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  From: Damien Uern <carrigan_2606@optusnet.com.au>
  To  : linux SA <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 22:28:52 +0930

FreeBSD Core team interview

Hey,

A quote from an interview on OSnews with the FreeBSD core team:

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3415

"FreeBSD is a *system*, not a kernel with a bunch of other stuff thrown on top 
to make a "distro." The kernel, userland programs, libraries, booting system, 
etc., are all tested together to make a release that's known good. Our 
backwards compatibility has remained quite good as well; a number of 
commercial vendors have FreeBSD 3.x and even 2.x binaries they still sell 
today because they don't need to change the executables."

-- Wes Peters

This sums up my number 1 problem with Linux (backwards binary compatibility). 
I've only used FreeBSD briefly (I still have it installed, but don't boot it 
ever), but I *loved* the ports system and the compatibility layers. Even tiny 
upgrades in Linux (e.g. from Mandrake 9.0 to 9.1) break applications. And why 
does Glibc always have bugs and security holes and break backwards 
compatibility? When do you hear of BSD's libc having such problems?

Sorry I'm ranting...

I would like to see official binaries compiled by the people that make the 
project (e.g. kde.org binaries), distributed in a distribution independent 
packaging format. If people were attempting to use official binaries from the 
various open source projects, maybe, just maybe, we'd get closer to having 
cross distro compatibility. (Imagine running a kernel.org kernel binary! 
People would no doubt distribute pre-compiled drivers for such a kernel that 
could be downloaded separately).

Once autopackage (www.autopackage.org) becomes more stable, I might try my 
hand at packaging a few things.

Regards,

Damien

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