*BSD News Article 94908


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From: cjs@cynic.portal.ca (Curt Sampson)
Newsgroups: misc.forsale.computers.workstation,alt.dec,biz.dec,biz.dec.workstations,comp.sys.dec,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.openbsd.misc
Subject: Re: FS: Dec Alphastation 500/500 Must sell
Date: 1 May 1997 11:56:08 -0700
Organization: Internet Portal Services, Inc.
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Message-ID: <5kap08$2dv@cynic.portal.ca>
References: <5k6vui$7pd@news-rocq.inria.fr> <tepvvcosqg.fsf@grandteton.cs.uiuc.edu> <slrn5mg1st.e7i.djb@lacrosse.redhat.com> <33694567.7E3B@nedernet.nl>
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In article <33694567.7E3B@nedernet.nl>,
Pim van der Eijk  <pvde@nedernet.nl> wrote:

>As for OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, the same argument holds expect for the
>fact that the user base of these systems seems (?) to be much smaller
>than Linux's...

I think there's no doubt about that.

>,  although I've heard some UNIX specialists in a company
>I've worked for praise NetBSD over the commercial UNIX this company was
>selling.

I don't find this surprising. In my (obviously biased, since I'm
a NetBSD developer) opinion, NetBSD is one of the best designed
OSes out there. I don't, however, hesitate to point out that this
may not mean much to you if you're not in the habit of poking around
in the kernel source code. :-)

>Also,  I don't understand why there have to be three competing
>*BSD projects,  the Linux gang seems better at keeping proselytes and 
>dissidents involved in the main stream ..

Uh...is that why there are at least nine different Linux distributions?
(Keep in mind that the BSD sytems include a userland, so you have
to compare each BSD with a Linux distribution, not just a Linux
kernel.)

I won't get into all the details of this argument here, since it's
been gone through over and over again in the advocacy groups. But
take my word for it, Linux has its own fragmentation and its own
set of disadvantages. That doesn't prevent me from recommend it to
some users, though.

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson    cjs@portal.ca	   Info at http://www.portal.ca/
Internet Portal Services, Inc.	   Through infinite myst, software reverberates
Vancouver, BC  (604) 257-9400	   In code possess'd of invisible folly.