Re: Linux vs FreeBSD vs SCO

From: Tony Lawrence (foo_at_pcunix.com)
Date: 05/27/05 

Date: Fri, 27 May 2005 06:04:42 -0400

Bill Vermillion wrote:

>
> The problems >>I<< have with Linux is it is not consistent.
> And it changes. They don't seem to have the concept of legacy
> systems, so that if they change something they expect you to
> upgrades. When - at one time - the ps -af deprecated the '-'
> and would bail out when it encountered that in a script I was told
> "change the scripts". The don't understand that some system have
> scripts that have worked for years the old way, and sometimes
> those scripts are called only rarely so breakage may occur later
> and you might not know why.

I don't disagree with anything you said. I will make two comments,
though.

First, the "ps" issue is more complicated than it first appears. See
http://aplawrence.com/Blog/B1011.html and
http://aplawrence.com/Blog/B1012.html

Secondly (and in spite of the first comment), you are absolutely correct
that Linux changes too damn much, ignores legacy considerations and is
well on the path to perdition by making things much more complex than
they need to be.

But if I have leaned nothing else in all my years, I have learned this:
technical superority means squat. It's the sizzle that sells, and if
the steak really tastes like cardboard, it doesn't matter. If any of
that did matter, Microsoft wouldn't be where they are today.

 From where I sit, Linux is evolving in the direction it needs to go to
unseat Microsoft (or at least push them to the side a little). That
means more sizzle, more shiny doo-dads, and (aaargh!) more wizards and
other background crap making decisions for you. You quoted "Linux is
for MS haters. FreeBSD is for Unix lovers". I don't disagree with that,
but I do remind you that the second group is very, very small indeed. 

-- 
Tony Lawrence
Unix/Linux/Mac OS X  resources: http://aplawrence.com

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