*BSD News Article 17317


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Newsgroups: comp.os.minix,comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.os.386bsd.questions,comp.os.linux,alt.uu.comp.os.linux.questions
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!sdd.hp.com!col.hp.com!csn!boulder!tigger!atk
From: atk@tigger.cs.Colorado.EDU (Alan Krantz)
Subject: Choosing a Unix like OS for a pc
Message-ID: <1993Jun19.125224.17510@colorado.edu>
Sender: news@colorado.edu (The Daily Planet)
Nntp-Posting-Host: tigger.cs.colorado.edu
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1993 12:52:24 GMT
Lines: 35




Hi- i've been considering purchashing a pc and running one of minix, 
bsd-386 and linux and have a few questions:

In genreal is the recommended hardware (i.e, which type of disk - scsi, rll,
... work esp well), same for video, bus (isa, eisa, ...) and so on. 

Are there other unix like operating systems that should be considered?

How does linux compare to other public domain unix like os - such as
386bsd and minix-386 in terms of features and performance.



As i understand it, in the near future pc based on risc chips such as
alpha and mips rs4400 will be available at prices similar to today top
end 486. What are the chances that these operating systems will run on these
processors (how much of the kernel is assembly and hardware dependent and how
much of it is generic machine independent C code) ?

How difficult is it to "hack" the kernel given an indept knowledge of
os principals? I.e, if i want to add custom system calls or additional security
features ?  (I have hacked a little on unix version 6 and found it
trivial to do this sort of stuff).

Should i post this notice on another newsgroup ?

Please send replies to me as this is a cross post. If there is enough
interest i will post a summary of the replies in a week or so.

Thank You,
alan krantz