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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!constellation!osuunx.ucc.okstate.edu!moe.ksu.ksu.edu!crcnis1.unl.edu!wupost!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!headwall.Stanford.EDU!kithrup.com!sef From: sef@kithrup.com (Sean Eric Fagan) Subject: Re: Status on discussed merge between NetBSD and FreeFSD Organization: Kithrup Enterprises, Ltd. References: <1993Nov14.085858.714@nhqvax.hq.nasa.gov> Message-ID: <CGHt2z.B7D@kithrup.com> Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1993 17:39:56 GMT Lines: 86 In article <1993Nov14.085858.714@nhqvax.hq.nasa.gov> root@stranneek.nsi.nasa.gov (Michael C. Newell) writes: >I'd like to make a reasoned decision. I'm not jordan, but what the hey, I'll take a crack at it anyway :). > a. The philosophical differences between each product. netbsd wants to be a portable OS. This is a good thing. My apartmentmate is running an early release of the mac version (on his mac, of course), as well as 0.9 on his PC. (I'm still running 386bsd 0.1 + patchkits, because my machine acts as a server for email and news to several people, so upgrading without backups would have been a bad thing. Now I have a tape, and will probably upgrade to freebsd-1.1 when it comes out.) Freebsd started out as, basicly, the patchkits and has done a lot less R&D than netbsd has. In that respect, it's "more stable." Both systems get pounded on fairly heavily, so both are about equally "stable" in that respect. Oh, freebsd has less people calling netbsd people bozo's in public :). > b. The technical differences between product approach. Hm. As I said, netbsd is "portable." They've also made some pretty stupid design decisions, I think (the magic number, adding some system calls that needn't've been such, some things like that), which the freebsd folks have picked up, I think, to be compatible. Various portions of the code have undergone extensive rewrites, and most of the utilities have been upgraded to newer versions, if they are available. (Freebsd has done the upgrading as well, I think, but less of the rewrites.) > c. The specific differences between the products. > - What does NetBSD have that FreeBSD doesn't? Different ports. Extremely important if you have an amiga, a pc532, a mac, an hp300, or a sparcstation (1-2, I think). Other than that, there's not a lot that netbsd has that freebsd doesn't, or won't shortly. The systems, as I think I tried to say above, feel slightly different. But I go back and forth between my 386bsd and my apartmentmate's netbsd machines all the time, and it doesn't bother me. > - What does FreeBSD have that NetBSD doesn't? That I don't really know anymore. The freebsd folks have a nice little discussion going right now about some configuration/sysadmining changes and tools; the impression I get from knowing some of the folks involved is that the freebsd folks are less concerned with kernel hacking than with system hacking (and the kernel is a small part of the system) than the netbsd folks. (Heck, there's a kernel change I have been thinking about making, and I would do it under netbsd, not freebsd, because of one of those extensive rewrites I mentioned above. But, for reasons briefly mentioned in another post, I won't. Bummer.) > - What's in the works for each system? Hm. Shared libraries for both. WINE for netbsd, hopefully dos emulation as well. (Although cgd has stated that he wants to dump his x86 boxes, and, once he does that, his concern for it will decrease dramatically. That was a concern to me, but, well, again, not any longer.) More ports for netbsd, probably a slow and constant change of the layout of the entire system for freebsd. Nothing really major for either, at this point, I think. Wait about six months :). > d. The COMPATABILITIES between systems. (e.g. "What > you need to keep in mind if you are writing an app > to run on BOTH FreeBSD and NetBSD.") I would have to say that you should compile to freebsd. Netbsd is, as I said above, introducing new things, considerably faster than freebsd is, so if you go for freebsd, things should always "just work" under netbsd. Shared libraries may help that somewhat, but, then, once you have shared libraries, you have to make sure that you don't try library routines that are present on one system but not the other. >I understand there will always be technical differences between >groups of systems engineers. Often this is a Good Thing. Yeah, true, but... *sigh* rifts are rarely good. Oh, well. Things are working now, and will probably continue to work in the future. Various people are doing active development on each, and some of the people are actually amenable to sharing code 8-) 8-). The long and the short of it is... I think you'd have to try both. Or find an independent reviewer to compare both and write up a review. Until that happens, you will have to rely on what the users say; I think both sets of users are pretty happy with what they've got, so you won't really lose with either decision.