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by dom0 3484 days ago
I feel X86BSD here, because Linux has a history of being different for the sake of being different. A relatively recent example could be getentropy (BSD) vs getrandom (Linux).

OTOH Linux has some extremely useful syscalls that others just don't have, sometimes causing major performance regressions. Case in point: sync_file_range.

But then Linux also has a history of screwing up and having a bunch of different syscalls on different platforms because somebody introducing a syscall didn't quite think it through. Case in point: sync_file_range. This "only" causes extra work for developers directly working with syscalls - so usually libc devs.
3 comments
AsyncAwait 3484 days ago
Linux is Linux.

BSD is BSD

Windows also has different sys calls than both Linux and BSD, that's because it's a different OS.

Yes, there's POSIX in there, but generally it is its own OS and you need to treat is as such, same as Windows really.

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raverbashing 3484 days ago
Yes, and this discussion makes perfect sense on user level code.

Yes, Linux, Mac OSX and BSDs have their differences.

But in the kernel, code is going to (or even has to) be less generic

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fithisux 3484 days ago
Not if you choose a uKernel design and para virtualize the legacy OSes.
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aseipp 3484 days ago
That's a nice computer science project but ultimately irrelevant in the context of kernel mode drivers, for like 99.99% of people who use Linux.

Not that tiny hypervisors and stuff aren't cool, though.

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dom0 3484 days ago
Indeed
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jordigh 3484 days ago
> because Linux has a history of being different for the sake of being different.

Heh.

I get the same feeling about git when I'm working with hg, the Canada[1] of git. For svn, darcs, bzr, and Mercurial, "revert" means to change the working directory to the repo state. Why did git use it to mean creating a new commit that undoes an old commit?

There's no use rallying against the majority software when it doesn't follow the standard. When you're the majority, you just get to make your own standards because you are the standard. BSD being the Canada of Linux, it's a little funny to hear them complaining about things that Linux does.

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[1] http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005497.h...

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