This is sort of a rant.

I don't understand why certain things, things that to me that are a little bit illogical become so popular.

For example. You have a college kid that hacks the core of a new OS called linux. OK that's a cool and good thing. Three cheers and all of that. Other people get on board and it goes beyond a simple college endeavor to become an OS with multiple flavors. My question here is why not BSD? It's been around longer, is more stable, has longevity, (I believe Yahoo uses it) It does not make any sense to me why BSD is not more popular.

If someone actually knows why linux is better than BSD I'd like to know. Please try to explain it using OS Internals rather than some "religious" following or fondness


Next, you have the browser wars. I long for the day when they are over. Much like those people in Star Wars longed for the day when the 'clone' wars were over.

There are only a handful of people on this planet that can honestly say that they experienced a time when there were no browser wars. Way back when Tim Berners-Lee created and programmed what we now know as the world wide web, he developed the very FIRST Browser on a NeXT machine. For a brief period of time it was the ONLY browswer in existence. I was fortunate enough to have been working in a shop that was a huge NeXT installation. We got the browser weeks/days after it was unleashed. This is circa 1990, 1991.

Now enter the W3C - The World Wide Web Consortium a group devoted to STANDARDS. Web developers should not have to write HTML, or JAVA, or Java SCRIPT or any kind of code that says if we have this browser we need to do this and if we have this browser we need to do that .. ad nauseum.

I say if a browser can not conform to the standards then it needs to die. Does Netscape still have its cheezy 256 color limitation? Full 24 bit color was introduced in NeXT's circa '92 - '93

I've been using Browers since 1991. I've used at the very least 14 different ones. Including Mozilla and Firefox. Today, IMHO, Opera is the best browser on this planet bar none. I've been using it for a long time and I still only know about 30% of all the features. Firefox is a good browser, but why did it get so much attention.

I have many more, but i'll leave it with just these questions.

Many regards,
wizbang

First, it's pretty useless to hack the core of Linux... because it's open source, everyone that knows a thing or two about programming can simply read the entire core and edit it to it's needs.
The difference between BSD and Linux I believe is getting very small... BSD is running almost a similar kernel.. at least if I look at kernel.org (I might be wrong)
The reason Linux is gaining popularity faster than let's say BSD is because Microsoft is worrying their heads over Linux, and show it, so that makes a bit into the computerworld ppl wonder what the fuzz is all about. Microsoft never talks about BSD! Further, Linux is promoted more, in media and by fans.




Same goes here for Firefox, it gets publicity and fans, because it's very adjustable to needs because of the extension system, which makes also the basic browser very small, which makes it very handy for older computers, it's not a big core that needs to be loaded before one can surf the web.
Besides that, IMHO it's kinda becoming a developers standard for designing and creating websites, because if it works under firefox, it almost always will work under IE.

Also, firefox is a development from the original Mozilla browser, which is around already for a long time, and the Mozilla foundation is pretty well known about their fast and secure way of working (see firefox version, already 1.0.4 since 1.0 in October iirc, so, many security issues are fixed fast).

That's the best I can say about it... hope it answers a bit

I think it is a matter of advertising. Linux gets more advertising than BSD.
When it comes to firefox, some people still find that if you install mozilla ( browser only ) is still faster than firefox on some platforms than Linux, but we all prefer firefox to the mozilla suite because of the attenion firefox gets in tech site and downlaod sites.

Mozilla site has always been there but it never got good advdertising. Firefox did and people chose to make it a big hit, mainly because the competition ( internet explorer ) hasn't released a new version since summer 2001. Once IE7 is released with improved security, a lot of people will switch back to it. Once again IE7 will become the new hip browser.

i hear more talk bout Linux and Firefox. That the main reaosn more people use it. Its cuz they hear about it and even if they dont know what it is they google it and download it to try it out.