*BSD News Article 51066


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From: wingel@hog.rydnet.lysator.liu.se (Christer Weinigel)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Linux or FreeBSD
Date: 17 Sep 1995 07:10:42 GMT
Organization: Rydnet, University of Linkoping, Sweden
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References: <409iah$inf@galaxy.ucr.edu> <41ogs7$jui@park.uvsc.edu> <1995Sep7.221221.28091@state.systems.sa.gov.au> <43bari$keb@covina.lightside.com>
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I really shoudn't get involved in this thread, but I'm waiting
for the latest Linux kernel to compile (a pre 1.3.28 patch), 
and I'm bored. :-)

[snip]
>3) When I switched from a.out to ELF under Linux, it WASN'T as stable as
>everyone had promised.  A couple of programs, including 'xbench' and
>simple utilities like "fromdos" and "todos" caused segmentation faults no
>matter what I did!
[snip]

I just thought I'd mention this might be a problem with 'fromdos' and
'todos', not ELF.  a.out has a 'feature' which allows a.out-programs
to access NULL pointers without causing segmentation faults, ELF is
much more paranoid about things like this, so some bugs which have
gone undetected with a.out executables are being fixed because of ELF.
I might be totally off the mark this time though :-)

BTW.  Right now I'm running Linux, but I'm not religious about it.
I'd like to try FreeBSD or NetBSD, but I still haven't been able to
figure out if there is any support my hardware (specifically, the
Trantor T128 SCSI-adapter).  Is there a 'Hardware compatibility list'
available for FreeBSD somewhere.