[obviouslygreen]

As a Debian user who started on Gentoo, I think the linked article was very interesting in terms of at least getting an idea of what the differences in design are.

I've never used a BSD or even looked into it... given what I read there, it seems like it'd be a lot nicer in at least one sense, since Debian releases die off and release-upgrade can be either perfect or very painful.

On the other hand, I do love how small and unassuming a basic Linux installation is, and -- as the author repeatedly and correctly stresses -- I'm used to doing things the way I currently do them. That's not good or bad, it's just momentum.

I do hope I'll get the chance to work with a BSD at some point, but much like my attempts to really get into Clojure... well, unlike the Stones, most of us do not have time on our side.

[imanaccount247]

>On the other hand, I do love how small and unassuming a basic Linux installation is

There is no "basic linux installation". Every distro is its own thing. Size seems like a really odd thing to bring up since every mainstream linux distro's "basic" installation is larger than the full OS of any of the four BSDs.

[tokenrove]

> Size seems like a really odd thing to bring up since every mainstream linux distro's "basic" installation is larger than the full OS of any of the four BSDs.

I don't think that's entirely true. The Debian install I do by default, with no tasksel tasks selected, is very minimal. I haven't checked recently how large it is (and one of the reasons I am considering moving away is that I suspect the minimal required system has been growing with the adoption of things like systemd), but I remember a few years ago noting that it was a fair bit smaller than a clean OpenBSD install. That's not including X and compilers IIRC.

Also, as I understand it, Arch Linux is becoming quite popular and it is also pretty spartan by default.

(Not that I think this really matters for most cases (embedded excepted); I would like to be able to uninstall tcsh, though.)

[obviouslygreen]

So your contention is that there is no basic installation... followed by the assertion that the basic installation, which does not exist, is larger than that of any BSD. Sorry, I'm going to have a hard time taking this seriously. And, frankly, your statement about the "full OS" is meaningless, as unless you consider the "full OS" to be only the base system, it includes every possible package, which very obviously is NOT going to be smaller than anything you could consider a basic Linux installation.

I meant small in terms of packages. The kernel, a shell, and not much else unless you specify it. Obviously you will specify something else, but the point was that I'm used to specifying exactly what else I want, so I have that habit to break/relearn.

The point you ignored or missed is that as a Linux user with no BSD exposure there's a basic difference in philosophy that creates several kinds of tradeoffs that I find compelling and interesting. I'm not "bringing up" anything in terms of absolute pros and cons, I'm highlighting what I consider noteworthy differences in terms of learning more about things I have not used.

[imanaccount247]

>Sorry, I'm going to have a hard time taking this seriously.

That will happen when you don't read it. Allow me to repeat it for you: 'There is no "basic linux installation"'. Linux is a kernel. There is no "basic linux installation". I do not know how it could possible be stated any clearer. Each individual distro is its own OS, which may or may not have a installation labelled "basic". Most of those are larger than any BSDs full OS. This is very simple.

>And, frankly, your statement about the "full OS" is meaningless

No it is not. You are awfully hostile for someone who just wants to learn. BSD operating systems are operating systems. The full OS means the full OS. Plain and simple. The lack of distinction between the OS and third party packages is unique to linux distros, where the OS itself consists almost entirely of third party packages in the first place. In BSD systems as in most systems, the operating system is everything included in the operating system, and third party software is third party software.

>it includes every possible package

This is one of the fundamental differences, which is why it seems to odd that you claim to be talking about the differences but you don't even know them.

>I meant small in terms of packages. The kernel, a shell, and not much else unless you specify it.

There is no mainstream linux distro where that is the case. Only specialized micro distros intended for embedded use and based on busybox provide anything like that. Debian, ubuntu, fedora, etc all have a few hundred MB more stuff in their minimal installation.

>but the point was that I'm used to specifying exactly what else I want

It is unreasonable to expect me to understand that was your point when you said something completely different. Nonetheless, you do not get that unless you are doing a custom LFS.

>The point you ignored or missed is that as a Linux user with no BSD exposure there's a basic difference in philosophy

No, that's the point you missed and instead talked about being minimal.

>I'm not "bringing up" anything in terms of absolute pros and cons

Saying "I love thing that is my own misunderstanding" implies that the other option lacks that thing. That's what pros and cons are all about.

[justincormack]

There is a huge amount more than a kernel and a shell in a Linux distro. There is of course a package manager, which is usually written in python. There are all the utils to configure hardware and file systems (mkfs, mount, raid, ip, etc). The minimal Ubuntu is 63MB compressed[1], although it is not strictly comparable with a BSD base, as the BSDs include compilers in the base system.

[1] http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2014/08/re-introducing-jeos-j...

[obviouslygreen]

Yeah... poorly phrased. I understand that there's more than a kernel and a shell; I started with Gentoo and worked quite a bit with RedHat/CentOS/Fedora before moving to Ubuntu and then to Debian.

The point was that what you get without selecting or installing anything else via a package manager is still apparently far less than what you get with a "base install" from a BSD (at least according to the article) and that that starting point is what I'm used to.

[justincormack]

Gentoo is probably the most similar, as it has enough to bootstrap the system in the base (stage3), which is not surprising as it was modelled on BSD ports to a large extent. Although the BSDs will also include a debugger too. Linuxes generally got pretty hard to bootstrap reliably though, nad had binary packages earlier, which was where things diverged in base systems.

NetBSD takes bootstrapping most seriously - you can cross build it on any system with a vaguely functional C compiler, and it will bootstrap completely.

[jvdh]

> release-upgrade can be either perfect or very painful.

This seems to be in the nature of the task. Freebsd-update is also often perfect, but if it goes wrong it can be very painful as well.

On the other hand, you do have a rollback feature, but then you're back to a probably working, outdated system.