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Received: by minnie.vk1xwt.ampr.org with NNTP id AA1908 ; Tue, 23 Feb 93 15:03:30 EST Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!saimiri.primate.wisc.edu!usenet.coe.montana.edu!nate From: nate@cs.montana.edu (Nate Williams) Subject: Re: 386BSD vs BSDI Message-ID: <1993Feb22.053055.9894@coe.montana.edu> Sender: usenet@coe.montana.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, MSU, Bozeman Mt 59717 References: <BRISTER.93Feb20214032@netcom.Netcom.COM> <1993Feb22.020449.20823@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1993 05:30:55 GMT Lines: 70 In article <1993Feb22.020449.20823@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> helz@ecn.purdue.edu (Randall A Helzerman) writes: >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. >From doing a lot with 386BSD, and a *little* with BSDI, I would make a guess that the reason it didn't work under 386BSD was a simple missing math function, or a broken one. There are some minor problems in the math libraries, as well as some missing compatability libraries. >From the user level, 386BSD and BSDI are almost EXACTLY the same. > >|> - 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. Huh? In my opinion, they are almost EXACTLY the same. With the 0.2.1 patchkit installed, you would be hard pressed to know the difference, and I may venture to say that 386BSD might be faster since it doesn't have the support of the DOS emulator and such. Also, with the NONOP patches, people have been seeing 20-40% speedups. > >|> - 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. In this area, I must agree. Thought 386BSD is very stable, it still has it's problems. Also, support is bursty. If a bug is fixed, it's because the person who fixes it wants it fixed and has the ability to fix it. With BSDI you get PAID support. If you got a problem, they will fix it, or at least try to figure out a way to work around it. With 386BSD, if you encounter a bug, you report it and hope someone else will devote the time to fix it, or you could go looking for it yourself. However, if the occasional hang doesn't bother you, (Once every couple days, more if you do a lot of heavy I/O, memory hog, less if you are the average user), then 386BSD fit's the bill nicely. Me, I've seen BSDI, and for what I need it for, the bang for the buck is with 386BSD, A satisfied 386BSD user, Nate -- osynw@terra.oscs.montana.edu | Still trying to find a good reason for nate@cs.montana.edu | these 'computer' things. Personally, home #: (406) 586-0579 | I don't think they'll catch on - Don H.