BSD stability and reliability vs Linux

[kratosgodofwar]

Hi everyone,

 

Why is BSD considered less stable and reliable than Linux distros like Debian? Is it because it’s BSD? But they’re both Unix? How could you test how reliable BSD is compared to Linux? If the same guy that created Linux made BSD shouldn’t they be equally as stable and reliable?

[Bombastinator]

22 minutes ago, kratosgodofwar said:

Hi everyone,

 

Why is BSD considered less stable and reliable than Linux distros like Debian? Is it because it’s BSD? But they’re both Unix? How could you test how reliable BSD is compared to Linux? If the same guy that created Linux made BSD shouldn’t they be equally as stable and reliable?

Linux is Unix-like but it is not Unix. It’s a hasty rework of minix which was sort of a rip of Unix.

 

history as I understand it:

BSD stands for Berkeley System Designs.  

Berkeley in this case is the university in the town of the name. 
Unix was owned by a company who was kind of cheap and liked free labor.  U Berkeley (I don’t remember which exactly.  Might have been u cal Berkeley. I’ve never been there) would do patches and updates for Unix because they used it and had a lot of bright people who could write code.  One day the University noticed it had actually patched and rewritten ALL of Unix.  All the code that made up the program was theirs.  They accidentally owned the thing. (Verrrry stupid of the company.  Greed will get you though) so what they did was release it under the BSD license which predates the GNU public license that Linux is released under.  It’s more open.  The owning company then came back with a gigantic lawsuit that lasted years.  The only reason Linux even got written was BSD was tied up in court and there was this OTHER corporate legal oopsie, this time on the part of the owners of minix, where if a person could write an OS based on minix in a tiny little window of a few weeks they could have a legal copy of minix.  There was this Scandinavian teenager named Linus Thorvalds that actually managed to do it.  So Linux exists.

[Sauron]

3 hours ago, kratosgodofwar said:

Why is BSD considered less stable and reliable than Linux distros like Debian?

It's not, at least not inherently.

3 hours ago, kratosgodofwar said:

But they’re both Unix?

Linux is not unix, it's unix-like. It doesn't share a single line of code with unix but it behaves in a similar way most of the time.

3 hours ago, kratosgodofwar said:

If the same guy that created Linux made BSD shouldn’t they be equally as stable and reliable?

Thousands of people work on Linux so it's not like you can attribute its quality entirely to Torvalds. On top of that distributions like Debian contain a lot more than just the Linux kernel.

 

Also the same people did not make both Linux and FreeBSD.

2 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

The only reason Linux even got written was BSD was tied up in court

Pretty sure it was originally written because Torvalds felt like writing his own kernel for fun. It gained interest because of the community driven nature it had from day one and because GNU was looking for a kernel with a GPL license since HURD was nowhere near ready (and it still isn't). Maybe if BSD hadn't been in a legal fight it would be more popular now but I wouldn't say it's the only reason for Linux' success.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

It's not, at least not inherently.

Linux is not unix, it's unix-like. It doesn't share a single line of code with unix but it behaves in a similar way most of the time.

Thousands of people work on Linux so it's not like you can attribute its quality entirely to Torvalds. On top of that distributions like Debian contain a lot more than just the Linux kernel.

 

Also the same people did not make both Linux and FreeBSD.

Pretty sure it was originally written because Torvalds felt like writing his own kernel for fun. It gained interest because of the community driven nature it had from day one and because GNU was looking for a kernel with a GPL license since HURD was nowhere near ready (and it still isn't). Maybe if BSD hadn't been in a legal fight it would be more popular now but I wouldn't say it's the only reason for Linux' success.

Your statement about the motivation of the writer is different from the way I heard it but it’s not impossible.  Minix was used as I understand it mostly as a training tool for students learning Unix systems at schools that couldn’t afford actual Unix systems because Unix was privately owned.  I was old minix was privately owned originally as well, it was merely more loosely held.  I don’t know.  The origins of minix and how it was licensed through its history may explain that one.  I was told minix was written as a work alike for Unix I’m much the same way as DOS was written as a work alike for the predominant 8 bit system at the time (whose name I am forgetting)   And based off in theory more than in practice another operating system that was never actually written that was an unchallenged patent infringement on that system.  An attack on the predominant microprocessor operating system of the time based on a legal loop hole.  The oopsie of minix involved the death throes of the original owning company.  It had not been a profitable system for many years.  In any case Linux became its own thing when Linus wrote it and resembles minix almost not at all now.

 

the history of free OSes and patent law is closely intertwined.  It led to changes in the way patents are filed, and the move to the filing of hundreds of patents at once.  This wasn’t done before DOS and BSD.

Edited May 3, 2020 by Bombastinator
Additional thoughts on patent law and DOS added

[Dutch_Master]

Minix3, the version Torvalds used honing his coding skills, still exists! https://www.minix3.org/

 

From my understanding Minix3 was written from scratch by a university professor to teach his students good coding practices (and Unix skills?). This was picked up by other teachers and thus came to the attention of Torvalds. As a proof-of-concept he wrote a replacement kernel for Minix3, which after some time was then picked up by some bearded guy with radical ideas on software, known by many by his initials: RMS, to be used in his new, free operating system. The rest, as we say, is history

[Bombastinator]

34 minutes ago, Dutch_Master said:

Minix3, the version Torvalds used honing his coding skills, still exists! https://www.minix3.org/

 

From my understanding Minix3 was written from scratch by a university professor to teach his students good coding practices (and Unix skills?). This was picked up by other teachers and thus came to the attention of Torvalds. As a proof-of-concept he wrote a replacement kernel for Minix3, which after some time was then picked up by some bearded guy with radical ideas on software, known by many by his initials: RMS, to be used in his new, free operating system. The rest, as we say, is history

This could be more accurate.  I looked at the “tell me more which had a short history blurb.  there appears to be a book involved again written in 1987.   Part of the issue with these and many similar things is how far back do you go?  “It all started when Johnny hit me back” is a perennial problem.  I don’t know if 1987 is the beginning of this one or not.  It is where things are picked up by the descriptor on the minix3 site. Unix is much much older than that, so it’s not impossible  it might.

 

I got my data from programmers that were BSD specialists working on a failed private version of   BSD now lost to the misted of time.  That version specializes in security.  There were others that specializes in compatibility.  It may have been open sourced and turned into one of the nameBSDs. There was freeBSD, netBSD, OpenBSD, OSX, and possibly one or more others.  The data I have predates OSX entirely.  Might have been some sour grapes there.  BSD was considered far far more stable than Linux for a long time partially because it had a lot of history which included all the work on UNIX done since the 1960’s.  I don’t know how true that still is.  Linux has recieve way more intense development than the nameBSDs for many years now.  These days BSDs survive partially because Apple uses it and releases stuff occasionally. OSX is a BSD.

Edited May 3, 2020 by Bombastinator