*BSD News Article 56024


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From: kpneal@eos.ncsu.edu (Kevin P. Neal)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc
Subject: Re: DEC Alpha port of NetBSD
Date: 27 Nov 1995 00:41:43 GMT
Organization: North Carolina State University
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Message-ID: <49b1g7$2sm@taco.cc.ncsu.edu>
References: <491ie8$4tg@taiwan.informatik.uni-rostock.de> <MICHAELV.95Nov23103449@MindBender.HeadCandy.com> <slrn4bdmff.43l.coleman@redwood.skiles.gatech.edu>
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Richard Coleman (coleman@redwood.skiles.gatech.edu) wrote:
: | 	 If i  remember right, there exist an  Alpha port of NetBSD. I've read
: |       in the  german UnixOpen magazine that there  is a completely new port of
: |       LINUX for th Alpha hardware.
: | 	 Who can explain, why  the developers at  DEC  begin from scratch  and
: |       don't choose NetBSD? 
: | 
: | Who can say?  Linux-mania?
: | 
: | My impression is that the NetBSD approach was much cleaner, at least
: | during development.  And, DEC *used* to be a BSD shop.
: | 
: | All I can say is that NetBSD/Alpha is here, is a fully operational
: | port of NetBSD, is fully 64-bit, and is being actively maintained by a
: | very capable individual.
: 
: It the Alpha port a part of the main development sources, or is it
: a port separate from the main development baseline?
: 
Allmost all of the source is in the tree, however I get the impression
that cgd maintains his own private tree and does alot of his work 
there. I think he checks his stuff into the main tree on occasion,
but I bet the main tree is not the most current Alpha code out there.

For example, on this machine camattin@eos.ncsu.edu tried to get
emacs to compile and couldn't due to some missing header file
or something that dealt with some COFF stuff (I'm not clear on
this myself, sorry.). Not that big of a deal, really, because the
machine runs X clients fine, and I can use vi. 

The biggest problem we have is lots of software was written with
32-bit assumptions in mind. MIT Project Athena's Zephyr, for one.
Elm for another. Tin 1.2 has a problem or two, so does pine.
Sigh.

-- 
XCOMM --------------------------------------------------------
XCOMM Kevin P. Neal, Sophomore CSC/CPE     kpneal@eos.ncsu.edu 
XCOMM North Carolina State University      kevinneal@bix.com
XCOMM --------------------------------------------------------