[geeks] Why Linux and not *BSD?

[Joshua Boyd]

On Tue, Aug 02, 2005 at 04:19:13PM -0400, kurt at k-huhn.com wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 02, 2005 at 03:43:50PM -0400, nate at portents.com wrote:
> > Hopefully folks here can shed some light on something I've been wondering
> > for a while... why do so many companies choose Linux instead of *BSD for
> > their OS (especially if it's embedded)?  What's coming to my mind is
> > PalmOne (the next version of PalmOS is going to be Linux based), Sharp
> > Zaurus SL-5000 and SL-6000 series, TiVo, PlayStation 2 consumer dev kit,
> > and even obscure projects like the Qonos scientific PDA:
> 
> The stunningly simple answer is "marketing".  Use of the word "linux" in
> press releases, marketing material, and product announcements is practically
> guaranteed to get you widespread market exposure.  Thes days, "linux" is a
> well recognized buzzword, and it's being exploited to the fullest extent.  It
> matters little what the best technology actually is, companies are designing
> their products around marketability, and using linux makes it very easy to
> promote their products to an incredibly wide audience.  Marketing types don't
> know WTF a *BSD is, never mind what it does or why it does it.  But they all
> know "linux" and they lean on other management to direct their minions to
> develop using it.

Also, sometimes linux may really be more appropriate.  I can't imagine
that is relevent for routing widgets like the linksys appliances, but
currently it seems that linux is better for audio, video, and general
multimedia than the BSDs are.
 
> People have incredibly short attention spans, do not care to know about the
> wide breadth of OSs out there, and don't give a narrow, pink, lab rat's
> behind what they could learn.  The marketeers know this, and so do the
> "journalists" that write these articles.

Bah.  Just leaves the rest of us a secret weapon for getting the job
done.  I know I've used NetBSD to pinch hit some problems at work.  

Of course, NetBSD could be just as good if the audio/video/embedded
people hadn't jumped on Linux instead (which I seem to recall sucking
very badly in the 2.2 days, and taking a lot of work to make decent in
the 2.4 days).

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd
jdboyd at jdboyd.net
http://www.jdboyd.net/
http://www.joshuaboyd.org/