*BSD News Article 96851


Return to BSD News archive

Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!metro!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!server1.netnews.ja.net!server6.netnews.ja.net!str-ccsun!singer.cent.gla.ac.uk!newsfeed.ed.ac.uk!edcogsci!richard
From: richard@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Richard Tobin)
Subject: Re: Is NetBSD alive?
X-Nntp-Posting-Host: pitcairn
Message-ID: <EB670F.Frx@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Sender: cnews@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (C News Software)
Bcc: richard
Organization: HCRC, University of Edinburgh
References: <01bc6c60$f76eb860$5f030514@yosemite>
Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 22:41:02 GMT
Lines: 29
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:6039

In article <01bc6c60$f76eb860$5f030514@yosemite> "Dave Schaumann" <dschauma@csci.csc.com> writes:
>However, I find the lack of traffic in this group troubling.
>Are the other *BSD variants so much better?

I think the low traffic reflects a smaller user community.  If you
only expect to be using x86 machines, I'd recommend FreeBSD for that
reason.  If you use FreeBSD, there will be lots of people using
exactly the same release as you, which is very useful.  On the other
hand, if you intend to use anything other other than x86 then NetBSD
(or OpenBSD) is the answer.

Apart from that there's really not much difference.  Anything
significant done by one group will probably be picked up by the other,
or could be ported with not much effort.

A personal view (though I know some other people who share it): the
FreeBSD people seem much friendlier than the NetBSD people.  When the
big split between NetBSD and FreeBSD happened, it wasn't really clear
who was in the right; but given that NetBSD then split again in most
acrimonious circumstances (to produce OpenBSD) it seems that the
NetBSD people are terminally factional.

I ran NetBSD 0.8 and 0.9 then switched to FreeBSD, almost entirely
because their serial driver worked better with cheap hardware.

-- Richard
--
I delete unread all email from or through Earthlink and Compuserve,
because it's almost all junk mail.