*BSD News Article 11651


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From: helz@ecn.purdue.edu (Randall A Helzerman)
Subject: Re: 386BSD vs BSDI 
Message-ID: <1993Feb22.020449.20823@noose.ecn.purdue.edu>
Sender: news@noose.ecn.purdue.edu (USENET news)
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network
References:  <BRISTER.93Feb20214032@netcom.Netcom.COM>
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1993 02:04:49 GMT
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In article <BRISTER.93Feb20214032@netcom.Netcom.COM>, brister@Netcom.COM (james brister) writes:
|> What's the difference between the OS put out by BSDI that runs on a 386 and
|> the 386BSD put out by WJ?

We just tried to port a major piece of software over to Linux, 386BSD, and BSDI.

We could only get it to work on BSDI.  For the price, BSDI is a major bargain
and well worth the headaches we could have avoided by just going with it first.

|> 	- major functionality differences?

BSDI seems to be faster than 386BSD, at least on the machines we've tested them
both on.  It must have undergone some major tweaking.

|> 	- How robust is 386BSD? BSDI?

While we were working with 386BSD we experienced some intermittant crashes and
there must have been a memory leak somewhere because we ran out of memory
after a while.  BSDI, however, seems to be rock-solid.

|> 	- Advantages of one over the other?

386BSD is free :-)  BSDI costs bux, but if you're going to use either for
any kind of production environment, don't even think about 386BSD.  Go ahead
and fork over the $1k for the BSDI kernal, you'll be glad you did.  The
company was quite responsive to all our questions and the saved headaches
alone were worth manyfold the $1k.  The only disadvantage I can think of
(and it applies equally to 386BSD and BSDI) is the (bogus) AT & T lawsuit against
BSDI.

I've got no connexion with the company--just a very satisfied customer.