From: rmk@rmkhome.UUCP (Rick Kelly)
Organization: The Man With Ten Cats
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1992 07:40:00 GMT
Reply-To: rmk@rmkhome.UUCP (Rick Kelly)

In article <BALASUB.92Oct3062603@organ.cis.ohio-state.edu> balasub@organ.cis.ohio-state.edu (Krishna Balasubramanian) writes:
>>>In article <9210010028.47@rmkhome.UUCP> rmk@rmkhome.UUCP (Rick Kelly) writes:
>>>>Coherent is a better choice for someone who doesn't want to recompile the
>>>>kernel, the compiler, and every command in the system once a week.
>>>
>>>Pshaw.  This is a ridiculous exaggeration and simply not true.
>
>>Comp.os.linux can give someone that impression.  Every time gcc gets 
>>upgraded, certain things seem to stop working.  Although it doesn't 
>>seem to be as bad now as a few months ago.
>
>Now the shared libraries use jump tables so binaries work with
>new versions. 

Yes, I know that, but this is recent.

>>A friend of mine was running 0.12.  It seemed to run pretty well.  But
>>he was never able to get X working.  I posted to the net with specific
>>questions that included the type of video card nd monitor that he was
>>using.  The email responses were mostly, "if you figure it out will
>>you email me?".  We gave up after a week.  And both of us have set up
>>X on commercial UNIX boxes.
>
>As I recall X11 support came in after linux-0.95 so it wasn't too
>likely it would work with linux-0.12.

You're probably right.  We ran both 0.12 and 0.95.  He downloaded Linux
and X from TSX at the same time.

NOTE:  I have followed Linux since it was only a mail list in the fall
of 1991, and have read both alt.os.linux and comp.os.linux regularly.

>>He tried to upgrade gcc, but he couldn't get it to compile itself.  The
>>doc files that he had were sparsely written, and seemed to contain a lot
>>of conflicting information.  And at that time the Linux FTP sites appeared
>>to have wildly different revisions of software.
>
>GCC has been distributed in binary form since 0.95  so I
>believe your info is somewhat out of date (by 5 months or so, 
>which is significant as linux has been around just twice as long?)
>The GCC docs have been a subject of criticism and have been updated.

His point was that he felt that he should be able to upgrade the system
components by getting them and compiling them.  His worry was that if he
couldn't reliably recompile gcc, then how could he expect to recompile
the kernel.

And the main problem was missing or misplaced include files.

>>He finally gave up, and he is now running OS/2.
>
>>I like Linux, and I will probably set up a 386SX machine so that I can
>>fool around with Linux and 386BSD.  I have more experience than he does
>>with porting software, and debugging other peoples sources, and I will
>>probably get things up and running in a reasonable time frame.
>
>Perhaps if you gave this machine 640K  RAM and a 5 Meg HD you will
>be able to conclude that neither OS worked -- ouch :-).

Well, his machine was a 386/33 with 300 megs of disk space and 6 megs of
ram.

I'm not saying that one OS is better than the other.  Go and read comp.os.linux
with the mindset that you have never heard of Linux before.  And perhaps you
will begin to see all the hardware/software conflicts that people are having
out there.  The same goes for 386 BSD.

Also, note how many people are actually posting news from a Linux system.

-- 

Rick Kelly	rmk@rmkhome.UUCP	unixland!rmkhome!rmk	rmk@frog.UUCP