[PLUG] Anyone using / can advise on FreeBSD/NetBSD?

[Mayuresh]

On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 07:14:02AM +0530, Amarendra Godbole wrote:
> What good is efficiency when it sacrifices stability and reliability?
> I find Linux code to be bloated, untested, and added at whim of a
> developer or two who has/have clout. All Linux h/w drivers are
> typically "blobs" - written by the device manufacturer, and used
> "as-is". I doubt if a serious scrutiny of these happens, since Linux
> requires to support all known h/w to mankind in its race to world
> domination.
> 
> Please note this is not a Linux bashing thread on a Linux group -- I
> am merely pointing out technical de-merits of Linux in comparison to
> BSD.
> 
> -Amarendra

Ever since I started getting into BSDs this question is really haunting
me.

Agree, BSD development is much cleaner and Linux lacks same amount of
control - as someone's blog says, the latter follows chaos model. (It is a
well meaned remark about Linux development model.)

Why does chaos win over discipline in many aspects? Does it have to do
more with wider use than with development model? (Of course don't drag
closed source systems in this comparison. They can continue to be lousy
despite much wider use.)

The question haunts me because I'm certainly a fan of clean development
approaches.

Is "let me get it out first and get a user. Let it stabilize with usage"
philosophy winning users fast which in turn is leading to stability as
against "let me get it right and not worry about winning a user"?

Regarding whether it is at the cost of stability and reliability. Again, I
want to emphasize that I am seeing things from a personal desktop point of
view and not any industrial application or server point of view where the
criterion could be different. To this extent Linux has never let me down
in stability and reliability - not at least post 2.6.x.

Coming to why Linux might have performed better in certain tests (an
argument I'd not like to generalize), there could be some choices
responsible. One example is, try "time" command on Linux and BSD both. BSD
gathers a lot more information about the process than Linux does.
Obviously it's a delight to get that detailed information if you were
indeed interested in it. If you weren't, that's an unnecessary cost.

Of course, I'm not attributing all the efficiency difference to the above.
Basically I don't know all the factors.

Mayuresh.