystems is either making a version of
Solaris that will run Linux programs (and maybe BSD programs--heard
this secondhand) or doing something to support Linux programs. I just
wondered how close all of these somewhat similar but also very
different (in some respects, at least, like the actual code) operating
systems are to each other.

Outside of some specific aspects, very similar. Specifically controlling
the kernel (say, configuring the firewall) is likely to be very
different, but - with a little thought spend on portability - most
programs will work well.

However, each system has its own extensions. This might be as innocuous
as OpenBSD's safer string functions (strlcpy) - which can be used on
any Linux or Solaris machine simply by including a copy of the source -
or as complex as a non-interoperable threading API (see WINE).

Nonetheless, the majority of *nix programs will run fine on any *nix
system. This is particularly true of programs written in higher-level
languages (like Perl or Python) that do a rather good job of plastering
over the difference between operating systems (mostly at the expense of
any OS-specific extensions).

And I don't really know about Sun and Linux, maybe someone else can
comment on that.

Joachim
.

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