On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 02:47:45PM -0400, Donald Allen wrote:
I never said ‘weaker’ meant simpler.
That's true and I didn't say you did. You said it was 'weaker' and I
said it's 'simpler' (but not *too* simple).
You certainly implied that I was arguing against simplicity,
which I very clearly wasn't.
I was as skeptical as you are, until I finally (in desperation,
because I couldn't find a simple, unbloated distribution that was
reliable) gave it a try. In actual use, it's a simple system to
administer. If dwm (WHAT?? No config files? I have to edit C code? Mon
dieu!) were a Linux distribution, it could easily look like Slackware.
I've used Slackware in the past, and the lack of dependency
resolution did indeed cause problems (as it did on similar
systems). On most Unices these days (even the loathesome
RPM-based systems), just about anything may be installed with
one command, or two if you have to search first. You don't even
need to think about the dependencies, and you certainly don't
have to visit a website. It's especially irritating if, like me,
you tend to keep your system clear of Gnome, but occasionally
need a Gnome-based program installed, along with its battalion
of dependencies, and need to purge the lot afterwards.
And, as for dwm, you won't win any points from me on that score.
I still think that that's a bad design decision.
Most do not have those "tricks up their sleeve" and they get screwed.
The only reason I can see for using Arch is if you make a conscious
risk-benefit decision that always having the latest and (presumably)
greatest easily available to you is worth the risk of occasionally
having to glue your system back together or restore it from a backup.
Don't care about most people, frankly. That being said, I've
never my Arch system wedged in the past three years or so,
though I have had some more minor yet annoying problems relating
to their rolling packaging.
But I do often wish that Linuxes would provide
something akin to FreeBSD's statically linked /rescue.
I will avoid wasting network bandwidth by going on a FreeBSD rant.
Suffice to say that I've tried 7.* and 8.* and I don't think that
system is fit for the desktop. Its reputation for solidity was made on
servers and I'm sure it's fine there. But, for example, the usb layer
was totally broken in 7.*, they re-wrote it for 8.* and it still
doesn't work correctly. There were other problems, too.
FreeBSD has gone down hill over the years, no doubt. I used
4-STABLE for nearly 10 years, and only ever upgraded to 5-STABLE
when 4 wouldn't run on my laptop. My firewall ran 4-STABLE for
some years after that, and my desktop eventually got 6-STABLE
when it was released. But after that, I didn't bother to install
it on my new laptop, because things were clearly not moving in
the right direction.
OpenBSD is a different story. It is a very high quality system. But --
it's noticeably slower than Linux, it doesn't have real SMP support
(just one Giant Lock around the kernel), it doesn't have unified
buffer cache support, and its hardware-support repertoire is not
nearly as big as that of Linux. But it's perfectly usable as a desktop
system, if it supports your hardware (and you don't care about Flash,
which many do not), very secure, very well documented and very
bug-free. It's also simple to administer, because the config setup is
sensible and everything is clearly documented. The big down-side, for
me, is that the developer community has taken on Theo de Raadt's
personality. A friend of mine said to me recently "the only reason for
running OpenBSD is if you like being insulted". Perhaps an
over-statement, but there's some truth to it. I just don't like the
way they treat people and so I won't use their stuff (because I like
to give financial support to people who donate their time to making
software that I use, and I just didn't want to send these guys any
more money). Too bad, because in the right setting, it's a great piece
of work.
I don't believe that OpenBSD is noticably slower than Linux, at
least not for servers. It consistently performs well on
benchmarks compared to Linux and the other BSDs, and I know that
the OpenBSD devs brag about their network device support
compared to bothe Linux and the BSDs. They focus on server
support, and they do that well. And, well, Theo is an asshole,
but I rather like him. He's a rather welcome antidote to Ulrich
Drepper at any rate. It's odd, though, that OpenBSD being so
focused on security and stability, that DJB of all people
ditched it for FreeBSD because of its lack of the latter...
--
Kris Maglione
One does well to put on gloves when reading the New Testament. The
proximity of so much uncleanliness almost forces one to do this.
--Friedrich Nietzsche
