Linux Vs. FreeBSD 399

Could you have possibly picked more of a flamebait topic and Subject header, Dave? (Oh well. I like FreeBSD very much, by the way. To answer your question about whether OS X proves BSD's a "viable desktop platform": No, but PC-BSD and FreeSBIE do.)

This begs the question of why you feel you would be obliged to compile binaries locally (as opposed to choosing to do so).

Frankly, realistically speaking, you're talking proprietary-software companies' OS wishlists. About which they care, but many of the rest of us really don't.

And, by the way, not that I personally care, but running binaries from one distribution on another is just a matter of satisfying their dependencies, so your original claim isn't true, either.

Also, a few minutes' contemplation will reveal benefits from open source (or, for that matter, proprietary licensing with source code access) irrespective of whether you personal can program.

No thanks.

OK, you're wrong.

Each distro necessarily maintains a minor, periodic fork in order to comply with distro-specific build policies, etc. Which in no way prevents running each others' binaries, if you actually care.

(-me has gone through the exercise of running Oracle RDBMS on non-certified distributions, which is an edge case, recommended only for the curious, and yet feasible.)

-- Cheers, Rick Moen "vi is my shepherd; I shall not font."