fooler wrote:
andy, first of all... unix is a unix is a unix is a unix is a unix...
This couldn't be more wrong. You've got Irix, Solaris, Linux (which is
not even based on the SVR4/BSD codebase which is what a 'real' unix would
be), SCO, AIX, and on and on and on. And heck, even in the case of unix vs.
unix, in the early days there was System V vs. BSD (Unix strains like Irix
are a mix of both), so no, a unix is not a unix is not a unix.
What we term *nix (NOT U-nix) is a bunch of different operating systems some
of which share common code to a great degree (although not completely), others
which are based on a _completely_ different code base (such as QNX and Linux)
but nevertheless attempt to expose a common an API as possible for the operating
system services.
What Linux is, is an OS which offers a POSIX-compliant API, an API which
just happens to be more or less the core API that the original (the real)
unixes gravitate towards and it also uses GNU, which is a set of command
line programs, written against the POSIX API, that mimics the names, command
line switches and functionality of the original Unix ones. GNU+Linux
is NOT Unix, just a kind of a clone.
Even when it comes to the OS commands, they may have the same name and same
basic command line switches but are far from identical from one incarnation
to the next. The GNU ls command which Linux uses, for example, has quite
different options from the FreeBSD one. But I'm sure you know this already.
Kernel capabilities also vary widely from one to the next. For example, the
Linux kernel is only now starting to approach the heavy duty abilities (such
as efficiently handling machines with 32, 64 or more CPUs) which the Solaris
kernel has supported for many many years now.
in linux, the difference with other distro is that with their environment
(eg. how services are started, package management tool, etc)... but they
have the same in common which they are using the same kernel... the basic
commands (eg. ps, ls, etc) are all the same to all distros...
Note that many of the distros out there use modified kernels with unofficial
(i.e. not from Linus) patches. An example would be Red Hat which heavily uses
Alan Cox's own patches. So different distros do not use identical kernels,
EVEN IF THEY ARE MARKED AS THE SAME VERSION. In fact, Slackware's policy of
always using the vanilla one from kernel.org might be more the exception than
the rule nowadays, but then this is also why we like Slack because when
you tinker with the kernel that comes with it, you know you are tinkering
with the exact same one that's 'blessed by Linus and Tosatti'.
P.S. have you tried running firebird on freebsd? my friends are shifting
from linux to freebsd because firebird is 20% faster on freebsd than
linux...
Interesting... word on the Firebird list is that compiling Firebird 1.5 on
FreeBSD is giving some a hard time. Of course, if you're using binaries,
this won't be an issue.
The point remains, different distros are essentially somewhat different
environments, and you don't switch from one distro to the next and expect
to be fully comfortable. Instead of saying that they are identical, I'm
interested in stories about how hard or easy a time other Linux-ers out
there have when switching between distros. I.e. how viable a proposition is
it to hire an RH (or whatever the most popular local distro is) person to
work with a Slackware server...
So far the response seems to be that it is very much a viable one, anyone out
there who disagrees?
--
reply-to: a n d y @ n e t f x p h . c o m
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