iansjack wrote:Solar wrote:Any other OS is either 1) a poor second to Linux when it comes to running the GNU userspace, or 2) doesn't have a comparable userspace.
That statement is just a little too sweeping (or else demonstrates a poor understanding - take your pick).
I'd agree with you there. *BSD does a pretty good job of running GNU stuff.
When you actually manage to install it on a box. The problem (for BSD) is nobody gives a damn what license their desktop machine software has. That only matters in the embedded world, however one small problem there:
- Where's the flash file system?
- Where's the Busybox equivalent? (Don't say 'Crunchgen', it's a very poor substitute)
- Where's the easy kernel configuration system?
- Kernel compression options
etc, etc...
Having hacked on both kernels to some degree (NetBSD and Linux), there is no question which I prefer. Sure, somebody trying to sell stuff prefers the *BSD license, but if you take that out of the equation there is no comparison, and the effort involved in making *BSD do what you want in the embedded world is usually far greater than the effort of making a clean separation between your application and the OS it runs on so you don't have to open-source both. The router market has shown that the Linux license, restricted though it might be, is perfectly adequate.
iansjack wrote:
The world does not belong to Linux (thank goodness).
In the embedded world, yes it does. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see the *BSDs succeeding, there are some very good people working on those projects, but they're a good 5 years behind Linux, and there's no reason for them to catch up ever.
iansjack wrote:
(Also, many of us prefer the FreeBSD licence to GPL.)
As a coder or a user? Statistics would seem to show developers preferring the latter.
regards,
Biff.