*BSD News Article 23248


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From: richard@castle.ed.ac.uk (Richard Tobin)
Subject: Re: WILL ???BSD DIE?
References: <jmonroyCFv39C.Iv1@netcom.com> <2b64ce$l4o@zip.eecs.umich.edu> <2b6o4p$15s@pdq.coe.montana.edu>
Message-ID: <CFxBJ3.Dzy@festival.ed.ac.uk>
Sender: news@festival.ed.ac.uk (remote news read deamon)
Organization: University of Edinburgh
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1993 16:09:02 GMT
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In article <2b6o4p$15s@pdq.coe.montana.edu> nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu (Nate Williams) writes:
>I have no idea where this comes from.  Other than some changes which have made
>it difficult to run these releases on some hardware that ran 386BSD, in
>EVERY aspect the newer releases are more stable and usable than any version
>of 386BSD available.

Different people have different experiences.  I have no doubt that
*overall* NetBSD and FreeBSD are much more stable than 386BSD 0.1.  On
the other hand, I ran 386BSD + <10 patches for nearly a year without a
single crash.  I guess I just happened not to be doing any of the
things that make it crash.  When I installed NetBSD 0.9, it crashed
the same day; since then it's been fine (and I plan to continue using
it).

My point is just that you shouldn't be surprised that *some* people
found 386BSD sufficiently reliable, or even better than one of the
alternatives.  Explain to them that this was a minority experience.

BTW, can you explain what you meant by "some changes which have made
it difficult to run these releases on some hardware"?  What specifically
are you referring to here?

Finally, despite my comments above, I don't want to associate myself
with any of the criticisms of NetBSD or FreeBSD made in the referenced
articles.

-- Richard
-- 
"Beat your ploughshares into swords and your pruninghooks into spears"
(Joel 3:10)