Re: misc

[Jeff Licquia <jeff@luci.org>]

On Sat, Jul 15, 2000 at 11:41:31PM -0400, Jordan Bettis wrote:
> Another thing about BSD, I have no doubts in it from a technical
> standpoint, but the people who use it can bext be described as the most
> amazing collection of assholes and jerks I have ever seen. I am
> overgeneralizing here, but they claim to hate anything GNU or Linux, to 
> the exclusion of everything else. I've discovered that if there is a Linux
> vs. Windows (or anything else) flame war, there is about a 100% that the
> strongest supporters of the non Linux describe themselves as BSD users (of
> course, nobody can figure out exactly what that means as they all use
> Windows on their desktop (my favorite is the guy on this BBS who attacked
> Linux and me every chance he got until I noticed that his login shell was
> bash)). Anyhow, I have to wonder if the very anti-community stance of BSD
> is why Linux is so popular today, and not stuff like 386BSD. 

The BSDs have a provenance older than Linux.  Of course, BSD came from
the Berkeley/Bill Joy pre-Sun days.  4.4BSD was supposed to be the
first non-AT&T-encumbered version, and I knew of the Jolitz project
(which created 386BSD, the precursor of all the modern BSDs) back in
1991.

IMHO, the sole failing of the BSDs is their lack of a Linus.  Since no
one really leads the group, personality conflicts lead to splits.  In
the early days, BSD kicked Linux's butt in many technical ways; today,
the gap is much closer (although it seems there are still some areas
where BSD has an edge).  The problem is that today Linux is a better
general-purpose OS; while each BSD has certain advantages, Linux is
better if you want close to the best in more than one category.

Can you imagine a unified BSD with the performance of FreeBSD, the
portability of NetBSD, and the security of OpenBSD?

> Does anyone here know of a good compiler book? I have heard good thing
> from one person on IRC about a book about compilers, appearintl, it takes
> one through the writing of a C compiler. This is exactly what I'm looking
> for, but he can not positively identify the book. Has anyone read anything
> along those lines? He thinks the title of the book might have been
> _Compiler_Design_. Such a book does exist, but it  is a collage text
> book. Text books are expensive and, generally as a rule, suck, so I am a
> bit wary of buying it. Has anyone read this book, and, if so, what's your
> take on it? 

Sorry, but nope.
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