--- Doug <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
<snip> 

> Excellent, I took a look at the list of packages in
> the portage tree on
> their homepage, and it seems like they keep
> everything up to date, very
> nice.  I'm assuming it's fairly easy to update your
> portage tree also.  Is
> there a simple command to do that also?

'emerge rsync'
(see http://www.gentoo.org/doc/portage-manual.html)

<snip>

> That depends on what the word interest includes. 
> I'm interested for sure.
> The only thing that turns me off to BSD is the
> perceived lack of
> applications.  Of course I may be wrong, but it
> seems like there's so much
> more to choose from with linux.  Of course, I'm
> probably wrong in that
> respect.

Linux has better marketing because it is used by more
people. Therefore, more people write more apps for
Linux. BUT, many apps can be easily ported to *BSD.
And there are apps you can run on *BSD that allow
Linux apps to run in a binary-compatibility mode. Or
somesuch.

Not to start a religious war here, but BSD ran on i386
before Linus wrote his kernel. Back then, bandwidth
was limited (dial-up for most people), so you had to
buy BSD on some large storage media. I don't know the
exact history for certain, but I believe that Linus
just wanted to write something that would boot and
allow him to run a console to talk to his modem, so he
could connect to his university's mainframe.

> I have noticed that the BSD community is far
> less....let me put this
> nicely...confrontational.  People in the linux
> community can get quite mean
> sometimes.

I've always thought of Linux as being the punk Unix
movement: anarchic, revolutionary, fashionable.

>  Not that anyone on this list is, but
> linux message boards are
> not safe for those who may be labeled a "newb". 

That is the one thing that really gets me about the
Linux community. I mean, we were all newbies once. The
Linux community used to be a lot more friendly. Don't
let a few loudmouths get to you, I'll bet those are
the trend-chasing PFYs recently new to Linux
themselves and looking to compensate something.

> They're also quite militant
> when it comes to the opposition of microsoft.

Well, I can hardly blame them. :) Microsoft is quite
militant in its own way.

>  I bet
> you there's a huge
> difference in blood pressure readings when comparing
> BSD and Linux users.
> :-)

You can find the roots of your observations in the
differences between the *BSD and Linux crowds in the
following licenses:

http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl.html
http://www.xfree86.org/3.3.6/COPYRIGHT2.html#6

The differences between the GPL and the original BSD
license are what separate those communities. I think
of *BSD users as being more of the academic/scientific
crowd who want stuff that will work, and not
necessarily the latest flashy stuff that will work
with a recently released piece of graphics hardware.

So, I'm kinda between the two: I like minimalism,
correctness and the command line, but I think M$ is
the Devil. And I think of Richard Stallman as being in
the company of the Old Testament prophets, eating
honey and locusts in the desert. I may not want to
spend a week with him, but I'm glad he's there.

John Hebert

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup
http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com

Reply via email to