Trovalds' Latest Effusion

[dave_boo]

Topic Description was just an attempt to get all readers into the thread by highlighting one of the few items that Linus has said that is controversial. However, the majority of the latest salvo coming from him has to do with the two security camps; Full and immediate disclosure and the non-disclosure sit on a bug to where it is mostly irrelevant due to obscurity. He advocates taking a middle ground. Read all here.

[niller74]

Topic Description was just an attempt to get all readers into the thread by highlighting one of the few items that Linus has said that is controversial. However, the majority of the latest salvo coming from him has to do with the two security camps; Full and immediate disclosure and the non-disclosure sit on a bug to where it is mostly irrelevant due to obscurity. He advocates taking a middle ground. Read all here.

Torvalds should keep his mouth shut and work on the Kernel Project instead. He has been very damaging to the Linux project over the past years with several of these statements.

Linux has its advantages over BSD in certain areas, but actually if one of the major software houses would choose to release a BSD it would apply much more to the average user due to its simplicity and well tested core. Actually what many of the Linux dists are trying to do is mimic the way BSD release new versions, by freezing versions and only doing bug updates/fixes.

Linux is great for users that want to live on the edge and constantly have their software updates, it is however very few users that actually benefit from this and if you compare the time it takes to install vs. the added security/functionality it is extremely limited what you get from "being on the edge".

The BSD core is well tested and you wont experience the same incompatibility problems that you do in Linux. The major problem with the BSD projects are their lack of support and elitest user groups.

[niller74]

Hmm I think TV is having problems this morning. SUPER SLOW!!!

Double post ftw!! +1

Edited August 17, 2008 by niller74

[dave_boo]

Topic Description was just an attempt to get all readers into the thread by highlighting one of the few items that Linus has said that is controversial. However, the majority of the latest salvo coming from him has to do with the two security camps; Full and immediate disclosure and the non-disclosure sit on a bug to where it is mostly irrelevant due to obscurity. He advocates taking a middle ground. Read all here.

Torvalds should keep his mouth shut and work on the Kernel Project instead. He has been very damaging to the Linux project over the past years with several of these statements.

I disagree with that assertion. The Kernel Project IS Linux. Everything else is essentially built with GNU software. And since all of use Linuxers are taking advantage of his contributions, it doesn't hurt for us to listen to his thoughts. You just have to look around F/OSS to see a multitude of 'interesting' people. I.E.; Theo Van Raadt, Hans Reiser, Richard Stallman, et. al. Furthermore, as you stated later in your post there is a bit of a 'masturbating monkey' syndrom in OpenBSD. I mean, look at their website "Only two remote holes in the default install, in more than 10 years!" And yet they don't tell you the whole story. Like what actually is running on a default install. Or what needs to run to have a 'functioning' box, and the holes that software has (had). Furthermore, OpenBSD has been quite hypocritical with some of their decisions in the past. Like the whole cleansing of their ports in 2001 and leaving Netscape or Theo's public shaming of Adaptec (when he actually had a developer that was working on it!) and then later the crying about a Linux developer employing the same tactics (I kind of understand the rationale behind him doing it; OpenBSD set a precedent and the Linux developer thought that was the only thing they could understand) or their uproar when the Atheros (I believe) driver was submitted to the Linux tree as a patch. Now I don't know how BSD works, but when a patch is submitted, diff is ran. Obviously diff stripped away both liscenses and all of the older cruft. And yet when a closed source software uses OpenBSD's stuff and strips the liscense away permanently not a peep is heard.

Linux has its advantages over BSD in certain areas, but actually if one of the major software houses would choose to release a BSD it would apply much more to the average user due to its simplicity and well tested core. Actually what many of the Linux dists are trying to do is mimic the way BSD release new versions, by freezing versions and only doing bug updates/fixes.

There is at least Slackware that uses a well tested 'core'. And Debian stable. I'm sure there are others, but those are the two big ones that stick out in my mind. The biggest thing I have against "Stable" releases is that I'm not keeping hardware around long enough for them to be utilised correctly in older kernels/udev/etc. And while for some people that is acceptable, it's wholly unacceptable to me. I'll trade a bit of stability for support. And in the last 9 years I've seen ONE kernel panic. However, that was when I was brand new to Linux and tryed to compile my own kernel.

Linux is great for users that want to live on the edge and constantly have their software updates, it is however very few users that actually benefit from this and if you compare the time it takes to install vs. the added security/functionality it is extremely limited what you get from "being on the edge".

I don't know how long it takes to install a BSD, but most Linux distros install within 1/2 hour with a wealth of services enabled. Even booting up a net-install disk and installing over the veeery slow DSL lines in Samut Prakarn got me up with only the packages I needed in about 6 hours. I'm also interested in what added functionality BSD offers over Linux......are there more drivers that are more mature? Or are there more programs? Or what? Note; I'm not slamming BSD. I think that a wide variety of software should be available to the population. This ensures that everyone gets exactly what they need/want rather than a generic one size fits all.

The BSD core is well tested and you wont experience the same incompatibility problems that you do in Linux. The major problem with the BSD projects are their lack of support and elitest user groups.