From rfunk Mon Apr 19 17:51:10 1999 Subject: Re: [COLUG] SCO VS LINUX In-Reply-To: <85256758.0052E306.00@colrelay.checkfree.com> from Jeremy Harris at "Apr 19, 99 11:05:25 am" To: colug@bopper.wcbe.org Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 17:51:10 -0400 (EDT) Jeremy Harris wrote: >I'm looking for reasons (other than price) why you would pick LINUX over >SCO OSV. Like hunter said, the question really should be reversed... have you ever tried to run an SCO box? The one I messed with was the least standard Unix-like thing I've ever used (including QNX!). All the system scripts are written in obfuscated TCL (instead of commented Bourne shell), making it quite painful to follow what's going on. And it uses pg as its pager instead of more. The ONLY reason I can see to run SCO is as a vendor-supported turnkey solution for a specific application. (The one I had the misfortune to mess with in january was originally intended for a cash register system, and they wanted to add networking abilities to it. I gave up -- if anybody knows SCO and wants a consulting job, the Schottenstein Center gift shop may have a use for you.) The real question is not whether to use SCO or Linux, it is whether to use FreeBSD or Linux.
From rfunk Wed May 5 16:57:01 1999 Subject: The best OS for the job To: colug@bopper.wcbe.org (Central Ohio Linux User Group) Date: Wed, 5 May 1999 16:57:01 -0400 (EDT) The list has been pretty quiet today, so I thought I might stir it up by mentioning some thoughts that have been going through my head lately.... and IMHO it's too on-topic to put in colug-politics. The press has been going on about how Linux "isn't quite ready for the desktop yet" but is great as a server. While I agree that Linux probably isn't quite ready to hand to just anyone who walks in off the street, I would argue that the desktop is Linux's greatest strength. That desktop may belong to a researcher who would have had a Sun workstation on his desk a decade ago, it may belong to someone using the computer to control some esoteric hardware device, or it may belong to an everyday techie doing everyday odds and ends. The desktop where most people have been using it historically, so that's where there's the most stable support. In particular, there are many desktop-oriented hardware and software products that won't work under any comparable platform. Linux quickly gets driver support for new hardware, much application software uses unique features of Linux, and the desktop is where you can most easily deal with (even thrive on and contribute to) a bit of code volatility. On the server side, Linux is excellent, but I would argue that FreeBSD's stability might win out in most cases. On a server, you want to be able to forget about needing to upgrade the OS, and I suspect that FreeBSD's maturity and conservativeness is the better approach here. Every server application should run no worse on FreeBSD than on Linux. Sure, you can run a Linux server for a long time without upgrading the kernel, but during that time there will probably be big bugs found in the kernel you chose. For example, there's a network security hole in every kernel before 2.0.36, the latest stable 2.0 kernel. (I'm planning to use "picoBSD", a small build of FreeBSD, as an internet gateway/firewall when I set up a home network, especially if I connect to RR.) For high-end "enterprise" servers, you need to go to the commercial arena if you want both performance and stability. (Of course, anyone looking for this sort of thing should have the budget for the commercial products anyway.) My choice would be Solaris. Linux is reaching for this market, but isn't really mature there yet. Comments?
From owner-colug@bopper.wcbe.org Fri May 7 20:16:26 1999 From: Rob Funk <rfunk@wks.uts.ohio-state.edu> Subject: Re: [COLUG] The best OS for the job In-Reply-To: <199905060713.DAA20128@user2.infinet.com> from "Michael E. Havlicek" at "May 6, 99 03:13:15 am" To: havlicek@infinet.com, colug@bopper.wcbe.org Date: Thu, 6 May 1999 11:25:11 -0400 (EDT) Michael E. Havlicek wrote: >1)SSL webservices > >Using linux as a freeOS is the only solution I see at this point. > >Redhat provides a cheap linux Apache based server. How can I run >SSL with free BSD for commerce? Does RH provide source in that package? Even if not, my non-lawyer opinion is that if you buy that package you have a license to use RSA commercially, and can then compile it yourself using RSAREF. You'd have to check the license info in the RH package. FreeBSD will run Linux binaries, in case you need to run the binaries you buy from RH. Or you can talk to RSA (www.rsa.com) and/or Consensus (www.consensus.com) about getting a commercial license to use RSAREF or equivalent (maybe even use RSA's SSL implementation).... or just wait until the patent expires (20 Sept 2000). If it's not commercial, of course, you just link SSLeay/OpenSSL with RSAREF and you're fine. I think all the right code is in the FreeBSD ports colletion. >what about netbsd? It seems to concentrate on running on everything; its primary goal is portability. It's an excellent option, but I see it as more of a solution for machines that nothing else runs on, or for when you have many different architectures and want to run the same OS on all of them. http://www.netbsd.org/Goals/ What about OpenBSD? It spun off from NetBSD for political reasons, and the main thing it adds is more integrated security/crypto features; since it's centered in Canada instead of the US, they have more leeway on that stuff. I'm not sure, but I think they occasionally merge the current NetBSD into the current OpenBSD, or at least feel free to copy some of the code. http://www.openbsd.org/goals.html >Hey, what about real systems running the sybase server? FreeBSD will run Linux (and SCO?) binaries, just like Linux will run SCO binaries. I don't know what the performance implications are, if any. BTW, a lot of responses are arguing about which commercial OS is best for the high-end machines. I didn't mean to suggest that Solaris was necessarily always the best choice there, just the one I'd personally pick. I don't really want to get into arguing about the relative merits of different commercial OSs on high-end machines here.