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Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.questions:9493 comp.os.linux.help:26674 Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions,comp.os.linux.help Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!sgiblab!sgigate.sgi.com!olivea!charnel!yeshua.marcam.com!MathWorks.Com!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!uknet!cf-cm!cybaswan!iiitac From: iiitac@uk.ac.swan.pyr (Alan Cox) Subject: Re: NetBSD vs FreeBSD vs Linux? Message-ID: <1994Mar28.133337.27552@uk.ac.swan.pyr> Organization: Swansea University College References: <SHEFF.94Mar23151209@indigoa.cr.usgs.gov> Date: Mon, 28 Mar 1994 13:33:37 GMT Lines: 51 In article <SHEFF.94Mar23151209@indigoa.cr.usgs.gov> sheff@sg2.cr.usgs.gov writes: > >I am looking into using NetBSD, FreeBSD, or Linux to create several cheap >Intel Unix machines for a turnkey system. Here are the requirements I have: > >1. Must be a stable platform. I would like to have the machines up 24 hrs a >day, 7 days a week if possible. All three will do this fairly well. Bet on one boot a week.. I get less but its always best to start paranoid (for comparison the solaris box here dies every 2-3 days but sunos on a sun has been up 75 days now) > >2. Can use a wide variety of hard disk controllers, network cards, and display >devices. The actual machines that the OS will be running on will vary >depending on availability and price of the components. Linux supports more disk and network cards, but both support all the common stuff. Video support is through Xfree86 and thus identical > >3. Relatively easy to install. I do not want to spend a lot of time trying to >figure out how to install the OS, since I might not be doing it on all the >machines. Slackware's Linux kit is painless to install and available on CD. It's also easy to install a minimal system (no compilers/apps etc) and build that to specific jobs. BSD I found harder and awkward to thin down. > >4. Relatively easy to maintain once set up. These systems will only have a >couple users running a limited set of programs. The only admin type work the >users will have to do is backing up and possibly restoring filesystems. Once set up properly and Unix system should go forever. > >5. Simple network support (ie. TCP/IP, sockets, ftp, etc). X amd NFS would be >really nice, but not necessary. Both have TCP/IP and the Linux tcp/ip nowdays is solid (prior to 1.0 it wasnt) our NFS server come BBS come multi-user system has been down only once since 1.0 came out and that was for a kernel upgrade! You get NFS and X for free in both cases. The X is identical, the BSD NFS is a little better. > >I don't know a lot about the specifics of any of these OS and I would >appreciate the help. I had planned on using xenix mainly because it was >available, but cost ruled it out (it was also incompatible with a lot of the >stuff I could download from the net, too). Either will serve you well. I'd pick Linux because its easier to install and get binary rather than source releases, and because slackware is so easy to use to build minimal installations (you might like to look at the dialog program with it if you are doing menus and stuff) >I really need VM and multiprocesssing for this system. Using Dos wouldn't >really provide a good solution to my problem (I don't know about OS/2, I've >never been exposed to it). OS/2 is under-rated its not a bad OS. Alan