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发信人: linuxrat (叫我老鼠错不了), 信区: Linux
标 题: PC Magazine:BeOS vs. Linux? No Such Fight[Fwd]
发信站: BBS 水木清华站 (Thu Dec 30 18:49:56 1999)
GNU/Linux和BeOS有矛盾么? 看看下面的文章, 然后在看看读者的评论.
有兴趣您也来参与评论吧. 呵呵...
===============Begin of post===================
BeOS vs. Linux? No Such Fight
By Scot Hacker, PC Magazine
December 8, 1998
My appreciation goes out to Cal Godot and Chris Herborth for their
invaluable feedback on this journal entry and its accompanying chart.
People seeking a serious alternative to the Microsoft and Apple
juggernauts may become easily overwhelmed by the sheer number of
choices they face. The OS Wizard in System Commander lists 31 -- yes,
31! -- different operating systems that run on x86 hardware (though
many of these are subtle variations and versions, leaving around 20
truly distinct choices). If you're willing to buy a dedicated Apple
machine or wait for MacOS X, you can add MacOS to the list, and there
are several barely known alternatives that aren't included in System
Commander's Wizard.
Of course, it's craziness to even consider installing that many OSes
on a single machine (though System Commander can handle it if you're
feeling a little nutty and have gobs of disk space to spare). But most
people looking to get OS Religion aren't crazy -- they're casting
about for serious alternatives to the status quo for reasons I've
discussed at length in previous Journal entries. Of those 20+
operating systems, only a few emerge as real contenders for most
users, and from that handful of options, only two emerge as
powerhouses in today's computing climate. I'm talking about genuine,
realistic alternatives capable of handling a broad array of tasks for
a broad array of users with the usual criteria: speed, efficiency,
stability, customizability, a good upgrade path toward the future, a
wide application base, a good support network, and a substantial array
of supported hardware. The two systems I'm referring to are Linux and
BeOS. Neither of them fulfill all of these criteria 100%, but they
come darn close in various ways, so I want to spend a little time this
month exploring their similarities and differences.
Please don't get your underwear in a bunch if I don't consider your
favorite OS a serious contender for new users of alternative OSes. I'm
talking here about mass-scale, well-rounded, technologically
sophisticated systems with a real chance of making a difference in the
OS world, and while OS/2 or AmigaOS or Solaris (or whatever) may all
be exceptional in their own rights, they don't represent the best
possible alternatives for new OS users in 1998.
BeOS and Linux aren't at war. In fact, they complement one another
very nicely. These systems have evolved under very different
circumstances, to meet very different needs. BeOS and Linux users
share a common desire to see healthy alternatives flourish, and to see
excellent technologies take root where the mainstream has failed to
deliver. At the same time, the cultures surrounding them have
fundamental differences. For the new user considering a plunge into
alternative operating system space, I've summarized some of the major
similarities and differences between BeOS and Linux culture and
technology. A BeOS vs. Linux technology comparison chart can be found
here.
Similarities
While both systems include a Unix-based command line shell, Linux
users tend to be more avid hackers than BeOS users, while BeOS
attracts a greater cross-section of the creativity / multimedia market
(though both system attract geekier users than the mainstream OSes).
At the same time, both systems are becoming easier to install, use,
and configure with every passing release, making them progressively
more attractive to mainstream consumers.
Both BeOS and Linux are struggling for the recognition they deserve in
what often appears to be a deaf and blind computer industry. Both BeOS
and Linux are more efficient than the mainstream offerings, extracting
far more performance from far less hardware than do Windows or MacOS.
Both systems include technological offerings Windows and MacOS can
only dream about, and users of both systems pride themselves on doing
things right. Kludges and workarounds to compensate for the burden of
the past are not welcome in either camp (though Linux bears more
legacy weight than BeOS because of its heritage -- Linux began life as
a simple port of an ancient operating system, while BeOS was written
from scratch to take advantage of a high-bandwidth multimedia future).
Both systems are POSIX-compliant (POSIX in BeOS is currently
incomplete in a few areas and thus does not bear the official POSIX
compliance stamp). Both systems enjoy the many fruits of the open
software model, although in Linux' case this fact extends to the
operating system itself, whereas BeOS is a proprietary system that can
easily run recompiled open source software. Unlike on MacOS and
Windows, many BeOS and Linux programs are distributed along with
source code and an invitation to users to improve and redistribute the
software. A compiler and development environment is included with
every copy of BeOS, and is considered standard fare in Linux
distributions.
Differences
Linux has been employed in the public sector for quite a few more
years than BeOS, and has sheer numbers on its side. Thousands of
programmers have contributed to the collective Linux code base, and as
a result, Linux has a huge wealth of mature applications and hardware
support that BeOS does not yet enjoy. Be is no longer a snot-nosed
startup, but neither is it a huge, entrenched, disconnected company
like Microsoft, Apple, or IBM. Be currently has around 70 employees,
but labored behind locked doors as a much smaller team for half of its
life. Both hardware and application support are huge priorities for
Be, but these things take time no matter who you are. Still, Be has
already managed to build support for an impressive array of the most
common PC hardware, and new BeOS applications and utilities emerge
daily.
There are advantages and disadvantages to having a parent company
running the show (BeOS is created and owned by Be, Inc.; Linux is
created by the people, for the people). For one, a parent company
guarantees a consistency of interface and API that's difficult if not
impossible to match when thousands of people are trying to reach
consensus (or worse, all doing things differently), as often happens
in the Linux world. And while support has never been a problem in the
Linux space, CEOs tend to perceive a problem with Linux support; an
illusion with which Be won't have to grapple. Many Linux users
appreciate their lack of corporate infrastructure -- they know their
system isn't subject to the whims of the market, nor can it be
affected by unfortunate managerial decisions. On the other hand, BeOS
users have a single, unified point of contact, an official vision from
a single entity. The corporate structure puts all the vision under one
roof. It may not be democratic, but it's clean and efficient.
In terms of audience, Be decisively targets the media creator and
consumer (an increasingly large and important part of daily computing
life), while Linux largely inherits Unix' role as a high-powered
programming, data-crunching, and serving platform. Many Linux users
thrive on the chaotic nature of their platform, and the Linux culture
in general often bristles with revolutionary fervor (though there are
office secretaries out there using Linux too!). Many BeOS users are
adamantly anti-Microsoft, but far fewer are anti-corporation. Most are
simply excited by BeOS' amazing technology. While many Linux users
want to destroy Redmond, Be's strategy is one of peaceful coexistence;
Be knows that users have a need for multiple operating systems on
their hard drives, and have no interest in "mooning the ogre," as
Jean-Louis puts it.
Speaking of technology, BeOS and Linux are fundamentally different in
inception and execution. Linux boots to the command line, and the
optional GUI is bolted on top, while BeOS can only be booted into the
GUI -- its bash command line is run from the integrated Terminal
application. BeOS is known for incredibly fast boot and application
launch speeds: the machine I'm writing on boots BeOS in eight seconds,
Linux in 70 seconds. Similarly, no BeOS application takes longer than
two seconds to launch on this machine; not so for Linux. On the other
hand, the fact that Linux can be hacked and modified to suit the needs
of a particular situation is one of the reasons why ISPs choose Linux
more than any other single OS. Linux is a fine-tuned network serving
system, while BeOS is a fine-tuned desktop and workstation OS.
Technologically and operationally, BeOS and Linux are different enough
to make comparisons almost pointless.
In the realm of hard-core networking, Linux wins hands-down and
probably will continue to do so for some time to come -- the finely
tuned Apache Web Server still powers the majority of the world's Web
sites. On the other hand, setting up and working with BeOS networking
is leagues more intuitive than it is under Linux. BeOS includes a
bundled personal Web server (called PoorMan) capable of dishing up
low-to-medium traffic sites, while RedHat Linux comes with the
industrial-strength Apache. Be will continue to advance its networking
capabilities, but they won't prioritize it as Linux devotees have.
Instead of trying to fight well-established markets, Be puts their
energies where they can win -- on high-demand multimedia and radical
multitasking. By doing so, Be has created a system that stays
responsive under multitasking loads that would crumble other OSes.
Under no other operating system can you launch eight QuickTime movies
simultaneously, then going to read your e-mail, format a floppy, and
decompress a zipped backup all at once and have the system still
respond to your next mouse click with little delay.
Installation and configuration is another arena of difference. It's
not uncommon for people to start with a Windows-only system,
repartition their hard disk, install BeOS, and be using it for the
first time in 15 minutes flat. Linux installation has made great leaps
recently, but even RedHat 5 (widely considered the easiest Linux
installation available) took me far longer than that to get up and
running, and required more consultation of documentation. 99% of BeOS
behaviors and preferences are tweaked via user-friendly GUI applets,
while Linux still requires many behaviors to be configured via
hand-edited text files.
The most important difference, though, is the potential that BeOS has
to offer as a result of its "fresh start" approach. Linux is awesome
in many ways, but no matter how you slice it, it's still basically an
evolved port of a 20+ year-old operating system, and with that age
comes a certain amount of baggage. Linux may be far more efficient
than Windows, but it still carries the past on its shoulders, and
(more importantly) lacks many of the futuristic technologies built
into BeOS from the start. For example, the ease and elegance of
data-sharing between BeOS applications via BMessages, the built-in
scriptability of all BeOS applications, the ability of the system to
take maximum advantage of any number of CPUs without developers having
to specifically code in multi-proc support, the extensibility of the
entire operating system via plug-ins ("known as Add-Ons")... I could
go on, but you should read Be's whitepaper, The MediaOS to learn more.
All of BeOS's amazing technology comes at a price though -- Be has to
cut a swath through the jungle of an entrenched industry, develop an
installed base of users, support the hardware out there, and make it
as easy and fruitful as possible for developers to make a living
writing BeOS software -- all things that Linux already has under its
belt.
Common Ground
If the point isn't clear as glass by now, I'll say it outright: BeOS
and Linux complement one another, and make for great kissin' cousins
on any hard drive. Both seem to pick up nicely where the other leaves
off. The days of thinking "one computer, one operating system" are
over, and ecosystems thrive best under biologically diverse
conditions. Linux is more mature, has more applications (right now),
and supports more hardware. BeOS is lighter on its feet, has way more
exciting technology, offers a far more pleasant "out of box"
experience, and is supported by a company with an infrastructure as
logical and lightweight as the operating system they build.
You want my honest personal opinion? (As if you didn't already know).
I enjoy using BeOS a lot more than Linux, even though there's still
wet cement in some places. At the same time, I'd run my Web sites from
a Linux server before I'd run them from a BeOS machine at this point
in the game. Linux is a Land Rover and BeOS is a Maserati. The cool
thing is, with Linux being free (though installation CDs and manuals
with enhanced distributions run around $30) and BeOS still $69, just
about anyone can afford to run both for about the same cost as a
single Windows 98 upgrade (while NT Workstation runs around $319).
Want to compare these cousins at a glance? I've constructed a BeOS /
Linux technology comparison chart for quick reference.
Random Notes
* Version 3.1 of BeOS was released last month and provides broader
hardware support, the first appearance of a serial port
preferences application, and an experimental graphics acceleration
tool for Pentium Pro and Pentium II machines. See PC Magazine's
review.
* A benefactor has emerged from the shadows to assist BeOS
developers in bringing their applications to maturity with a BeOS
venture capital fund. See the BeFund's first newsletter.
* Two of the best BeOS news sites have merged into a single
powerhouse -- BeOS Central and Believe are now one entity, called
BeOS Central. BeLeadingEdge and BeForever continue to thrive.
* BeTrieve now provides an alternate download source for BeOS
applications and software.
* Software, software, software. See Be's BeWare section to browse
the collection of available applications.
===================End of post, and.....readers' stuff==================
_________________________________________________________________
Comments from Readers:
Andy Tai - Subject: Author is biased toward BeOS (1998-12-08 19:29:47)
The author is clearly pro-BeOS. The article can be written as a
comparsion between BeOS and any Unix-like OS.
But no matter, since Linux is Free Software/Open Source, any features
of BeOs that are good can be cloned. Only a matter of time.
Chris - Subject: He is biased, but BeOS is nice :) (1998-12-08
22:56:53)
Yes, the article is obviously biased. (aren't all articles biased?) If
you read the comparision chart, the wording is rather skewed as well.
But, personally, I'd still rather use BeOS as my workstation and my
Linux box as the server. BeOS is a very nice OS.
Chris
Zygo Blaxell - Subject: Author is an OS pundit wannabe (1998-12-09
13:41:18)
"Under no other operating system
can you launch eight QuickTime movies
simultaneously, then going to read your e-mail,
format a floppy, and decompress a zipped backup all
at once and have the system still respond to your next
mouse click with little delay."
That sounded like a challenge.
(typing noises..."6...7...8...OK, now email...hmmm...does a cpio.gz
backup count?...OK...darn, where'd I leave the floppies?")
OK, guessed I proved that statement wrong. Granted, the quicktime
movie I'm watching 8 times is less than 20 megabytes, so it fits in
RAM. If I had to wait for my IDE drive to fetch 8 different movies
totalling more than my total RAM then I'd have problems under any OS.
Formatting a floppy and checking email are trivial; moving my mouse
around and typing uses more CPU time. Unzipping a backup is pretty
nasty although most of the problem is disk I/O.
Actually if BeOS has better disk scheduling and buffering than Linux
(which isn't very hard as Linux's filesystems are very much on the
"dumb" end of the scale) then it probably does the job better. But
it's not true that Linux can't do the job at all.
Some of the claims are pretty funny, like "maximum advantage of any
number of CPU's without developers having to specifically code in
multi-proc support." You need developer cooperation to take maximum
advantage of multiple CPU's. A certain amount of automation makes
multiple-CPU designs easier, but most of that automation happens in
the compiler and libraries (if not the programming language itself),
not at the OS level. The stuff at the OS level is probably quite
similar between BeOS and Linux. But then again maybe that was the
original author's point: BeOS comes with better libraries and
development tools for multiprocessing. It's important to be clear on
this so that we can write it up on the OSS To-Do list. ;-)
BMessages and built-in scriptability? Uhhh, like OLE/Gnome/KDE, or
even Tcl/Tk? (OK, they might be more "elegant"). I'm not even going to
say the words "Bourne Shell"...D'oh!
These are not things that should be tied to an OS. Linux, Windows, and
BeOS are capable of implementing this kind of functionality in user
space, given a nice abstracting library and adequate shared memory
support.
"The days of thinking "one computer, one operating
system" are over"...uhhh...gee, I was kind of hoping the days of
thinking "I might have to reboot this machine for reasons other than
hardware changes or power failure" were over. I don't want multiple
OSes on one machine. I don't even want a single OS on one machine. As
a consumer (i.e. not doing my paying software development job, but
simply buying consumer electronics and using them) I want lots of
cheap little machines doing cheap little tasks, and I don't care if
they're all running one OS each or one OS for all of them as long as
they work and as long as they are extensible through addition of
third-party software. Argh...I think I just said I wanted Java.
Zygo Blaxell - Subject: And now that I've read the comparison chart...
(1998-12-09 13:41:18)
This is a significant beef with me: Perceived installation complexity
on supported hardware.
In the past year I've installed and configured five Linux servers (two
at work, two at home, one owned by colleagues). In each case the
installation process was: insert CD, power on, accept default
settings, wait for colorful bar graphs to go by, remove CD, reboot.
Heck, I was able to network-boot a Sparcstation running Linux/sparc
without much trouble (assuming you know how to network-boot a
Sparcstation in the first place, which can be _heavily_ geekish,
installing Linux instead of Solaris is a simple matter of substituting
CD's on the network server).
I've also attempted to install Solaris and QNX on a i386 machine using
my choice of partitioning. In one case it was necessary to move the
CD-ROM drive to a different IDE interface, while the other case
required changing the partition table in a very inconvenient way. Both
of these OS's are no-brainers to install on blank hard disks but
trying to install on an existing system is a nightmare.
Be might have this sort of thing down to a fine art, but Linux is a
close second.
Is Linux actually POSIX-certified now? I thought it was still trying
to get certification but didn't have it yet. Or am I thinking of
Caldera's X/Open Unix certification?
I wouldn't say porting BeOS is easier than porting Linux to new CPU
architectures until I had done both. Porting an OS to a different CPU
architecture means rewriting basic memory management and IRQ stuff,
device drivers, any code with register-size and byte-sex issues, and
any assembly language in your run-time libraries. This takes
person-*years* of time for an OS and enough tools to develop
applications.
I'd like to see if POSIX-compliant programs can "take full advantage
of any number of processors automatically," or only BeOS-specific
ones.
=================== End of readers' comments=====================
Then what's your comment? Come on to tell it on SMTH/Linux....:)
--
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| 以无法为有法 ， | 拳本无法，有法也空； | 我爱GNU/Linux, |
| 以无限为有限 | 一法不立，无法不容。| 因为我爱自由！ |
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| 截拳道宗师-李小龙 | 意拳宗师-王芗斋 | 土人 Linuxrat |
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