[Tfug] BSD flavors

[Jude Nelson]

On 3/6/07, christopher floess <skeptikos at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think another thing that bsd advocates see as an advantage, is that
> freebsd is a centrally developed os while linux is just
> the kernel with an environment built around it, if someone can
> elaborate on this better, please do
> so, but I think I read somewhere that that translates into a more
> dependable environment, though some times it also means freebsd is slower
> to
> add support for new stuff. That's my two cents, hopefully I'm not way off
> :)


Here's how I understand it:

The BSD community makes use of highly centralized development practices.
BSD OS's are like small Linux distributions:  only a handful of people
maintain everything.  Also, each has its own Benevolent Dictator For Life (
a.k.a. the founder), who usually leads the kernel development team for that
BSD.  The BSDs are basically open source OS's with a management model
similar to proprietary OS's.  Their development cycles are slower, but their
releases have a slightly higher chance of not having bugs.  I don't see this
as an advantage; large distributions like Debian, OpenSUSE, Fedora, Red Hat,
and Ubuntu, for example, while they may on extremely rare occasion have a
broken package (i.e. Ubuntu had that X server crash bug a while back), the
development community is HUMONGOUS and quick to react.  Things may break
more easily in the Linux development community, but things also get fixed
way quicker than in the BSD community.  Also, the BSD community is usually
confined to the academic fields, particularly R&D.

At least, that's how I've come to know it.  Please correct me if I'm wrong