GNU vs Linux vs BSD

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soilwork

GNU vs Linux vs BSD

Post by soilwork »

whats the diff

Id also like to know what the linux kernel was compilled in.. is it C or C++ and what compiller?

later
Schol-R-LEA

Re:GNU vs Linux vs BSD

Post by Schol-R-LEA »

All of them are Unix variants, as you presumably already know. Each was written from the ground up, to avoid an Imperial entanglments... I mean, to avoid copyright infringment of AT&T's original code. Now that SCO owns the rights to UNIX, it's hard to say where that issue lies, but the key element is that each of them is a freely-distributed Unix workalike, that each takes a slightly different approach to the Platonic Ideal of Unix, and that no matter how similar they may seem on the outside, internally they are all quite different.

BSD is arguably the oldest of these, being derived from the Berkeley System Distributions of the eara 1978-1989 or so. When Unix hit Berkeley around System 7 or so, it created a subculture of Unix hackers quite different in outlook from the Bell Labs hackers; this first schism in the Church of Dennis Ritchie led to a lot of confusion about how certain basic utilities and functions should work, with the result that when the rift was settled around 1990, everybody was supporting both schools to a greater or lesser degree just to keep up. The current FreeBSD, and its cousin NetBSD, are the two halves of a project around 1990; most BSD fans agree that while the development of newer tools and better interfaces has slowed to a crawl, the BSDs are perhaps the most stable platforms of all on the PC.

GNU HURD started out as a private project of archhacker and anti-secrecy radical Richard Stallman. Stallman had, and still has, a particualr vision, that software shoud be Free - not just in the sens of not costing money, but in the grander sense of being accessible to anyone who wants it, at any time, with no secrecy or 'information hoarding'. Since even he couldn't write an entire Unix clone by himself (tho' he certainly tried to), he spent the next several years gathering together like-minded programmers to create a huge repository of free software goodies, the GNU Tools. The name, which stands for "GNU's Not Unix", came out of the original intent of writing the OS without any AT&T code - a radical idea in 1980, when even the BSD group were beholden to Bells Labs for their kernel. The result was that they didn't write an OS (well, at least not until very recently), but they did write the biggest, most reliable utilities library imaginable. Most of what people think of as Linux (or BSD, for that matter) is actually the collection of tools from the GNU library.

At last we come to Linux, the youngest of the three. Linux started out as an experiment in writing a multitasking kenrel, no unlike what some of us here are trying to do. Linus Torvalds, the orignal designer, starte off borrowing a lot from another free Unix workalike, Minix (see Andrew Tannebaum's Operating Systems Design and Implementation, listed in the books thread, for more information). After a falling-out with Andy over certain design concepts, however, Linus did something intersting: he told everybody about his little toy kernel, and asked thim if they wanted to help him work on it. Apparently, many did, and soon the whole thing developed a surprising momentum; by 1997, Linux was getting the lion's share of free development work, mostly because of the relatively light hand Torvalds ran the show with. While many complain of it's flaws, there's no question that Linux is the most popular of the Unices today.

AFAIK, all three are written in gcc C (gcc being GNU's universal compiler/assembler/linker tool). Linux in particular is quite dependent on the details of the compiler's code generation.
dori

Re:GNU vs Linux vs BSD

Post by dori »

thanks

now I understand that each has its own ups and downs but which one do u think would be the best thing to use..

Im planning on using the kernel of linux or bsd for the OS.. actually I was planning on using most of Linux and just adding the features I wanted... but if BSD is more like it..

what was BSD written in???
AvengerX

Re:GNU vs Linux vs BSD

Post by AvengerX »

Schol-R-LEA wrote: AFAIK, all three are written in gcc C (gcc being GNU's universal compiler/assembler/linker tool). Linux in particular is quite dependent on the details of the compiler's code generation.
Does that help you? Read it again if you don't understand it -
dori

Re:GNU vs Linux vs BSD

Post by dori »

sorry, I appologise... there was a lot of text that I went through at school in my class fast and missed some detailles...

thanks though
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