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Received: by minnie.vk1xwt.ampr.org with NNTP id AA1873 ; Tue, 23 Feb 93 15:01:58 EST Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!The-Star.honeywell.com!umn.edu!umeecs!quip.eecs.umich.edu!dmuntz From: dmuntz@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Dan Muntz) Subject: Re: 386BSD vs BSDI Message-ID: <1993Feb22.034148.26141@zip.eecs.umich.edu> Sender: news@zip.eecs.umich.edu (Mr. News) Organization: University of Michigan EECS Dept., Ann Arbor References: <BRISTER.93Feb20214032@netcom.Netcom.COM> <1993Feb22.020449.20823@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1993 03:41:48 GMT Lines: 65 In article <1993Feb22.020449.20823@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> helz@ecn.purdue.edu (Randall A Helzerman) writes: >In article <BRISTER.93Feb20214032@netcom.Netcom.COM>, brister@Netcom.COM (james brister) writes: >|> What's the difference between the OS put out by BSDI that runs on a 386 and >|> the 386BSD put out by WJ? > >We just tried to port a major piece of software over to Linux, 386BSD, and BSDI. > >We could only get it to work on BSDI. For the price, BSDI is a major bargain >and well worth the headaches we could have avoided by just going with it first. I don't suppose you'd care to elaborate on this at all? I've "ported" many packages to 386bsd w/o problems. About the only thing I haven't managed to get up and running is _alex_. And I put ported in quotes since in most cases porting consists of typing 'make' +/- configuration steps needed for any system. > >|> - major functionality differences? > >BSDI seems to be faster than 386BSD, at least on the machines we've tested them >both on. It must have undergone some major tweaking. > 6 minutes to build the kernel on my 486dx50 (386bsd0.1 + pk0.2.1 + NONOP patch). Again, does anyone have some numbers to provide a more objective comparison? >|> - How robust is 386BSD? BSDI? > >While we were working with 386BSD we experienced some intermittant crashes and >there must have been a memory leak somewhere because we ran out of memory >after a while. BSDI, however, seems to be rock-solid. > There does seem to be a memory leak somewhere in 386bsd. I can crash a machine by running multiple xtroff's; however, other memory-intensive programs don't seem to cause problems. Once this vm problem is fixed, I believe "rock-solid" would apply equally well to 386bsd. Even before pk0.2, my machines would stay up for weeks at a time under a fair load. >|> - Advantages of one over the other? > >386BSD is free :-) BSDI costs bux, but if you're going to use either for >any kind of production environment, don't even think about 386BSD. Go ahead What a ridiculous thing to say. It depends on what you're producing, who's producing it and what it's being produced for. If, for example, you were producing a system and wanted to supply a (possibly hacked up) os environement with it, 386bsd would be the logical choice (outside of licensing fees for BSDI, which IMHO would take a hell of a lot of nerve). >and fork over the $1k for the BSDI kernal, you'll be glad you did. The >company was quite responsive to all our questions and the saved headaches >alone were worth manyfold the $1k. The only disadvantage I can think of >(and it applies equally to 386BSD and BSDI) is the (bogus) AT & T lawsuit against >BSDI. It's a bit of a jump to say the threat of Novell/USL applies equally well to 386bsd since your name doesn't appear on a list of customers to which USL may very well gain access. -Dan dmuntz@citi.umich.edu